Part 1
One August night last year, hours after I had come home from a trip, my father called. Normally he is jovial, but this time he sounded worried. He asked if my Samurai has fainting incidents, and I answered in the negative. From what I was told, he had suddenly lost consciousness while hanging out with Ninja (who ran to alert his grandfather) and was unresponsive to his surroundings. He was just groaning with saliva pouring out of his mouth.
I asked to have him put on the phone; I am his mother after all, and my voice should bring him back from wherever his mind and body had decided to go. As you have already guessed, my voice and my love weren’t the medicine he needed. As my father was reaching out to Alphegaz Kamau for help, I lay on the floor in his room, reminding God how burying my children was not in the grand scheme of things. A few minutes later I called Daddy back, and he said the young man had fallen asleep; they suspected fatigue was the cause and Well, given the tight schedule we had during that trip, it seemed like a plausible explanation. The remainder of the holiday was uneventful, and he went back to school for his third term.
About two weeks into the term, I get a call from his headteacher on a Friday at 8:00 a.m. Samurai was taken ill early that morning and had been rushed to a dispensary close to the school; all this time he was unconscious (according to Samurai’s account). The plan was to take him to the main hospital the following day for further check-up. I am forever grateful for his teachers. (I mean, I have heard horrible stories of children falling sick in school with no communication to the parents until tragedy strikes or the case worsens…) I digress… The Saturday option, however, did not sound right, so the headteacher and I agreed that Samurai should come home.
This was the start of a very long day. About 45 minutes after he left school, I received a call from a strange number informing me that my son had collapsed at the bus stop and had just come to, and that is how that man got my number. I requested the man on the other end to watch over him, as I called my cousin Sylvia Sonie Kim to go get him. This mama left home without breakfast to go rescue a Samurai, but since it would take a bit of time before she got there, Tim Bett was the next call I made, and he picked the Samurai from the 2NK guys, stayed with him until my cousin got to him.
When all this was happening, I was on my way to get him…
