By Njonjo Mue
[In the last Episode, I had met a young programme officer at the Institute of Economic Affairs with whom I was to work for one week in October 2001. Little did I know that as we discussed the ‘ Kenya at the Crossroads’ Scenarios Project, God was preparing the mother of all scenarios for us that would lead us to becoming partners for life…
But before continuing with the details of how I finally became Moses to Katindi’s Zipporah, here are a couple of brief interludes…]
INTERLUDE ONE…
OF IGNORANCE, WITCHCRAFT AND GOD’S SENSE OF HUMOUR
I grew up in Thika in the 1970s.
Despite the town being a melting pot of people from different parts of the country, who came from the villages in to the budding town in search of work in the factories of Kenya’s ‘Industrial Capital’, I was still ignorant enough to believe some of the myths peddled by adults about different ethnic communities.
In particular, we were strongly led to believe that people from Kitui were witches and could do us great harm by remote control from a long way away.
I was an avid reader of the children’s magazine ‘ Rainbow ’ and I often contributed short stories, poems, puzzles and quizzes for publication in the magazine.
One day when I was ten years old, day I wrote to ‘ Rainbow ’ seeking a Pen Pal, and you can imagine my shock when I received a letter from a girl from Kitui asking me to be her Pen Pal.
Horror of horrors!
What was I to do with this letter from the child of a witch? It was a Catch 22.
If I replied to the letter, I would definitely come under her spell forever; if I didn’t, she surely had the powers to track me down to my very bedroom and unleash some terrible calamity.
I was surely done for.
In a state of total panic, I sought the wise counsel of my elder brother, Kamau, who calmed me down and told me that if I did not respond to the letter, the girl from Kitui would have no way of knowing if I ever received it at all.
And so, with a great sense of relief, I burned the letter, scattered the ashes to the four corners of the earth and slept soundly, knowing that I had had a narrow escape.
Many years later, I met a charming young woman. We became friends, fell in love, dated for two years and got married on Jamhuri Day 2007.
She is the best thing to have happened to me. Her name is Katindi Sivi Njonjo. And guess what, she comes from Kitui!
And am I so glad that I came under her spell forever!
Surely, our God has a sense of humour….
INTERLUDE TWO…
HAPPILY EVER AFTER
For Katindi…
By Njonjo Mue
We met inauspiciously
Became friends unhurriedly
Grew fond of one another genuinely
Enjoyed each other’s company profoundly
We laughed, often uncontrollably
And slowly but surely
We fell in love unconditionally
And got married gleefully
Now we enjoy life intentionally
And because I love you completely
I look forward to living joyfully
With you… ever after, happily.
And here are the details of how all this came to pass…
WON’T YOU PLEASE BUY LUNCH FOR A POOR STUDENT?
At the end of May 2002, I resigned my job as Regional Director of Panos Eastern Africa and returned home to Nairobi from Kampala to enroll in a two year Masters in Theology Programme at the Nairobi International School of Theology (NIST).
Shortly after school started, I wrote an email to Katindi saying, “Now that I am a broke student, I am not ashamed to ask you to buy me lunch.”
She did not hesitate to invite me to lunch at the Fairview Hotel. She had recently been promoted to Programme Officer following the departure of her former boss and best friend, Angella Kitonga from IEA, but still I knew that even with her new salary, buying me lunch at the Fairview must have been a sacrifice for which I was very grateful.
During my time at NIST, Katindi and I would often meet to share a meal or tea. We also started to go out for entertainment in town. She would choose the plays we would see at Alliance Française or the National Theatre, and I would be responsible for recommending the movies we could watch.
After the show, we would find a restaurant with a reasonably priced menu (Generations Restaurant on Moi Avenue was a particular favourite) and share a cup of tea, which we would deliberately drink very slowly, even asking the waitress to warm it again, so as to extend our time together without having to burst our very modest budget for entertainment.
I would then walk her to her matatu stage behind Gill House, continuing ascwe went our animated conversations about our experiences navigating our way as pilgrims in a hostile world, where she would board her transport home to Kariobangi South where she was living with her parents.
Katindi was also a member of Christians for a Just Society (CFJS), an organization that had been recently formed to mobilize the church for social action, and she would often invite me to the weekly CFJS prayer meeting.
