Agony aunts will in their advice columns warn you that you know your spouse is back to their old flame or has found a new one when they suddenly get a new glow and spring. All of a sudden, they will cease complaining about the inadequacies in your relationship, they will stop generous expressions of anxiety on where you are both headed in life, especially financially and bringing up the children.
They will also stop pestering you for the things they always missed, needed or even demanded. When that happens, chances are high someone else is plugging in the holes and there is a new estuary of love flowing into their hearts.
By spooning love and tending to her needs from this cup, they will get a higher sense of fulfilment, satisfaction and confidence to face tomorrow, and will slowly begin to care less about your transgressions, limitations and failings because she or he gets more than what is in your shared tributary.
This analogy is reflected too in political relationships, and more recently, the defection by Orange Democratic Movement Secretary General Ababu Namwamba and others from his backyard in Busia.
The same applies to the other political gamblers in New Ford Kenya led by Eugene Wamalwa, the only Cabinet Secretary who daily desecrates his office with political baggage.
Among a host of Luhya elders seeking political blood renewal that Mr Wamalwa dragged to State House to meet President Uhuru Kenyatta were Musikari Nasi Kombo and Fred Gumo.
Mr Wamalwa had led his party’s political herds-boy Governor Ken Lusaka in a journey that would end with the slaughtering of the NFK cockerel and a march into the Jubilee Party even before Mr Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto brandished the knife against their own Jubilee-affiliate parties.
It is not that Mr Namwamba is a fool. No, he has brought out his political mpango ya kando, (illicit love) and for the moment he is not saying he is joining Jubilee. Why? Because even the most cunning of cheaters don’t leave their spouses straight into the kraal of the new lover. There is always a ‘waiting’ room or a cheap rental or an apartment to allow attention and rumours to dissipate and for the two lovers to season their new union.
Even before you take things literally and accuse me of suggesting that Mr Namwamba was in a politically and conjugally celebrated union with Raila Odinga, I wish to remind you that in 2008 as new MPs were being sworn in, he was the only one who refused to swear allegiance to then newly-elected President Mwai Kibaki.
The point the latest political developments brings us is nothing new but needs to be retold; just about a year to the next elections as is the case always in Kenya, political and ethnic realignments take place.
What we are seeing now is the beginning of the seismic motions where those who have been meeting secretly, or within the confines of secret liaisons where packets of chocolates, bottles of perfumes, new smartphones and wads of currency are exchanged, begin to be more open and adventurous in testing the limits.
The only difference this time round is that the bug that Kalonzo Musyoka-infected, political wheeler-dealers called njia-ya-katikati (Third Force) is spreading fast and no doubt, even a few surprise faces in Jubilee will be grappling with its aches very soon.
Our political arena set with two main horses – Jubilee and Cord – gives a fertile ground for coalescing of peddlers who will strategically stand at the junction of opportunism in a bid to be invited to join the marginal winner next year.
The problem with this arrangement is that like in any romantic relationship, the beckon of your previous home could be more enticing the moment you are under one roof with your new partner, and you realise that you are just but one of those he or she has been wooing!
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This moment will come out clearly once the parties hold their primaries and the bad manners called ‘direct nominations’ come to play. Just watch the political rostrum and you will find more surprising faces than Barbara’s and Eunice’s.
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Three things we always talked about: His sister’s husband who was mistakenly shot by a drunk motorist in Nairobi while targeting someone else in road rage. The unlucky man would die after over 100 days in ICU.
Two, the pain of later losing his own wife following illness and being left to bring up their children alone. Thirdly, the miracle of his own recovery from alcohol addiction, which had cost him his job and rendered him a vagabond.
It was from this web that he lived his latter life a clean man running a rehab centre for alcohol and drug addicts in the Home of Champions. The county government would, in recognition of his zeal to drive away alcohol, appoint him director of its Alcoholic Drinks Control Board.
Henceforth, he was in the media fighting to haul souls from the cesspit he once was in. On this page, he wrote many times about this destructive phenomenon.
Last Friday, Armstrong Kibet Rono collapsed and died, leaving his legacy; how to rise up and walk after stumbling. RIP Armstrong.
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