If there is one man who has always been with me in good and bad times, in my challenging and interesting times, in my planting and harvesting seasons, it is Reverend Overseer Apostle Manasseh Elkana, the Principal Superintendent of The Holiest Of All Ghosts (THOAG ) Tabernacle Assembly.
People can say what they want but Apostle Elkana is a true man of God: Holy, caring, humble, forging, loving, supportive and all.
Despite not having been to his church for eons, he stopped all he was doing when he heard that I had a situation, and not for the first time. The situation started after I directed Fiolina to institute far-reaching austerity measures, if we had any hope of returning our lives to normal following revelations that she had been using off-shore money for on-shore activities.
While Fiolina agreed with me that there was indeed a need for cost saving measures, she did not agree with some of them, particularly moving to a smaller house.
“Besides rent, a bigger house means more water used, more power consumed, more soap used, and more temptations,” I told her two weeks ago.
We planned to go look for a house together but she ensured that it did not happen. Like all women, she is talented in sabotaging things. An hour to any planned house hunting, she would bring up a quarrel that would ensure we were not on talking terms.
Seeing that things would not move forward, I took it upon myself to look for a reasonable house myself — from Masingo to Maraba, Amalemba to Makaburini, I walked around, looking for a house that was within our on-shore means.
I found a house in Amalemba, a one-bedroom unit on second floor of a busy and active estate. For my own security, I will not say the rent of the house. The next challenge was how to move.
“Why do you keep asking when we will move? Why can’t you be a man enough and lead from the front?” Fiolina asked after I kept asking that we move, with no answers from her.
Amalemba house
“You are all talk and no action,” she said.
I decided to be that man Fiolina has always wanted me to be — to be in control of things. First, I had to take Fiolina to the new house. She was skeptical when she heard that the house was in Amalemba, but as soon as we started walking towards the house, her mood changed completely.
“Which slum is this you are taking me to?” She asked. Inside the house, she kept coughing, called the house dark and stuffy, and touched anything as if it was germ-infested. She would sanitise her hands every other minute, and when we got back home, the first thing she did was to shower.
“If you can move our things to that small box, I will also move,” she said, without looking at me.
I started looking for a lorry to help us move but was shocked at how expensive they were. Luckily I struck a deal with a driver of a pick-up who was ready to help me carry things in small quantities every day, without the owner knowing.
That evening, he came over and we started with the sofa set. Fiolina did not utter a word. We arrived in Amalemba within a short time and the driver said we could go for another trip. But our problems started on arrival: The sofa set could not fit through the gate’s door, however much we tried.
A neighbour advised us to hoist it with a rope above the wall. We succeeded with that, but encountered another challenge. The seat could not fit in the narrow staircases. The driver, now upset, took a hammer and tried to force it, even removed the stands, but it couldn’t fit. We had blocked the staircase and residents started complaining.
Dejected, we returned the sofa set to Fiolina’s house.
“What is this?” She asked on seeing her broken sofa.
Full blown quarrel
“Do you know how much this cost me?” She went on: “Seriously, you honestly thought that anything in this house, starting with me, can fit in that hole you call a house?
The small altercation degenerated into a full blown quarrel. I decided to take a walk to cool down.
When I returned, at around 9pm, Fiolina refused to open the door for me.
“Go sleep in that Amalemba hole of yours,” she said. “Si you said it is a good house?”
I tried to tell her that the house did not have a bed, but she retorted: “Do you know that our bed is bigger than the entire bedroom of your so called house?”
It was a long night for me, and that explains why I did not write last week.
I do not know how things would be now were it not for Apostle Elkana, who, upon hearing about the situation, travelled to Kakamega town to put some sense into our heads.
Thanks to him, we are back together, even if on Fiolina’s terms, and even though we gave him a handsome sadaka.
In the meantime, I have to get the Amalemba landlord refund me 50 per cent of the deposit, and we have to think of how we will raise the money to repay the loans. Sorry, I have to think about that since Fiolina asked me to be a man enough. BY DAILY NATION