Following Easter of 2004, I joined members of the Fellowship of Christian Unions (FOCUS) in forming an advocacy NGO, the International Institute of Legislative Affairs, whose mission was to advocate for just legislation and lobby Parliament to pass the same.
I invited Katindi to join the group, not only because I knew she would make a great contribution given her academic and professional background, but because it would also give us the opportunity to spend more time together.
THE SCALES FALL OFF
In October 2005, I was arrested at the American Embassy and imprisoned for thirty days at the Industrial Area Prison for advocating for compensation for the victims and survivors of the 1998 bomb blast.
Immediately following my release from custody, I fell ill and was admitted in the hospital for a week.
Throughout that week, Katindi used her lunch hour to visit me in the hospital where we would just sit in the garden and talk.
All this time, it had never occurred to me that ours would ever become anything more than a good friendship. Remember the small matter of that age difference?
However, during the fourth day of her visits, something unexpected happened. As we sat talking in the garden of Chiromo Lane Medical Centre, like the apostle Paul in Damascus, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes. Alas, the young girl who had stood before me disappeared and, behold, in her place stood a beautiful young woman.
In addition to all her other qualities, I specifically remember noticing, as if for the very first time, her curvy hips which were beautifully if subtly amplified by the pinstripe brown skirt she wore that stopped just shy of her knees.
HE WILL NOT LET YOUR FOOT SLIP…
The age gap between us seemed to vapourize, and I did not waste time in asking the question that urgently came to my mind.
“Katindi, we have been friends for four years now,” I told her, trying to hide my excitement at the prospect of what I was about to propose. “Have you ever wondered if our friendship could become something more?”
“Absolutely!” she said without hesitation, her sincere smile lingering somewhere between shyness and confidence.
I was pleasantly surprised by her quick response. The usual protocol when a Christian girl was asked out by a guy those days was to say, “Let me go and pray about it,” even if it was obvious her eventual answer would be “yes.”
It was part of an unspoken code that Christian girls should not be seen to be too eager to enter into romantic relationships.
When I asked her later about her prompt response to my suggestion that we upgrade our friendship to a relationship, Katindi said that she already knew what she wanted and did not want to play games.
Clearly, the lass who had been waiting at the altar resplendent in her wedding gown were getting impatient and could not wait any longer for her lad to catch up!
Nevertheless, she would also confess that once she had said yes on that Thursday lunchtime at Chiromo Lane, she did pray about it during her evening devotion, and God had unequivocally answered her question about whether it was the right thing to do by leading her to Psalm 121: 3, “He will not let your foot slip – he who watches over you will not slumber.”
ATTENTION WITHOUT INTENTION?
We dated for just over a year during which time I grew even fonder of her. But like most men, I suffered an acute case of commitment-phobia and I feared that I might have fallen into the trap that many Christian young men fell into when it came to relating with girls, the trap of attention without intention.
On the afternoon of New Year’s Eve on 31 December 2006, we had a long conversation over a cup of tea during which Katindi gently confronted me.
“We’ve known each other for five years now and have been dating for over a year,” she said methodically, clearly trying not to sound like she was complaining. “What are your intentions for this relationship?”
She said that while she valued my friendship, she did not want the New Year to start with us still being in a state of limbo. We needed to decide whether we were taking it to the next level and if not, we needed to release each other.
I told her that, honestly, I was genuinely unsure as to the direction our friendship should take.
As we usually did, we parked her car outside Hilton Hotel and prayed together inside shortly before I crossed the road to the Kencom bus stop to catch my KBS Bus Number 4 home to Riruta Satellite where I was living at the time.
“Father God,” I prayed aloud as I gently held her hand. “Thank you for this special friendship that you have given us. Lord you know that I am scared and confused about whether to move forward or not. I need your help. Please speak clearly to me and show me the way. In Jesus’ name. Amen”
A LITTLE HELP FROM MR. GRAHAM
God did not take long before answering my desperate prayer for clarity. That very night as I sat in my one bedroom flat at Riruta Satellite randomly flipping my TV channels while waiting to tune in to KBC to join President Kibaki and First Lady Lucy as they led the nation in ushering in the New Year from State House Mombasa, I came across a Billy Graham Classic programme that was just starting to air on Family TV.
The evangelistic crusade must have been recorded somewhere in the US in the late 1960s or early 70s, for the recording was in black and white and the dress fashion and hairstyles of those in attendance indicated those of a different generation.
