Meet the Okonjis

We have moved over to stay with our friends Michael and Risper Okonji, so I thought I would introduce them to you. The Okonjis were our neighbors when we lived here 25 plus years ago, and we have seen them six or eight times in the years since. Their little townhouse is in Golf Course Estates, which sounds grand but isn’t. To an American eye it looks like slum housing. In reality this is a solidly middle class neighborhood, and behind each barricaded gate there is a well-kept household. We like Golf Course because it’s close to everything and unpretentious. Popie has just started doing a daily series of lunchtime talks on relationships for students at Daystar University, and she can walk there from here very easily.

Michael is an electrical engineer, and Risper is an administrator at ILRAD, which does agricultural research. (I don’t know what ILRAD stands for.) They are lovely, easygoing, terrifically hospitable people. They have four boys, all in their twenties, and as pleasant, polite and easy as you can imagine. Since there are no girls, and no maid (unusual in a middle class home), the boys do most of the cleaning and serving, and much of the cooking and washing and ironing. They do it well, with no complaining. A sort of Navy atmosphere, I guess. It has occurred to me that I ought to have sent my children here for an internship.

There are always young men at the Okonji home—I mean, young men besides the four boys. This is a male household where Risper stands alone. But this is about to change, as Dick Jan, the oldest boy, is about to marry. Jan is named after a Dutch doctor (now passed on) who spent his life here doing malaria research and became very attached to Michael’s father (who was his lab tech in Kisumu, on Lake Victoria) and then to Michael and family. The other boys are David, a doctor in UK, Tim (named after me), and Dean (named after our friend Dean Hirsch).

But I was saying. Jan has made plans to marry a delightful young woman who comes from a different community. She is Mkamba, the Okonjis are Luo. These are very culturally different. So there are some interesting negotiations going on, not only involving these ethnic differences, but also involving the different points of view of the generations. We are enjoying witnessing these discussions, and as a matter of fact we will be part of the negotiating team that goes to the young lady’s home on Feb 7 to agree on payment and finalize arrangements. As both families are Christian this should be a merely token agreement, but one never knows for sure. In the Luo community brides are bought with cattle, I am told, with no cash changing hands, but the Kamba do it differently. Stay tuned. The wedding is on March 14.

I don’t have a picture of the Okonjis but I’ll try to post one in the next few days.