Br. Muema

Some call him ‘the carpenter of the bicycle’, some call him Onesmus, yet others in his village call him ‘father Muema’ and he laughs about it because he cannot keep correcting the villagers like, ‘I am not Fr. Muema, I am Br. Muema!’. Some years back, he found me in Mpeketoni. Innitially, I did not see anything special. He was ‘just another new brother’, they (we) come all the time. However, as time went by, things started to change, the easiness with which he took life was just great. I realized that with his attitude, all was fine, acceptable and good! Nothing really seemed to trouble him. When he lost his brother, the first born in his family, it was no different. He came back after the burial and I said, “it is good your brother has died, now we are eating mangoes brought from your place,” he laughed an added, “yep, I also had a chance to go to the village”. When I asked him why I did not get to see a lot of people “mourn normally”- the African mourning, he said “hata mimi sikulia, hata sikumbuki kama niliona mtu yeyote akilia!”.