Haziel

You don't want to miss anything that Biko writes. Because it's Sabbath let's go... 

I wrote about this chap — Steve Muchiri — four years ago. Dunno if you remember him. He had led a life of astonishing tragedy when we met. When he was five years old, his sister who was three died suddenly. He doesn't remember much of that event other than his mom crying all the time. Seven years later - when he was 11 - he got a brother - a small baby brother with chubby feet. He fell sick and died before he turned one. 

Three years later his mom — shelled by death — fell sick & died. He was 14 years, yet feeling like he'd been around for decades. "It felt like being buried alive." But thank God he still had his dad.

However, the following year his dad got cerebral malaria. He would scream and cry the whole night. One day he told him, "Son I'm going to die but God will take care of you." He died soon after.

He was all alone now, drenched by death at 15. He asked God angrily, "What kind of God are you who kills all my family members? Talk to me! Be a man and tell me to my face! In fact, take me!" But God didn't say boo. 

When we met (he was 29) he was worried that if he died, now that death was stalking him, his lineage would be erased. There would be no evidence he had been on this planet - well, apart from Facebook pictures.

Anyway the other day I learnt that God wasn't done with him yet and had done him a solid. In the past four years he'd met a lovely girl, Joan Thuo, who he married (her second) and they recently got a son, little Muchiri, his heir, and are expecting another one. He named him Haziel, meaning God has seen. "My wife had had several miscarriages in her previous marriage," he said, "but now somehow she's just giving me babies!" 

God must be grinning, saying, "Oh humans never trusting my process."

Happy Sabbath, folk.

As told by #bikozulu