Last word
On Political
Butterflies
After all these years Ochieng can still not explain to himself the tumultuous year that he had spent in silent pursuit of Flora, his name or her, although he wasn’ t even sure if the name was a short form of Florentine or Florence since everyone just called her Flo.
Ochieng vividly remembers that Flo joined Ochieng’ s sister girl school in the second half of the last term and there were rumors that she had been expelled from her last school after either being caught smoking or organizing the harassment of an unpopular teacher.
Flo was not striking in the conventional way that one describes beauty but she was attractive and all she needed was to walk into a room and her presence would be felt and invariably there was always a group of girls around her.
Ochieng saw her during various debating and agricultural club outings in which she never spoke nor did she actually appear particularly interested in farming and Ochieng figured that the activities were to offer her escape from a stifling boarding existence.
Ochieng asked his sister about her, hoping to get an introduction, but to his dismay his sister just warned her about the girl, telling him to keep his distance since she was not a good girl yet on interrogation, he was unable to find out what was bad about her.
Ochieng’ s sister could not explain why she kept her company if she was supposedly a bad girl and eventually, she confessed that she was actually protecting him since she knew there were many boys interested in her and didn’ t want his heart broken.
In subsequent outings Ochieng noticed that Flo was always talking to a different boy, lending credence to his sister’ s observation and he noticed several other boys furtively waiting to speak with her at any one occasion which made approaching her difficult.
Then Flo became a hot topic in Ochieng’ s school as Ochieng overheard several boys claiming to be her boyfriends, depending on who was able to monopolize her time during those most awaited outings where contact with the opposite gender was possible.
Boys will always be boys and soon Ochieng wasn’ t even sure whether the stories were true as boys began spinning tales around her and exaggerating their progress in the conquest of her heart. One boy even claimed to have spent time with her during the school holidays.
The definition of an anti-hero from literature describes to a T our very own Baba, the political misfit who has had a gargantuan influence on Kenyan politics and presently we cannot honestly decide as a country if he is a blessing or a curse. Whichever end of the spectrum you fall on, the fact remains that he has been a character impossible to ignore with the proverbial nine lives of a cat.
Ochieng, being naturally shy and reticent could not muster the courage to even talk to her and nursed his puppy love for her from a safe distance and created endless scenarios in his head about a future together with her without actually deigning to talk to her.
What puzzled Ochieng was that under normal circumstances, a girl that was associated with several boys would have been labeled a loose girl and shunned. But not Flo, her desirability seemed to be her allure and her attraction actually grew, she was an enigma.
Then in one of those outings, Flo just
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