Before he started preaching, Billy Graham, rather unusually and quite out of the blue, stated, “Young people surprise me these days. A young man comes to me and tells me to pray for him because he is confused as to which girl to marry, and yet every so often I see the young man serving in the church with a pretty young girl beside him. They seem to enjoy each other’s company so. They run errands together and they sing together in the choir. Everybody it seems, except him, seems to know that they were meant for each other, but he continues to pray to God to show him whom to marry. God must laugh at such a young person who refuses to see the answer to his prayer right before his very eyes.”
Mr. Graham may have been speaking that word to a different audience in a different country, three or four decades earlier, but on that New Year’s Eve as I sat sipping a cup of tea at my little apartment in Riruta Satellite, God used him to speak very clearly to me and to once and for all settle my dilemma.
WILL YOU MARRY ME?
The next time I saw Katindi was two days later on 2nd January 2007, as we drove to Kitui to visit her Cùcù.
I waited until we had just exited Thika Road over the fly-over that would take us to Garissa Road. It seemed somewhat appropriate that I make my auspicious announcement as we passed by my alma mater, General Kago Primary School.
“Guess what… the Lord has spoken in answer to my prayer of New Year’s Eve.” I explained to her how Billy Graham had gone our of his way to address a young man about a young maiden and how his short detour from his evangelistic message left me in no doubt about God’s intentions for us going forward.
“Katindi, will you marry me?” I asked.
She was the one on the wheel. She stopped the car on the roadside, gave me a warm long hug and simply declared, “Of course I will marry you.”
Her signature smile and the dancing in her eyes made it unnecessary for her to say anything more.
EE NA MÙTEETHESYA?
When we reached her Cùcù’s house in Katutu Village, it seemed like Cùcù had been having tea with Billy Graham…
“Eena mùteethesya?” she asked Katindi shortly after I had been introduced, “Does he have a helper?”
It was too early to announce our intention to get married, so Katindi tried to brush her off and change the subject.
However, later in the afternoon, after the chicken had been caught, cooked and eaten, and as we were having tea and enjoying the sights and sounds of Katutu village, Cùcù suddenly and without warning started to sing an old gospel song. It was a Kiswahili song but she sang it sweetly with a Kamba accent. Her sweet voice made me realize from where Katindi had inherited her own voice, which she used as part of the worship team in her church.
“Hooodi hodi
Hooodi hodi
Mwakaribishwa
Fungua milango, madirisha
Mwokozi aingie…”
[Knock knock
Knock knock
You are welcome to come in
Open the doors, and the windows
That the Deliverer may come in]
She then turned dramatically to Katindi and declared with a knowing smile, “Ùù tiiwe Mwokozi waku.” (“Isn’t this gentleman your Deliverer?”)
We all laughed and soon we said our goodbyes to start our journey back to the City as we did not want to drive at night.
As we passed by Thika on our way back and discussed our visit to Cùcù, we realized that in her own subtle way, she had spoken a blessing to our impending union and we could now go ahead and start preparing to embark on the adventure of our life together.
SHERIA HOUSE IS NOT AN OPTION
As the New Year 2007 began, we also started to prepare for our wedding.
By this time, I had been without paid work for four years, three of which I had been a student in Bible College and one of which I had worked without pay as Executive Director at CFJS. I had long depleted my reserves and was really living hand to mouth.
I was therefore really concerned that I would not be able to raise enough money for the wedding.
Also, I was turning forty years old that year, and I felt too old to convene a committee to help us plan and fundraise for the wedding. What is more, I feared that having worked in high profile international jobs, I would be ridiculed by friends if I tried to ask them for donations to help fund our wedding.
But it was just my pride speaking…
After I shared the news of our forthcoming wedding with my friend Karobia Njogu, he asked me when we would form our wedding committee, which he was eager to join.
“We won’t be forming a committee,” I told him flatly. But he would hear none of it.
“Refusing to form a committee,” Karobia said, “Would be denying your friends, whom you have always stood with during their time of need, a chance to reciprocate.”
We therefore did eventually, albeit reluctantly on my part, form a wedding planning committee. But we decided that when it came to donating for the wedding, we would not prescribe any minimum amounts from committee members as was the tradition at the time, but would leave it entirely up to individuals to determine what they were comfortable giving. Even for those members who for one reason or the other were unable to give financially, we considered their very presence and help in planning a gift enough.
