Our deeds will always follow us to the grave

On February 14, 2020, Dominic Roche, fastidious to a fault, adjusted his face mask as he admonished a friend whose literal and figurative guard against Covid-19 appeared to have been lowered.

A man of deep Christian convictions, he explained that while he believed in the doctrine of divine health, it was concomitant with that of personal responsibility. In short, one could not expect God to facilitate good health when they were careless about how they lived. Exactly a month later, Roche was dead!

In a season when social media posts now read like the obituary pages of newspapers, at a time when the collective consciousness of the nation has become inured to death, this article is not about the third deadly Covid-19 wave.

It is not about the effete attempts by those in government to stem the tide. Nor is it about the current lockdown that is a dead cert for economic woes, if it follows after the pattern of last year’s lockdown. This is about life and death; about how the manner in which one conducts themselves while alive is replicated even after they are gone.

Roche loved people. His love was demonstrated by his sacrificial giving. There was no noble cause he would not attach himself to; no friend in distress he would not offer a shoulder to lean on. Many are the times he would show up unannounced for fundraisers to cover hospital bills or funerals. Many are times he actually attended funerals of people he was hardly acquainted with. Many are the strangers he paid school fees for, taking them under his wing as if his own kith and kin.

Roche died from Covid-19. And not before a huge hospital bill had accumulated over his 10-day stay in the Intensive Care Unit. In death as in life, his spirit of generosity came to the fore. Friends and strangers, unbidden, took it upon themselves to fund-raise.

In Kenya, the United Kingdom, the USA and wherever Roche had touched hearts, people gave generously to the extent that his entire hospital bill plus funeral expenses were fully paid for within the three-day burial limit set by government. And there was consensus concerning every detail of his send-off. No disputes over the venue of interment; no strange women with babies in tow, claiming rights to his estate. Just a celebration of a great man who had given his all in the service of humanity.

One is reminded of the stark contrast between Roche and the political class. For one, the giving of the latter is never motivated by altruism. Those who give in churches do so with pomp and pageantry, preening before television cameras for the world to acknowledge their “generosity.” And their giving is seldom from hard-earned proceeds of legitimate business but almost always, stolen from public coffers.  

It is interesting that controversial public figures remain so even in death. It is as if their misdeeds follow them beyond the grave. Tales abound of leading figures who remained unburied as various interested parties fought for the right to inter them. Stories of property disputes, some of them running for decades, are not uncommon. Sadder still are tales of the offspring of the corrupt and how they squander family wealth on licentious living.

County assemblies

Roche’s story is an inspiration to those who desire to live and die right, and a warning to the corrupt about the futility of their actions. It is a cautionary lesson to those who have stolen Covid-19 funds that apart from the present suffering they have visited on Kenyans, they will be followed by infamy and ignominy beyond the grave.

It is an admonition to the Jubilee administration that profligate spending on a referendum against the backdrop of a rising national death toll; that giving billions of shillings as car grants to members of county assemblies, when public hospitals have run out of bed space for critically ill patients, is simply beyond the pale.

Unfortunately for the Jubilee administration, it has been blighted by poor decisions for so long that even good intentions are now infected by bad faith. For instance, few see last week’s lockdown of leading counties in Kenya as beneficial.

Not when those caught outside curfew hours have been bludgeoned by the very police officers sworn to serve and protect them. May our leaders redeem themselves soon, else their actions will call them out beyond the grave!

-Mr Khafafa is a Public Policy Analyst