Lessons for friends from Miguna, Raila fallout
Knowing why people become friends is the key to understanding why they fall apart in the end. Illustration/Joseph Barasa
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.
Their friendship is thus very shallow. There are other people who behave as though they are friends, and yet they exist in such relationships because one exploits the other in some way or the other.
If for example, one is the son or daughter of some big political figure who is able to peddle influence, then many friends would hang around such a person. But once the political power goes, then the friendship also dies. Many friends in the Nyayo era no longer see each other because opportunities for big deals no longer exist.
As the Nyayo era came to an end, new and very powerful cartels of “friends” took over to fill the vacuum left. Some existed because of their historical role in opposing the Nyayo regime, others because of the new opportunities to take over the reins of power, and yet others saw the wealth they could make by exploiting the change in government. Many were corroborations of all the three.
The glue that held them was extremely weak, without principle or values, and most certainly bound to break as soon as circumstances changed, for whatever reason.
These are the typical friendships of convenience that lack depth. They are not in reality worthy of being described as friendships.
I do not know what type of friendship existed between the PM and his former legal adviser, and equally I do not know the kind of friendship that existed between you and your former friend, but this is clear — those friendships were not based on shared values, and there was no intention on the part of one or both parties to help or support the other in the long term.
The relationship existed for the selfish benefits of one or the other.
The ultimate test of friendship is the extent to which your friend remains with you, not in the good times, but when being with you is difficult, challenging, expensive and inconvenient.
fnjenga@africaonline.co.ke
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