Life for Lives.

In the end. He’s finally there, he made it. Miles away from the provocation of life, no sideshow to tickle his imagination of a land with men in white robes, half-naked from the waist up. Women with beards, where lions don't see black pastoralists as danger and white poachers as a friend, all are equal. Where Eagles cover kids with their wings during cold, maybe there are no cold days, just moderate, or perhaps they become cold-blooded, so it varies with the room, maybe triple point.

 A land full of faces, unique faces that you identify with places and all are amazing places, with a cool breeze, spectacular views with tender wind strokes. A land full of milk from bees and honey from bulls. Heaven, I suppose. Where we all go to understand our vitalities in form of judgment, not a paradise garden.

Maybe he never made it to the land of clear view with moderate conditions and he's in pain. Wishing to undo every single action in his life that he had no time to rebuild. You can never pull a fish that big through a hole that small. He's told every single moment he asks for compassion. All was lost and he has to pay.

Maybe being African gave him a prospect, for all the beliefs held strongly of eternity with no mention of torture or honey and milk. A life where we ultimately join the men and women at the watchtower. Peregrinating over the land in a cool breeze, only conversing to particular kinds. The ghastly ones in goatskin coating their sitting allowance, lank hair with a couple of birds feather clasped on a thin skin-like a crown on the head. One eye-shaded white or dark-white mostly, perhaps white is never a colour but a theme of how ready one is to face the reality.

 Wheezing voices, wild sarcastic chuckles, and the most peculiar requests, like a blue goat. He Joined his forefather and all that was left was to accept libation, a share of every single drink one intended on gulping down their throat, burnt goats and rabbits every once in a while after they refute the living rain or whack them with skin rushes, distorted kids or unexplainable character among clan member. Like a bloke’s sudden interest in white women that the whole village screeches at the top of their voices JUOGI! 

 Maybe he's comfortable and watching over us.

Perhaps all is done and it’s just a lifeless body. No afterlife, no soul hovering over the land, or in some weird places where life is nothing but ‘joy’, or in a red crucible with raucous voices and spine-chilling faces. He's just gone, gone, and as a carbon, just decomposing beautifying more flowers, probably a red rose with a Queen of the night’s scent. Maybe every era or place we believe being on safari to is just over-the-top and null. Heaven, hell, spirits and demons, milk and honey angels and dragons, twelve virgins or no more marriages you know,” Till death do us apart”.

We are grieving, but in a celebratory way, because we all know that all lives are connected.

We all know that Death just doesn't take someone, it misses someone else, and in pain, we cry, "it should have been me” justifying the small gap between death hitting or missing you. Lives never remain the same. It’s a continuous attempt, to loosen up your shoulder aim, hit and different people get hit daily by death. So it never should be you, that shellfish. Let everyone enjoy their moment. 

Maybe life has no meaning at all, the moment you are gone, we bawl and life goes on. Your absence nudges nothing but just mere sensations that are gone after a stint. Maybe life for a life is just a waste of a person that the justice system can't. Maybe we are all just statistics, we come and we go.

But there's an equilibrium to it all, one goes and a new one is born emplaced elsewhere just not with the same family or loved ones. But is there a nicer place if not in the arms of the loved ones, that a selfish Being has better plans for the soul than to be with the ones that cherish it the most to fidget all through life together?

Today is Mike’s birthday, as he's soaring above the blue lands and green skies, over the clear seas. Wailing in pain or maybe clenching tight to the valve that releases rain down to us or just humming Franco's new composed song to the ace on a Silver Throne. Maybe I'll course him some booze late at 5oclock and he will counter back with some rain.

As cars drove by slow in motion, Matatus at the rear hooting and dubbing each other names, to move out or go park elsewhere. Toleration is never on their operations routes. Everyone chirped through their windows to catch a glimpse of whatever was prompting the halt. Gazing like they were there to solve it, but they all whirled and rolled the windows to the max on seeing the selfless lifeless body, others even couldn't draw back their skulls. Struck dead silent just body peeping, spirits in anguish.

 Others shielded their eyes as if they were saluting as tears streamed down their faces. There was no need for a rescue team, just one to collect the different pieces, maybe stitch together and later hand them over to the loved ones. He was no more a bus had scraped the life out of him and threw him to the side barrier on the highway. No one looked back again to nourish their knickknack. Death was on their faces.

Today is mikes anniversary, we commemorate the happiest of his touches in our lives. No life is a waste and maybe we waste life thinking that we are alone and nothing we do matters. He was robbed from us, not mature enough, not mellow enough nor baked enough and maybe not worn out enough. He gave worth to every single experience. 

One moment that struck us all was, Kim, our lastborn, came  dashing into the room from school;

Kim: mum, 

Mum: what?

Kim: Mike has a girlfriend!

Mike: shut up, (slapping him hard on the back)

Mum; tell us about her.

I’ve never seen him so stressed, in embarrassment I suppose, the kind that makes you smile though. He was proud inside, I could tell it.

Mike: she's not my girlfriend, I just gave her my lunch.

That was the end of his peace for all I can remember. Any moment he was late for a chow, mum would shout from the kitchen miles away to Mike’s SI'MBAA; are you coming or should we pack you take it to her? We all loved it, though it kind of shattered him inside. Winnie was still Mike's girlfriend the day he left us, and she felt it to the core. They had just reunited years after school separated them. 

But it's the thing with love, it will always find its way back to you. I wonder if it's in the handbook of life, manual or maybe laws of nature, that perhaps one day Mike will be back to us, find his way to our arms, love. To his mother who never sees life the same again, to his father who has to hammer away his pain, jabbed pride, and buckets of tears that I'm sure sometimes flood his eye sockets on the highway whenever he sees a biker and reminds him of his son.

He's gone. A son to a father, a lover to a mother, a superhero to younger brothers, and a crush to the sister maybe even a pillar of joy and hope to a girlfriend. I just hope they get the energy to carry on and see Mike in his young copy, Chris. He's enthusiastic and full of life just like the father. A cute face from the mother, a flat chin from the father's side, and some brown eyes I don't know from who, but they speak life, spread hope and profess a lovely vision. 

Life gave us him. Maybe Mike found his way back to us, and we have to take care of him now the same way he did. But it's all mental, it's different like land a sea. Maybe we are all connected after all.

Today is mikes anniversary and birthday. We are all on the road, on our bikes, cans on the carriers, and banners on the handlebars. Reminding everyone that we are all human, we are brothers and sisters. A son to a father, a husband, a friend, and with a purpose in life. We are marking a biker path, a meter wide. Just a meter that all bikers request on the road. An arm's length. We are bodies on objects, our flesh holds as the body to our machines, we are different from you in cars and buses, different only that you are inside a body.

 A body that moves on your command, you know life, then it's on your to guard life. Give a cyclist, or biker only that one meter, be thoughtful and patient with them, we are all human. A minute lost can be recouped later, but a life, a life, I don't know about life, I've not been to the land, where the soul goes after it leaves the body. Let your conscious guide you. Speak up when you see harassment on a biker, show love just because everyone deserves it not that it shall come back to you.

Every day will be Mike's birthday, not an anniversary, for a new light was born, to show the world that maybe life has meaning after all.

Happy birthday, two-wheeler!