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Loss, humility, and the things we only understand in part

Four years ago today, I told this story about my friend, Father Walter. It found its way back to me today, just as I was wondering what first story to tell in this new home. Perhaps some stories know when it is time to return.

So, let me begin with Walter.

1Corinthians 13: 9-12

“…but when completeness comes, the partial will pass away…”

Good evening friend;

Permit me to introduce you to Father Walter Connolly Okoth, of the Diocese of Maseno West in the Anglican Church of Kenya.

Now, let me ask you something. When you hear someone sigh that life is difficult, are you ever tempted to ask, “Compared to what?”

You see, I am a passionately curious man, and Walter is my great friend. Apart from our honourable connection with him as the former Vicar of Ka’ocha – my in-laws’ home parish – there is something about Walter’s humility and his curious detachment from things that has always made me think about my own relationship with this world.

So today, let me tell you Walter’s story.

It is said that when you set out on a journey and night covers the road, you discover the stars. But not every starry night is beautiful. Some nights are frightening. Some are agonizingly long.

Walter has known such a night.

Before Kenya’s 2007–08 post-election violence, Walter was an established Nairobi businessman. He had spent nine years studying and working in London, had begun doctoral studies at Middlesex University, and had worked part-time at HSBC Bank. By 2006, he had saved enough to venture into Nairobi’s transport business.

Then came December 2007.

In the violence following Kenya’s disputed presidential election, Walter lost his entire fleet of seventeen buses – fifteen minibuses trademarked with Nairobi Eastland’s famed Forward Travellers, and two new 51-seater Scanias awaiting commissioning for the coastal route. They were torched by crowds who believed they belonged to their political rivals.

And no – just in case you’re asking – the kind of insurance cover against political violence and terrorism that one might immediately think of today was not available before 2007. So Walter’s losses were irredeemable! One day, he was a man of comfortable means. The next, he woke up with almost nothing.

But that was not the end of his long night.

His wife of barely a year never fully recovered from the trauma that followed. Walter spent what remained trying to save her, eventually selling other property in Nairobi’s posh Karen neighborhood and in Rongai as they prepared to seek further treatment in Singapore.

The money was raised. The arrangements were made. Then she died two days before the flight.

I met Walter in 2015 in his home parish in Ukwala, during my attachment under Rev. Odongo Luke. Two years later, Bishop Joseph Wasonga ordained Walter in the same service in which I was priested, on 10 December 2017, at St. Peter’s Cathedral, Siaya.

Walter remarried in 2020, fourteen years after that earlier chapter of his life began. He and his wife, Nyauyoma, are blessed with a baby girl, Christina. And somewhere in the background remains another road he could still take: the possibility of returning to the UK and resuming the scholarly journey interrupted all those years ago.

But perhaps what fascinates me most about Walter is not what he lost or even what he might still become.

It is Walter himself.

Everywhere in the world, if you look keenly enough, there will always be a Walter, someone with a very long story and a remarkably quiet demeanor. They are often the silent ones in the crowd, their long stories buried underneath much shorter, louder ones.

It might take some digging to find a Walter. And perhaps that is one reason we should learn to linger around people.

A Walter is a reminder that we understand very little about the lives of the people sitting beside us. Behind an ordinary smile may lie a night we know nothing about. And sometimes what survives such nights is not an explanation, but a quieter way of being in the world.

Our paths have kept crossing, perhaps as a consistent reminder to me of the secret survival quotient of humility. And maybe that is why Walter’s story stays with me. I do not pretend to understand his losses. Neither do I know the answers to the many whys carried by people whose lives take turns like his. Perhaps faith does not always give us those answers. For now, as Paul says, we know only in part. We see dimly. But one day, we shall see face to face.

And until then, I return to Tolkien:“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are evil.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

A story gathered along the way.