AND THEN THEY SAID THAT I WAS MAD .... EPISODE 5

AND THEN THEY SAID THAT I WAS MAD.

By Njonjo Mue

PART FIVE

WHAT IS THAT IN YOUR HAND?

My mother died when I was fourteen years old at the end of December holidays when I was just about to start Form Two at Alliance. I had since lived with my aunt in Nairobi, more or less permanently, with regular visits to my dad in Thika. I love my aunt like my second mum since she practically raised me from age 14. However, at the time of my tribulations, I thought that her love for me was also dependent on good behaviour and not as unconditional as I now know it to have always been. And so, when I unceremoniously returned from Oxford in June, I did not dare even think that I would be welcome back to her house. I was such a useless failure, after all.

But shortly after I left hospital and began to reason properly once again, I knew it was time to go back home. And so, towards the end of October 1992, I packed what few second-hand clothes that my sister had bought for me and went back to Riara Road to a warm welcome by my aunt and her household. It was good to be back home. However, the fog of depression had not really lifted. Although, aided by medication, I was now able to sleep through the night, getting out of bed in the morning was an epic struggle, especially as I had nothing to get up for. I felt myself beginning to slip away again.

Then one evening, my aunt informed me that she had run into Catherine Wanjau one of my classmates from Law School in town and had asked her if she could find time to pay me a visit just to encourage me. Catherine had always been a Christian and had been at Alliance Girls and later was a classmate at Parklands Campus, so I knew of her. But I did not really get to know her until we joined the Kenya School of Law where we were both members of the KSL Christian Fellowship as I had recently given my life to Christ. Even then, we really did not have a friendship beyond what we shared at the Fellowship with all the other young aspiring Christian lawyers. And so it had come as a bit of surprise to me that she would want to visit.

The following afternoon, a Wednesday, Catherine came to see me at our house on Riara Road. I cannot really recall all that we spoke about, but I clearly remember how at some point she asked me quite bluntly when was the last time I had prayed. The question sounded like a cruel joke. Prayer was by now no more than a useless old ritual to me and God seemed to be just a fanciful idea that I once had the foolishness of believing in before the centre gave way and things fell apart.

Catherine had brought a new NIV Bible with her. She asked me if she could read a passage from Nehemiah Chapters One and Two. Nehemiah had a great job in the King’s palace in exile. Some visitors came from his native Jerusalem and informed him of the sorry state of his beloved capital city – the walls were broken down, the gates had been destroyed by fire, God’s people were now exposed to all kinds of predators.

This made Nehemiah very sad. He prayed and fasted over the situation. When the king noticed his sadness and asked him what was the matter, Nehemiah explained what had happened to the land of his ancestors. The King asked him what he wanted. From this point in the story, it is better to let Nehemiah speak for himself:

“Then I prayed to the God of heaven, 5 and I answered the king, ‘If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my ancestors are buried so that I can rebuild it.”’ 6 Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, ‘How long will your journey take, and when will you get back?’ It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time.”

Nehemiah went on to lead God’s people in rebuilding the gates and the walls around Jerusalem in record time.

The story of Nehemiah is remarkable in every sense, but Catherine wanted to draw my attention to the last part of Chapter 2, verse 6, “It pleased the king to send me; so I set a time.”

“What would you like me to pray with you about?” She asked. “Like Nehemiah, you need to be very specific with God, and you need to set a time.”

“I would like to get a job,” I replied flatly.

“By when,” she asked as if she was running her own job placement programme and could give me a job on demand.

“By Friday,” I said. I knew getting a job in a law firm in less than two days would take a miracle. But I guess that is why our conversation had to end in prayer. Catherine prayed a short and simple prayer without the usual pompous language that we Christians sometimes use, seeking to impress God into listening to our supplications.

“Dear Lord, your child Njonjo needs a job and he needs it by Friday. Please give it to him in Jesus name. Amen.” The prayer was over even before I had properly closed my eyes.

And with that she stood up to leave, pointing out that a job would obviously not find me in the house but I had to do my part in looking for one.

The following day, I took my CV, boarded the bus and headed in to town, without a particular plan in mind. My first stop was Lenaola’s office at Maina Wachira & Company Advocates in Agip House where he was cutting his teeth as an astute legal professional at the beginning of a remarkable journey that would lead him all the way to the Supreme Court Bench. He was delighted to see me. After exchanging pleasantries, I told him that I was looking for a job.

“I heard Nancy Kang’ethe saying that there was an opening for an advocate in some firm which I can’t remember,” he said. “You might want to check with her.”

There were no mobile phones at the time, so I walked straight from his office to Nancy’s office at GBM Kariuki & Company Advocates in Kimathi House and was fortunate to find her drafting some pleadings before breaking for an early lunch meeting.

When I inquired about the job, she told me that it was actually Peter Onyango, a partner at Kangwana & Lubulela Advocates who was urgently looking for someone. I crossed Moi Avenue to Peter’s office in Commonwealth House still holding my brown envelop containing my extremely thin CV. I was struggling to ignore the voice that was beginning to whisper in my head that no law firm would bother hiring me once they read the CV and realized how little experience I actually had.

However, as soon as I entered Peter’s office and informed him that I had been sent by Nancy for a possible job, he did not even ask to see my CV. His first question was, “Can you go to court this afternoon?” I pointed out to him that I was not appropriately dressed for court. He then asked me to report to the office the next morning ready for work.

And so, on Friday at 8.30 a.m. I sat in my new, spacious and luxuriously furnished office on the 9th Floor of Commonwealth House as the latest associate to join Kangwana and Lubulela Advocates. Catherine’s prayer had been answered down to the date and time she demanded we include in the request sent up to heaven. I will never forget the role that she, Lenaola, Nancy and Peter played in being God’s voice, his hands and feet in this important step on my journey of recovery.

Before Catherine came to visit on that Wednesday afternoon, I had allowed myself to get stuck in a time warp as is the bane of many who suffer from depression. I kept thinking back on my journey into the abyss to try and identify that one place where I could have taken a different turn and avoided all this heartache. I lived with the constant thought that I had accidentally broken a precious vase and was looking for a way to go back to the place where I broke it so that I could unbreak it. And so my mind constantly dwelt on my days in Oxford, asking myself what I could have done differently.

I did not have the presence of mind to persuade myself that even if I could tell ‘where the rain started beating me’, that place no longer existed and it was not possible to retract my steps to go physically back there and pick up the pieces. I would have to find a way of moving forward. But there was no one to help me see the folly of driving the car of my life with my eyes firmly fixed on the rearview mirror. Until Catherine came along that Wednesday afternoon.

“Forget about what might have been, in Oxford,” she had counseled. “God is now asking you the same question that he asked Moses, “What do you have in your hand?”

“I have my law degree and my bar qualification,” I had responded feeling hopeful for the first time in a long time, but also trying to manage my expectations.

“Then give that to God and he will use it,” Catherine had said simply. “Oxford may or may not be a part of your story, but if you don’t use what you have in your hands right now to start rebuilding your life, you will lose it all. Just trust God and start walking. He shall direct your path.

It took great humility to go to my classmates looking for a job, but once I had decided that pride was a luxury I could not afford, I found that God had already opened a door even before Catherine had obediently taken that step of faith to seek out a long lost friend and speak the words of life into the dead places that had for one year stubbornly occupied the very core of my being.