I knew him to be my father's young bro. He wasn't that close, he lived in Shinyanga while we were in Moshi - Kyou. I'd see him only during Chrismases he would come or when there's an event in the kijiji. And that was it for long period of time.
Then I was diagnosed with diabetes mellitus, the disease he too shared. a friendship had to be formed here, we shared a thing. He became my really close friend after that. We talked of how to inject insulin, how to eat and stay healthy and all that diabetes stuff. After my Form VI he invited me to Shinyanga, I saw his home, we strolled around, him showing me around the town he called home. This Baba Mdogo was a really cool friend; he aught me things. We tried a lot of concontions of various traditional, Chinese, Korean etc. herbal brews, we were tired of injecting the insulin! We created and devised our own ways of living with diabetes, our own way. A rebel way, of course. We thought we had to live a full life, well, we could drink few beers despite a medical ban, and that ugali made from uwele wasn't any good we could eat anything cause we had to live, WTF?
When I came back from my Spain trip I had brought with me a lot of diabetes supplies; syringes, glucometers, etc. We shared these, I made sure he got the best and new equipment and techniques I got from Spain. Did this diabetes thing the ONLY connection we had? I don't know. The guy used to me call me more often even than how my own father used to. He was this close friend. We confided to each other our fears over this condition we had, when we felt like the insulin wasn't working OK.
Then this year April he came to Moshi to share with the rest of us the bride price he got from marrying his daughter, Ade. We laughed and had a lot of mbege, pots and pots. But he had this dry, painful long cough. We all thought it was something to do with the throat. Something stuck somewhere down the throat, a small tissue growth maybe. He needed to see a specialist, yes? Yeah, see one in KCMC, they'll get a tube down your throat and they'll be able to see that disturbing thing and root it out, then life will be the same again. We were wrong, it wasn't the throat. It was something more sinister. It was not in the throat, not anywhere near. It was in the lungs, it was CANCER. And all our 'throat thing' was only delaying and the monster continued to spread. It took months before it weas diagnosed, this time in DSM at Ocean Road institute. He had to start a very painful and weakening procedure; chemotherapy. He took few doses; 4 to be exact. I had my opportunity to see him and be with him when w¡he was taking his 4th (or 3rd) dose, watching him in the bed receiving the dose through drip, helplessly, wishing it could go much faster. He could take it no more. The battle could not be fought no more. Saturday night was it, he was recalled by back from active duty. Dying, fighting!
I can't think, and so stupidily I drank Coca Cola, WTF? I can feel the blood glucose so high and I am not going to take insulin. Go friend!!
Plato once said, 'We can easily forgive a child who's afraid of the dark, but the real tragedy of life is when men afraid the light.' I write about me, about people I like and admired, about what I do, what I see, and about where I live.
