On knowing love and loss

“Where would you like to sit?”

Silence. Observations being made.

“Outdoors or the inside?”

My response to this question is almost always the outside. It’s when you sit outside that things happen. It’s when you sit outside that you see things when they happen.

When you sit outside, your eyes could catch the lady in a red VW Polo take seven minutes trying to reverse park. It’s in sitting outside that you notice the clueless, oblivious, bird drop poop on a very well polished Mark X. Here is where you will notice the clouds’ mood change from blue to grey.

Outside is where you’ll see the upper-class 46 year old man have his eyes stuck on his phone, probably reading the online version of Bloomberg Business while his kids, a boy and a girl, who are about eight and nine, have vanilla milkshakes and some cake.

It’s an enriching sight, but it’s also a disconcerting one. The next time this same man looks up, the kids might be 27 and they’ll be the ones on their phones. However, they won’t be reading some article on the decline of the exportation of Swiss watches, instead, they’ll be following Olivia Pope’s latest tweets. This will be done while having a glass of Rosé after completing a chicken-salad sandwich, because by then, they definitely won’t be entertaining the thought of fries, especially the girl…I mean, all those calories?

It’s a Tuesday evening and we are at Java on Ralphe Bunche Road. My friend, who I haven’t seen in exactly a year, decides we should sit and while away the Nairobi traffic. This is subject to the fact that, regardless of the direction we decide to take, in this location, at 4.30 pm on a weekday, there’s just no escaping the road chaos. So instead of sitting in heated vehicles, cranky moods and folded up faces, we pull out chairs and observe birds temporarily destroy the Toyota brand.

Contrary to most cases, I pick the inside. Majorly because it is quite chilly outside and also because the inside of Ralphe Bunche Road’s Java is opened up, giving us a bit of both worlds: the comforting warmth and the outdoor scenery.

We sit and over hot drinks, discuss the rebranding of Java, some of their meals and my friend’s fascination with their steak but not their coconut chicken. We talk about careers, the entrepreneurial battle of ideas and his dance with wanna-be investors.

Then the conversation goes in and out of all other kinds of topics, like his upcoming trip to Dar-es-Salaam and his reluctance to getting the Yellow Fever Vaccine: “But why don’t you just get it? It’s an affair that takes less than 30min,” I ask.

“I don’t want to. I just don’t. I’m determined to see if they’ll actually deny me entry,” he retorts back.

Me: “They probably will. In the times we currently live in, most immigration borders are rigid about some of their laws. I don’t see what the problem is, just get it.”

Him: “I just don’t want to. I don’t want foreign things being injected into my body. They’ll have to let me in.”

Me: “But life is so much simpler as it is. They need a YF certificate, you go get it done and give them one. Why the need to make it (life) unnecessarily complicated?”

Him: “Aaaah, I feel like rebelling. I’m just curious to see what they’ll do to me, if anything. They have to let me in.”

Before I tell him he can’t go around pulling certain stunts because he doesn’t own a powerful, rhythmic name, like Miguna Miguna or John Pombe Magufuli, he stands up, excuses himself and says he wants to say hello to the man sitting right beside us.

On the man’s table is a book titled: “Why Nation’s Fail.” Considering my friend’s staunch belief in politics, this book, must be the source of his intrigue and fascination with the man. The next thing I see is hands being shaken, laughter being shared, and I could hear subtle teases.

I look at my phone, pretending to be reading an already read text message. Perhaps after this, as these new-found friends keep chatting, I can find out if there’s actually an Olivia Pope twitter handle. But before that happens, my friend comes back, tells me to go say hello to this gentleman and “Could we perhaps switch tables?”

I subtly look at my watch, and then mentally give myself another 30min before I gather the stamina to face the traffic. We switch tables. The gentleman, Muriuki, who is dressed in a navy blue T.Shirt and a black blazer (and who I later found out is a politician), gets up, shakes my hand and asks if we’d like to order anything else. We both decline.

I ask if he is meeting a friend at Java, just in case we’re intruding.

He says he isn’t. That he just needed somewhere to go. Not his office. Not his house. Not a friend’s place. Just somewhere, anywhere. And his car somehow found its way to this Java on Ralphe Bunch Road.

That sounds disturbing, I ask if everything is okay.

He tells us, everything was okay, until two hours earlier, when he was told his younger sister was knocked dead by a speeding vehicle.

The mood instantly changed. Ours, not his.

“How could you possibly be at Java entertaining strangers on the very day you’ve received such devastating news?” my friend asks.

“I needed to process the news. So I got into the car from my offices in Karen, and I drove. I drove until I emotionally needed to stop. And I found myself here.”

We look at him. Silent.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” I ask.

“No. There’s nothing anyone can do. What is there to do?”

Silence.

“I lost my wife a year ago… I know how this goes. I just need to process. I will suffer. Mourn. And eventually heal. But now, I just need to sit at Java with this book I was planning to pretend to be reading, but thanks to the two of you, I don’t have to.”

Silence.

 “I’ve known love and I’ve known loss,” he said. And smiled, almost smiled.

Those, were the most profound seven words I’d heard all year.

Yvonne Aoll is a writer and freelance journalist. You can read more of her work here http://www.cottageaoll.com/