Br. Samuel

I am watching a bespectacled fellow wipe the tables, set the cutlery at the table, refill the water jars and so forth. I also remember that yesterday I saw him put on the gumboots as the hoe lay there waiting to be placed on the shoulder ready to break, turn and twist the soil. I am excited and at the same time perplexed. Excited because we still have genuine vocations sprouting. Perplexed that such a young and promising man could still find a reason to humble himself much as to dust his spectacles as he tilled the sand. I am inspired by this man who has been with us barely a week. Luckily he is inspired by “himself” because he tells me that he delayed to get here, 

“nimechelewa kujiunga, hii ndio maisha niliyotamani sana.” he said as he displayed his entire dental formula. I hope and pray he understands what he is saying because I too at one point deceived myself I understood, now I don’t think I understand anymore.  

Br. Joseph

There is feeling that I should just type the name - Br. Joseph – then leave a long blank space, just to make you understand how little can be said of him. This is among the brothers I have spent quality time with but the truth is that little can be said. Nonetheless, I remember we chose him as our representative at one point. I somehow don’t remember voting because I never thought I needed to be represented anyway, but I remember he was my representative. His decisions were straight and clear, followed by his silence.

It happened that we had been invited by the sisters to celebrate the day of their founder. One of us had to go and Joseph could not think of anyone else but me. He came to me and said, “Unaenda wewe”. I never responded because certainly I was not going. “What kind of a celebration can the sisters have surely?” I wondered.  I could not imagine celebrating any thing save the liturgy – and I did not go. Whether Joseph was irked by that or not, I don’t know! A few days later, Joseph came to me with a cutting from one of the dailies’ cartoons which was a comical signpost saying 

the first character in the Cartoon asked,

“what if he doesn’t die?”

 “well, he will be shot again!”. responded the second character.

 Joseph left me in stitches. A few weeks later, we had our own celebration. Naïve as I was, Joseph made me the MC of the day. Whatever energy of resistance remained in my bowels dried.

Br. Steve (OmeraNdogo)

Isn’t it true that things don’t exist unless there are questions about them? It is in 2010 when a young boy asked me whether small boys could be accepted as brothers. At first I thought he was talking about himself. I asked him if he wanted to become a brother and he cheekily said, “No, am asking because of that boy” pointing at Br. Steve. It was at that time it occurred to me for the first time that surely Steve looks boyishly young. With that question, as if suddenly, Steve started “existing” in my world.

He belongs to this generation of instant stuff; instant food, instant knowledge, instant friends and I guess even instant brother. Just the other day Bro. Evans was explaining to us how they fatten oxen in some central part of Kenya. Well, he said that they relieve the bull some of its vital force and it grows instantly. At that time we started wondering, ‘could we possibly do that to those tall dwarfs like me who don’t seem to respond to the grace of height.’ Steve commented to that saying, “hiyo ndio tunaita instant thinking” as he burst into hearty laugh prompting the whole table to burst into laughter. Now I understand why it is so possible for him to stick to almost, if not all, social networks – you need instant thinking to instantly respond to messages on whatsapp, facebook, twoo, tweeter and so forth, all at a go!

Br. David

I met Br. David way back in 2005. Looking at my receding hair now, I kind of imagine how this friar was 25 years ago. But at the same time I am so much aware of the Swahili saying that states akili ni nywele kila mtu ana zake! (a literal understanding of this is that the hair is the visible part of the head that represents the essential, invisible part of the head), and so I think akili ni nywele ukiona haipo kichwani kwa nje, ipo kwa ndani. Br. David’s hair is honestly not coming out and I somehow think it is very much concentrated inside the head. 

He has been my professor for a couple of years and I can attest to it that his hair is doing him justice not to come out because his knowledge of his area of specialisation is way above my comprehension and always supplemented by his never ending jokes. When I for the first time met him, he was very comical as usual. He kept swirling his index finger around the buttons on his well build stomach. Apparently I was coming from a generation addicted to six-pack tummies and here I was standing before a man with a one gigantic pack, yet unnerved by it. He introduced himself, “naitwa ndugu David Kamau, OFM cap.” This was the first time I was hearing about “OFM” and so he went on to explain, “OFM means – Order of Fat Men – like me!” I laughed because although I knew very little about OFM, I knew that that was not the actual meaning of the initials. Indeed he was still watering my naïve vocation and as he says “… the effectiveness of vocation promotion is based not on what a vocation promoter does but on what he/she is” (How to Become a Capuchin, 4).

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.