In April of that year, we attended the wedding of two friends of ours, Joshua and Faith Kikuvi. It was just the kind of wedding that we imagined having later in the year, a good celebration but not too ostentatious, and so we requested them to give us a copy of their budget.
Shortly thereafter, Katindi and I were sitting at her office one Thursday evening after everyone else had left to start working on our wedding budget.
We considered how much money we could reasonable expects to save from our respective monthly salaries (I had recently been employed by the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights as a Senior Human Rights Officer).
We were dismayed to realize that even if we were to backdate our savings to January, we would still not raise half the amount required by the date of the wedding in December.
In a panic, I proposed a number of alternatives, including postponing the wedding to April 2008 to enable us to save some more money, or going to the State Law Office at Sheria House for a civil ceremony and hosting a few friends for lunch afterwards. Katindi flatly rejected each of these proposals.
“I have waited all this while to have a church wedding, and there’s no way I am going to the AG’s office for a civil ceremony,” she said emphatically.
She even suggested that I was developing cold feet about marrying her and that was why I was looking for a way to break the engagement.
This accusation hurt me deeply. I was desperate to get married to her, but I was just being realistic about the cost and our inability to meet it.
IT’S YOUR GLORY ON THE LINE
God must have been listening in on our conversation, for at that very moment, I had an epiphany.
“Katindi,” I said. “We are going about this the wrong way. You see, in our plan to save for the wedding, we don’t need anything other than a bank account. Where is the place for God in this equation?”
She asked what I had in mind. Instead of explaining, I told her let us pray.
Holding both of her hands in mine, I said a simple prayer: “Lord, we know that you called us together to be husband and wife. We plan to get married on 12th December 2007. We need this amount of money for the wedding, yet we can only raise half the amount in our own strength. We believe that you want your name to be glorified at the wedding. If we can’t have a good celebration on that day, it is your glory that is on the line. Please provide for us the balance of the amount we need. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
OPENING OF THE FLOODGATES
The very following morning, Katindi called me to ask if I could take her to the Ministry of Planning. For a number of weeks, she had been volunteering in a think tank that was brainstorming and conceptualizing what became Vision 2030. At least she thought it was voluntary.
But on the morning following our prayer, she received a call from the Ministry.
“Hello Katindi,” her caller greeted her. “I am calling you from the Ministry of Planning to ask you when you are coming to collect you consultancy fee.”
Katindi was genuinely confused since she did not know that the meetings that she had been attending, chaired by Dr. Wahome Gakuru, were part of a consultancy. But her caller explained that indeed it was, and that all the other consultants had long since collected their money.
When I took her to the Ministry offices, we were both pleasantly surprised when she was given an envelope containing KSh. 60,000 in brand new bank notes, which we banked into our wedding account.
She was to receive further payments for the ongoing work on Vision 2030 as well as a number of other consultancies that brought in even more money. Our wedding kitty was growing steadily.
One morning in mid-October during my time of devotion at 3.30 a.m, I had a candid talk with God.
“Dear Lord, thank you so much for the way that you have come through for us since we prayed for provision for our wedding. But all the money so far has come through Katindi. Now, Lord, we are going to have a crisis if we are going to be equal partners in this marriage and yet my tap remains dry. Please send some of the blessings through me as well. Amen.”
Amazingly, following that prayer, Katindi’s taps were shut dry, and I mean not one single cent came through her from that day until the wedding in December.
My taps on the other hand opened like floodgates.
The week before I made that prayer, I had been interviewed for a promotion at the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. When I got to the office later in the morning of that prayer, I was called in by the Commission Secretary, Mburu Gitu, to give me the good news that my promotion to head of department had come through with a commensurate increase in salary, and we started to bank the difference in our wedding account.
In mid-morning of the same day, I received a call from my friend Anne.
“Hi Njonjo,” she said. “I have been receiving your email updates about your wedding plans. How much are people contributing?”
I told her that we had decided to leave it open for each person to give as they felt able to.
“Just give me a figure,” she persisted.
Half jokingly, I told her, “Well, my dear, I would have asked you to give us one million shillings, but since we also want others to be able to contribute, how about you give us 100K?”
“Ok,” Anne replied nonchalantly. “Can you come and collect the cheque on Wednesday next week?”
When I expressed my pleasant surprise, indeed shock, at her generosity, she retorted, “Njonjo, you have sown into many people’s lives. It’s just harvest time.”
