Lessons for friends from Miguna, Raila fallout

Listening to the ongoing circus involving Miguna Miguna and Prime Minister Raila Odinga has made me become uncomfortable with some of my confidantes.

Some five years ago, one of the financial managers I had trusted left me almost bankrupt after he took some loans for my company, squandered the cash by cooking figures and then fled.

He then started badmouthing my company and even took an advertisement in the papers, saying he no longer worked for my company. How do you then tell who to trust?

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The ongoing circus as you call it could end up in court and when it does, we will not be able to comment on the case. But before it does, it must remain the subject of fair comment by all of us because it touches on a number of very important and topical issues in our country.

Many have made comments on the political dimension of the falling out between Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his former aide Miguna Miguna, but your question restricts me (fairly) to the area of the relationships in which I might have knowledge and experience to explain or describe.

Before we begin to explain why the two could have fallen out, it might be useful to understand why they came together in the first instance. Indeed, knowing why people become friends is the key to understanding why they fall apart in the end.

Most people who describe each other as friends share a number of characteristics. Many people remain friends because of a long shared past.

I came across a number of men and women who are friends in their 60s and 70s because they were born and brought up in Nairobi in the 1940s and 1950s.

These people, may have been brought up in the same estate. They could be friends because of a shared history.

Similarly, there are those who visit each other as old girls or boys of a particular school. Some are friends because their parents were friends.

Another batch of people who call themselves friends, but do not have a shared past are the ones with relatively recent links. They, for example, became friends because their children go to the same school, they moved into an estate together or they commute by the same matatu daily.

Yet others become friends because they attend the same church or mosque, believe in the same God, have shared values and give each other spiritual support and encouragement.

A number of people are friends because they met and now drink in the same local pub. The only thing they share in common is the fact that they buy each other alcohol and converse over a glass of beer.

The common denominator between these “friends” is the idle nature of their existence and an apparent fear of being home with their families. Many of these men know very little about each other and are only bound by their loneliness in life.