STORY THREAD

Last Saturday, a friend I was with in a club in Westlands picked up a fight with two guys. He was thoroughly beaten as I watched. Today, he has sent me a long text message lambasting me for being a fake friend for I sat out of the fight instead of helping him.

He expected me to help him as friends do and because he was the one who had bought the booze that we were taking. There are two reasons why I chose to enjoy while he was being clobbered instead of fighting alongside him.

When I was 12-years old, I moved to my aunt’s place. She owned a large parcel of land that stretched onto the riverbank of River Sio. A large portion of the land that bordered the river was unused. It was a bush where we used to herd her cattle.

Across the River, there was a densely populated village with homesteads standing too close to the river bank. That village barely had land to graze their cattle. More often, they would guard their cattle across the river onto my aunt’s land under our mercy.

I was barely a month old at my aunt’s place. I had moved to her place that December because I wanted to join the nearby primary school which was producing better KCPE results.
On this day, a day after Christmas, we went to graze her cattle in the bush.