Author: Juliet Maruru

Breaking Traditions

I saw it coming.

She is the best friend I ever had. I remember how we met, two scared monosat The Aga Khan High School administration lobby. My mother was seated next to me, her red and white lessos, one worn as a veil and the other around her waist, declaring her properly Swahili. Her mother was dressed in the crisp office secretary kind of outfit that got awe and respect in the coastal villages.

Then the administration receptionist called out.

“Hastings Kalume Bongo?”

I got up to go get the forms I was supposed to fill in as the admission process. Then the administration lady called out again.

“Gabrielle Akinyi Wanjohi?”

I was way too nervous to pay much attention, but it did occur to me that her name was unusual. I figured that perhaps she had a Luo mum, and a Kikuyu father, which would explain the name. I had time to figure it out later, when she and I were assigned to the same class, and then ended up as desk-mates.

Even back then, she had endless legs. The white skirt and blouse, with the green belt around the waist (the HH Aga Khan High School uniform for girls) emphasized her height. That was all I noticed that day. Endless legs and her name.

When the Orientation guide, a student from Form 2 Red, showed us the way to Form 1 Green on the second level of the school building, I was a little too pre-occupied wondering if Day Schools were an exception to the secondary school bullying we had heard so much about.

But then we settled into Form 1 Green, and I got to know my desk-mate better. We were neighbours, very close neighbours. She and her mother actually lived about 25 metres from my mother’s swahili house. That evening, we walked home together, and that was the beginning of my friendship with Gabrielle Akinyi Wanjohi.

She told me about her middle name. She was born when her mother and father were together, for a very short period in the late 80′s. She should have been Gabrielle Akinyi Mboya, but when her father bailed, her mother changed her surname back to Wanjohi. Her father was a well-known politician. She and her mother told no one about it. But she told me.

I told her about my father. He died suddenly when my mother was pregnant with my youngest sister. My mother had a difficult pregnancy, which led to the discovery that she was HIV Positive. My sister was fine. We told no one about that. But I told Gabrielle.

I was there, beside her, around her right through our high school years. I was there the day we got our Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education, me with butterflies for noth of us, and her with these high hopes for both of us. I knew her better than anyone else ever had.

So I saw it coming.

In High School, Gaby had this thing with Nicholas Ferreira. He was Goan, from a wealthy family, and the only guy in school who could get Gaby to stammer.

I won’t say she was a gold digger, even if you are thinking about her that way. She has always had these extreme dreams. She had this intelligence that few people could par up to. Even I hardly ever tried.

I just loved her. Not quite as my sister, but not as I would love any other girl. We always had this bond. Even when she started hanging out with thosewazungus from North Creek Road. We still had an irreplaceable bond. At the end of the day, I am the one she would come to, to talk about her dreams, her fears, her hopes, those hopes that were always so high I worried that she would reach them and find disillusionment.

The reason she took up with Nicholas Ferreira had very little to do with his family’s money. She was always one to pick dangerous damaged things to love. Like that dog she brough to her mother’s flat. It had wounds, a broken leg and I worried that it might have rabies. And that is exactly why she took care of it. If no one else would love it, she would.

Same thing with Nicholas, the bad boy who had been suspended more times than anyone could remember. She took him in, and with time, he accomodated her, her intelligence, her mad dreams of seemingly unattainable goals.

That is what set her apart. When girls her age were busy planning out their fairy tale weddings, she was dreaming of taking on the world and conquering it.

I am not trying to justify some of the choices she made, has made. I just hope that you can understand.

Gabrielle is not a bad girl, she is not a gold digger. Just try and see beyond what everyone else would like you to believe.

Anyway, when that dangerous love affair with that Blaine guy, I just saw how hard it would be when she realised that it was just another illusion.

I am a guy, which in some ways i think is a handicap. I wish I had been able to tell her when it started that she had better prepare for when it would end.

But she was glowing, walking on air, and even if she did not say it, I knew she was planning out her wedding in her head. For a moment, for a six month period, she had stopped dreaming about taking on the world. All she was thinking about was how she could conquer this one man.

Cooper Blaine.

My father worked for his father. My grandfather worked for his grandfather. I had refused to follow the family tradition. I worked hard in Primary School. So hard that I got the full scholarship to study at the private school everyone envied. And there I worked hard enough to land myself an internship and another scholarship to The Mombasa Polytechnic. I had no doubt that if I worked hard enough I’d get that chance to go study for an Engineering degree at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

Anything at all to break away from the long cycle of poverty and mediocre standards of living.

And what do you know, Gaby had everything to do with it. She taught me to dream for the highest of the stars. And I did. But I had no doubt at all that Cooper Blaine was not the dream Gaby should have reached for.

I tried to remind her. When we completed high school, she went to work at North Beach Hotel, and I went to work as an intern at an auto sale & repair shop in the Mombasa Central Business District. But we had a tradition; every Sunday afternoon, we went down to the beach and played soccer.

She broke that tradition just once, the first time she went on a date with Cooper Blaine.

We all need one true friend, who can be there for us no matter what. Looks like Gabrielle has that one true friend. Or does she? What do you think? Join us next week to find out. For more from this writer see us here.

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