Letterhead to heaven

 

I began writing this at 11 pm, I have an hour to cross over into a new year. I’m praying my eyes should sail me through midnight, and these kids in my neighborhood should keep on blasting those fireworks made from steel wire, I’m convincing myself that we are crossing to January again from January, or how have you been counting it? Mine was January, February, then January for the next ten months.

If this was a bad year for you, take heart, there are other people who are wondering what you are talking about. The people who work at Arimis for instance, they made record sales. For some reasons that milking jelly was meant to help farmers, but even the company itself has been unable to answer questions on why that mafuta ya kukamua ng’ombe’s demand has tripled in Nairobi while most cows are bred in Kericho.

I reminisce on my journey back from the village in January 2020, my secret diary tucked in the hidden compartment of my laptop backpack. New year resolutions strategically placed somewhere in between the pages, a page you can remember yet no one can suspect, like 6-6-6, Saturday of 6^th June. It was a new year and I was very optimistic. Looking back then, 2019 had really made love to me with a hockey stick… I’m really trying to be kind with my words here, it had been a tough year and I had promised myself that 2020 was that year to turn around things. Did I? My secret diary remains a secret.

What 2020 taught me is to be human again. I took that advise from Peter Musechu and Kidum song, Relax. Life obviously travels at a higher speed than your expectations, so either you are trying to catch up or you have found the formula to meet somewhere at the middle. I looked around me. Yes, it’s good to look around you. I saw people doing worse than me, I saw some lose hope, I saw fear, and yes that fear knocked my door too early in the year, I flinched but I did not slump. I remained on my feet like a man, it was just the beginning. Then some bad news would come, my nephew Bruno was gone, just like that. He was 21 or 22. Oh man, I loved that kid. There are people you love so much that when you lose them, you can only pray for a safe passage to rest. For this one I prayed that if his actions might have not been pleasing by any means, merciful angels would find him a backdoor to heaven, at least this once. And I would cry whenever I got the chance of privacy. But that is life, right?

We still wake up to the next day and plan, again and again, because we are alive to live, and be happy, and show some kindness. No one in history ever went to the books of poverty for being kind.

Well, it’s now 12.22 am, and I’m into 2021. I find all the reasons to be thankful to God that I have a chance to be here, writing this. My letterhead to heaven reads, “The forgotten title, I am just a planner, but dear Lord, you’ve got Surprises.” I must cushion myself from any surprises 2021 by acknowledging that in life, just like in a car, there is a seat for me, but that seat is absolutely not the driver’s seat. I need not write a new year resolution for this one, I just need to continue from where I left yesterday.