I attended a mentorship program way back when I was done with high school. My parents are simple folks, ordinary wananchi, not predominantly business people or people who like owing others favours; so I did not have a lot to do while I was waiting to join campus. If you know what I mean, you know what I mean. Therefore, we had a lot of time to figure out what we really wanted to do with our time.

As I have mentioned before, I am a girl from a little town in Kenya, so you can be sure that going for computer classes was the one thing we were sure we wanted to do. That was the norm and like my sister before me, I enrolled at the local computer school and went on some few classes before my parents thought it was prudent for me to quit and attend mentorship classes. Yes, different priorities. What was in store for me, I had no idea. I was pretty chilled out back then and after going through whatever typical Kenyan high schools put teenagers through, I gave very few fucks. Don’t get me wrong, I was pretty nice, I just did not care about a lot of things back then, not a lot of things mattered and I was okay with that. Typical town girl, no sense of style, major responsibilities or aspirations for my life.

For someone who did not care too much about a lot of things, I awfully cared too much about being a successful person. Independence was particularly important to me. For those who read and follow m articles keenly, you will remember that my friends had a ‘business venture’; the idea was to invest in ourselves in order to secure jobs for ourselves when we were on academic breaks in campus, or when we were done with campus. This would serve as a fallback measure where if by any chance we did not secure jobs after a reasonable amount of time; we had something to do and a way to keep our heads above water for the time being. The best part was the fact that we were going to do this as friends and if you have had good friends as a teenager, then you will understand why exciting this was for us. “By the youth for the youth” sort of a thing. As a teenager with a lot of good friends, you feel like you can take the world by the balls and do anything and everything under the sun. After all, nothing is new under the sun, right? So if someone somewhere made it, so would we. We just needed a plan.

I have always taken pride in the fact that all my friends are smarter that I am and that was very intentional. I did not know this back then, but in many ways I am my father’s daughter; he too, had and kept friends older than he for the same reason: it is always going to be a learning experience with these folks.

These guys had drafted a whole business document, articles and memorandum of association and all. I had not taken Business Studies as a subject I was interested in so I was very much impressed. They knew exactly what they wanted and how to get it. I respect that. We disbanded before we began but I kept all the documents and later on while in campus, I stumbled on them in one of my folders. It was pure nostalgia because now I had learnt about such documents in Company law and I must say, even though we were not a hundred percent correct, we were definitely on the right track.

Fast forward to when we were supposed to meet all the members of our little club for the first time. As the hosts, we arrived first and were getting the location ready for the meeting. Remember, I was not outgoing or very social, that was my best friend’s department so I was not surprised when I met some people I was not acquainted with even before the members showed up. While I was going about my business, I met this really… for lack of a better word… obnoxious dude. First time we are meeting, we did not even exchange words and, best believe it, the dude winked at me!

Now, let me explain why it was a huge deal for me… I was a seventeen year old girl, frequent church goer who was brought up on the premises that secular music was the Devil’s. I still wore jeans and did my hair though. I was religious, not backward.

Like I said, back then I really did not give a fuck, so best believe that when I say I kept it one hundred, I really did. I felt myself moving back as if some invincible force shoved me back and away from him. Dramatic, I know. It does not even stop there. I rolled my eyes and acted like he did not exist, after my whole body just betrayed me. I cannot believe that this total stranger caught me by surprise.

Who was this guy anyway? I had never seen him before and I am sure he had never seen me before either. Our town was pretty small so everyone knew everyone. Wait, I was not social. God damnit.

Hmmm, I started this piece with the intention to complain about how my parents literally forced me to take a mentorship course over a computer class.

Yesterday, while we were hanging out, I mentioned to my friend about the first time we met and he chuckled. I proceeded to ask him if he remembers the expression on my face and he chuckled, again! I am sure I did not express how weird he made me feel that fateful day, but my face clearly painted that picture for him.

This year has been filled with a lot of tragedies and terrible Acts of God. To be honest, I am grateful that I am alive and well, healthy, with a roof over my head and food to fill my belly. However sad the occurrences are, I am grateful that my mind works the way it does, always overthinking, always remembering and always connecting. More importantly, I am grateful that I can be able to share some of these experiences and bring a smile on someone’s face. You never know, a little cheer can go a long way. The longest friendship I have ever had was with my best friend of over a decade and even though she is no longer here, she still manages to bring that cheer. My friend, the winker… well, this is our fifth year as friends and the longest I have now and guess what; do you know who else was present the day we met? Yep, my bestie.

“Who’s that?” I asked, visibly annoyed.

“That’s XXX, kind of cute huh?”

‘Yeah,’ I thought to myself. ‘Cute jerk.’