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The last time I saw Jadudi was during the December holidays of 2017 at Dunga Hill Camp in Kisumu.
A big orange sun was just setting where the silver lake meets the sky and I was holding a drink in my hand while squinting down the hill to see if the famed hippos would come out to graze when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
I turned to find him grinning at me. He was leaning on a walking stick. We hugged. His speech was slurred. His eyes seemed very much alive and determined, the eyes of someone who didn’t acknowledge darkness. I told him he looked well. (He did).
I dragged him to where my cousins were seated and introduced him. “Aah, is this the famous Jadudi?” They shook his hand and patted him on the back. He made the girls giggle.
All this time I had my hand on his shoulder, like a prize I had found. I was happy to see him still standing, still living, still fighting.
He said he would be coming to Nairobi early 2018. “Call me, let’s have tea,” I told him.
He never called. I never called. Life passed under our feet like a mysterious river.
Prior to that, the last time I had talked to him was during the unfortunate online brouhaha that came after the fundraiser.
I remember he had called to explain certain things that happened that I was not aware of. I was angry and disappointed.
We finished that conversation amicably but the whole debacle had left such a sour taste in my mouth I decided to completely step back into the shadows.
We lost contact for years and we never spoke again, until that day I was looking for hippos.
I learnt about his death at 5am two mornings ago, through a tweet from someone who said he was his cousin. I lay there, excavating my last memory of him and his cane and the setting sun.
I thought, well, let that boy rest in peace now, he has fought battles nobody should never have to fight, let alone a boy his age.
They had opened his head numerous times, poked scalpels in there and each time he had emerged more determined to live, more eager to beat that ugly thing in his head.
I felt sorry for his mother and his family at large. But I was glad that now he could rest, that he was free of pain and hospitals.
I hope that Jadudi went knowing that the whole of Kenya and beyond loved him and rooted for him, as witnessed by the campaign #AMilliForJadudi that raised over Sh7 million.
I hope he felt warmed by how invested Kenyans were, how some people donated as little at Sh20, which for me was the single most powerful show of humanity.
Of course I will never forget him because he changed my life in many small ways, but mostly that God doesn’t forsake his own.
Now that the curtain has fallen on this brave young man, what’s remaining is for us to pray for his soul to keep, for peace for his family.
Even though he is gone, I believe that he won. When the time comes for that thing in his head to tell its story, it will say, “Oh what a stubborn boy that was, he couldn’t just go without a bloody big fight.”
Rest in Peace, wuod Dudi.
