Br. Sila

Seven years ago, I and my groupmates arrived at St. Bridget, our hearts lively throbbing with mixed feelings of both the uncertainty and the excitement of leaving Mpeketoni. You know mpeketoni had not been a very hospitable place to most of us who come from the highlands and so we somehow abhorred the place. If you add to that the amount of manual work that awaited us every morning as postulants, we had every reason to detest the “capuchin way of life”. It was with such an attitude of life we met the then vocations promoter Br. Sila. 

He did not say much and so the interaction remained very much minimal until somebody came over and said “jamani, Kimani has been arrested.” He had been arrested because of entering into the city with a smoke emitting land-cruiser. Sila looked around and laughed, which was quite funny. He wondered, “kama wamemshika kwa sababu ya hiyo, mimi si watanifunga miaka ishirini juu ya hii mkokoteni yangu” Apparently he was driving a small vehicle whose emission of gas would have made you think the industrial area is on the move! From that time everything else he said was hilarious. How easy it is for Br. Sila to see the humour in seemingly ugly events.