And she was not joking! She honoured her pledge the following week.
Shortly after I hang up the phone from speaking to Anne, I opened my email to find a note from my friend Robert Mbugua who was working in South Africa.
“Njonjo, if you had my cheque book in front of you,” he wrote. “How much would you write as a contribution for your wedding.”
I responded to him that I would write KSh. 50,000. He wrote back and said that he and his wife Josephine would be sending us the 50K. As if this was not enough, he added, “At the time of your wedding in December, my family and I will be home in Kenya for Christmas. You and your bride are welcome to stay at our home in Sandton for your honeymoon.”
Later that day, I received a donation of KSh. 33,000 from my friend Kagwiria Mbogori, who was working with the UN in Monrovia, Liberia. In addition, she told me that she had a new car that she was importing at the time and that it would be at our disposal as soon as it got registered to use for running errands as we prepared for our wedding.
Kagwiria’s email was followed by another phone call from my friend Christine Wambaa, also working with the UN in Geneva informing me that she had wired me KShs. 10,000.
Finally, to crown it all, just before I left for home at the end of the day, my friend and former law school classmate, Commissioner Winnie Lichuma, called me to her office and gave me a cheque of Ksh. 20,000.
In one day alone, I received contributions of over KSh. 200,000. I was utterly gobsmacked.
Surely, God had “thrown open the floodgates of heaven and poured out so much blessing that there was hardly room enough to store it,” as he promises in Malachi 3:10.
By the time of our wedding in December 2007, we had received over two and a half times the amount that we had budgeted for, including cash to pay for our travel to South Africa for our honeymoon.
We also had a wedding register at Nakumatt Supermarket and we received all the gifts that we had requested for, and then some.
KJ IS IN THE HOUSE…
Wednesday, the 12th of December 2007 eventually dawned.
It was Kenya’s 44th Jamhuri Day. It was also the date that we had chosen to exchange vows before an audience of close to one thousand friends and family at the Moi Educational Centre in South C.
Our wedding will surely go down in history as one of the most joyful events. As our wedding party went for our photo session and to freshen up before the reception at the beautiful grounds of the home of Mr. and Mrs. Anzaya Akatsa in Karen, we left behind our guests being thoroughly entertained our Emcee who was one of the most talented and humourous comedians of all time. Formerly of the famous Redykulass comedy Trio, John Kiarie, more popularly known as KJ, had a reservoir of fresh jokes and of funny stories that never seemed to run dry, and he did not disappoint.
IN OUR FATHER’S HOUSE
For our first night as husband and wife, we had obtained a reasonably priced package at the Mayfair Hotel in Parklands that comprised a brief sunset photo session with our Best Couple, a lavish dinner for the newlyweds, a night in the honeymoon suite, and breakfast the following day.
Later that night in our honeymoon suite, as I reflected on the events of that momentous day, I remembered that when I was a child, my father never missed an opportunity to remind us that he was a shareholder of Mavoloni Land Buying Company whose flagship asset was the Mayfair Hotel.
“Mùkaawa ùyù nì wiitù,” he would announce proudly as we drove past the Mayfair, “We own this hotel.”
I wondered why this random thought had popped into my head tonight, as it had nothing to do with the memorable events of our just ending wedding day.
But as I drifted off to sleep next to my bride who had long fallen asleep and was breathing gently by my side, I imagined that it was God’s way of welcoming us home and reminding us, as we took the first steps into our marriage, that we would always be safe if we remained relaxed and settled in our Father’s House.
POSTLUDE…
‘t’was a beautiful Wednesday morn
The sun shone bright and warm
Kenya marked her 44th
And the world seemed to stop.
For just a stone throw away
From where the festivities were taking place
A much more joyful occasion
Was just getting underway
The Pastor called us to attention
Just a few minutes shy of eleven
And in she floated with her folks
The most beautiful creature under heaven
Her smile in all its radiant glory
Seemed to make the sun hide away
And I whispered a prayer of thanks
That she’d be mine alway
The happiest day of my life
Soon got underway
We laughed and danced to celebrate
The precious gift of love and life
Vows were made, rings exchanged
Papers were signed, prayers said.
And then the moment came
When the two, one became.
Fifteen years have come and gone
Since that magical day
But the laughter has never faded away
For we brought it home to stay.
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Simiyu S. Stanford