This is a very personal story and I’m still left pondering over events of early Saturday morning.
Friday night I had a headache so nilikuwa tu home, had a nap hoping kichwa itaacha kuuma but by usiku nilikuwa nimeshaboeka nikasema wacha nikae indoors since next day nilikuwa niamke mapema for safari. By 1030 nilikuwa bed catching zzzzz. Mimi hulala bila shida hadi alarm iniamshe. I had set my alarm clock 4am, ndio ni-snooze hadi kitu 430am then by 6 latest nikuwe nimetoka.
At around 220am, nikajisikia nimeamka. Not sure what woke me up so Went online, nothing interesting and on Whatsapp I had around 20 messages and thought I shouldn’t open texts in case someone strikes up a conversation and then its Good bye to sleep. I went back to sleep since I still had two more hours to go…but something told me to check my messages. This time I had 22 texts so there was someone online and I thought may be I should check it out while I court sleep.
My cousin was writing a message and from the preview of the text, seemed like he was in distress. On opening the message, I realized that the guy was writing a message to tell me he was going to kill himself. Damn!! I try to contact the guy…Mteja…I go on Facebook, he’s deleted his account…I try calling again but call doesn’t go through. All this time I had been trying to call on Whatsapp so I decided to call direct.
Luckily he answered…but his voice sounded very frail and I was afraid that he was actually taking his last breathe. The phone line went dead and I tried to call again. This time he picked up and he was bawling.
We talked for 2 hours and thankfully by the time we were done, he sounded better and had changed negative talk. Guy has been going through a lot of stress at school and in addition he’s been getting a lot of family pressure/ family conflict as well. I still feel like there’s more I can do because these issues do not just go away but I don’t know how and what approach to use especially when it comes to sensitive family matters.
I have been trying to wonder how I woke up just in the nick of time. What if I never read the text? Lots of questions and no definite answers. This experience was quite the jolt on my perspective on spirituality and God.