Maurice Odumbe, And The Pitfalls Of Social Networking

I watched JKL yesternight. It was the first time I have watched that show from start to finish. The show was way better than watching an intoxicated Tony Gachoka puke profanities moving his arms like that trapped spider I pinched two weeks ago on my library wall.

I am not a fan of television, I would not feel anything if my analogue tv is switched off by the powers that keep threatening us. Maurice Odumbe, was, painfully, in distress. I rarely watch men cry, it is such a sorry sight not to behold. My late grandfather taught me that the only time a grown man is allowed to cry is when they have lost their first born son in their prime.

Maurice Odumbe is a household name. He is not any other hero. He is legend, in the class of Kisoi Munyao, the forgotten mountaineer who defied all odds to plant Kenya’s flag atop Batian peak, Kenya’s highest point above sea level. If he were to be in the military, Major General (Rtd) Maurice Odumbe would now have been recalled by President Uhuru Kenyatta for a posting in the bloated civil service. Maurice Odumbe had this pathological penchant for success he put Kenyan Cricket on the world map.

What, then, I ask, ails Maurice Odumbe?

David Beckham, with all his riches and fame, has only “three really good friends”. The exact identities of these three is not yet established but rumours abound they are Gary Neville – his best man, Tom Cruise, and Prince William. “I’ve got my wife. I’ve got my four kids. I’ve got parents, grandparents still, and three really good friends. It’s all you need. I’d rather have three really good friends than 20 good friends”, he told the US magazine ‘Mens Health’, in 2012.

David Beckham, I am told, is the poster boy of glamour. A man with an insatiable thirst for the limelight he once stood up to Sir. Alex Ferguson in the Old Trafford dressing room and swore at him. Anybody who swears at Sir. Alex is stonewall minced meat. Beckham thought his balls were too big for the Old Trafford dressing room. The world was at his feet, Real Madrid was already flirting with him.

Yet a person like Sir. Alex is what Beckham needed to come down to earth. At Real Madrid, Fabio Capello would later bench star-boy Beckham and he never ran to the British press leaking insider info from the Bernabeu. He kept his cool, became patient, and when his chance to step up and turn things around came, he never wined, rose to the challenge and whipped those free kicks into the top left corner. ‘Bend It Like Beckham’ was later made into a movie.

Beckham has reached the pinnacle of success, and yet he only has three friends.

You, really, do not need 100 friends when you have a tightly-knit family around you. The import of friendship is to, among others; offer a social support system that cushions you from the vagaries of life, and death. Nothing, in this bracket, can a family, a really genuine family, not afford to offer. If you have time for friends, you, surely, have enough time for family.

A man, cleverer than I am, once said that “friends are like petals on a flower; together they’re beautiful and make you smile but eventually the petals fall off and drift off in the wind.”

I am told Maurice Odumbe had friends. Friends who could walk naked in the North Pole during winter. Friends who could avail themselves at his doorstep, in Loresho, at the touch of a button. Friends who could bring the house down with only their liquor-resistant livers, and their borrowed high-heeled shoes. Friends who smoked Maurice Odumbe’s green bucks like Form 4 students lighting a bonfire with their books, after KCSE. Those are the friends Maurice Odumbe shared his secrets with, and put his unwavering trust on.

Yesterday, Maurice Odumbe was all alone. Picked from the gutters by Robert Burale. The rest of his friends just shedding crocodile tears on social media reminiscing of the good old times riding with champ Odumbe in high-end limousines, picking his pocket like a tea-picker does to dark-green leaves in the highlands of Kericho County.

People who drain your hard-earned cash, during the good times, and watch you go down when things are thick, should all be rounded up and be sent to the Dead Sea. Leeches of this generation are worse than those hooded gunmen who attacked children in Nigeria. They are the real terrorists.

I am comforted Maurice Odumbe has reached out for help. A lesson to all those sewer rats who cheered him on when all he needed was a firm hand to guide his carefree lifestyle.

PS: If I have ever eaten your goat, and your current state of distress can solely be attributed to your generosity towards me, kindly take this early opportunity to let me know so that I can make amends. I do not drink, nor smoke. My retribution, I suppose, will not be that heavy to bear.