Last time I saw George we went to a Ferre Gola concert in 2019 at The Alchemist. We'd been planning to meet for years after that, but time remained in the shadows; he fled to his beachside manor in the village, and life kept us apart.
Last night I ran into him at Coster's concert in Kisumu.
First thing he shouted over the loud music was, “…dead man walking." I
shouted back, "What?"
In my ear. "I almost died a few weeks ago. I'm a dead
man walking. We're all dead men walking. We are dust!” Then he asked, "How
can we plan to meet for six years and never meet? What are these things we're
doing that are so important?" I was confused; is this a TED talk or a
concert? "Wuon G, let's have a drink," I said.
A few weeks ago, he told me, he was in the passenger seat
along Kisumu-Bondo road, playing cards on his phone when suddenly he heard Fred
Tinga, his driver, shout "Eii! Eii!" Looking up, he saw the angry
snout of a bus carrying death right in front of them. Then came the ugliest,
loudest bang.
"Dying is so fast, so... ordinary," he said,
“Immediately after the crash there was pin drop silence. Then this piercing
scream - a man's scream - that lasted maybe five seconds. My eyes went cloudy.
I could hear sounds, voices, but they seemed distant, far away, coming from
another life.”
He staggered out the wreckage and walked 30 meters from the
twisted steel and fate and sat down on the grass. “ I was certain I was dead
until a man came and placed his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘that’s Deya.’ I
thought ‘is this Jesus addressing me?”
Slowly, like a baby learning to stand, he got up.
The bus lay on its side like a slain beast. He could see its
underbelly. There was smoke, rubber and blood. There was death but you also
felt God. He staggered and stood over the man lying on the tarmac, It was
Pastor Deya. Their homes were 800m apart.
“I remember thinking, ‘Is it he who is dead or is it me who
is dead?”
He couldn’t feel anything for three whole days after the
accident. His body had gone numb, and his mind had followed. On the fourth day,
he started trembling. His body was finally awakening to the tragedy. Each time
he sat in the car, his legs would tremble violently.
At night he’d jolt awake to the man’s screams. Heart
hammering, he’d stumble to his bedroom window and stare out at the lake, now
black and ominous. He’d ask himself, What’s all this for? “I’d have been buried
by today. My friends would have shared photos of us together on social media
and moved on. You are aware of these things but when you come close to death
they come in sharp focus.
We sacrifice everything to acquire things, but for what? You
know Hezekiah Oyugi?” He asked. “One of the most powerful men of his time. His
palatial home is now abandoned, this place men came to kiss his ring. There’s a
tree growing right through that house now. A whole tree, Biko!”
The accident consumed him the entire concert and he
completely pulled me into his haunted orbit. “These friendships,” he gestured
around our table with an illustrious sweep of his hand, “they’re plastic. Smoke
and mirrors. Not one of my friends came to see me. The moment they heard I
wasn’t dead, they moved on. Nobody asked how I was really doing.”
He says the only people who showed care and concern were the
villagers, peasants,his workers. “Near death strips away the bullshit. Shows
you how alone you really are and so you have to decide how you want to start
reliving your life.”
At some point he leaned right into my ear and shouted, over
the roar of the bass, Zechariah 4:6. Of course I had no idea it was Zechariah;
I can barely tell Jeremiah from Job. Something about staying alive not by our
own might or power, but by God’s spirit.
The moment was beautifully absurd: Watendawili screaming ‘Na
mangeus wamebeba’ in one ear while this broken man shouted scripture in my
other. I was overwhelmed by the strange poetry of it all, unexpectedly moved by
his raw pain, realizing that sometimes you come for a concert, but what you
leave with is the word.”
By Biko Zulu
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