When I Knew She Was The One
Arguably my best memories of Ruth happened when we weren’t together. When I lived in Thika, there’s this time the water company cut off supplies for the best part of one week. I survived on my 200 litre plastic drum. Matters came to a head as we approached the seventh day and I started scraping the bottom of the barrel with every jug of water I withdrew from the drum.
I hardly knew any of my neighbors and it didn’t seem to me that anyone else was affected by the water shortage. When Friday came along, I didn’t shower in the morning, choosing to save the shower for Sabbath instead. I told Ruth of my predicament on the phone with no expectation that she’ll do something about it. There’s a mkokoteni guy who used to supply a nearby car wash with water. Even he told us he couldn’t find water at his usual sources.
I lingered in town after work that day. My plan was to only enter the house to sleep so I could have water for Saturday morning. When one restaurant closed I moved to the next until only bars were open. That was the cue for me to go back home and slip beneath the blankets in the hope sleep would mask the need to go to the toilet and use water for the following day’s special shower.
Lo! and behold! No sooner had I opened my kitchen door than I found the 200 litre drum full to the brim with water. What a pleasant surprise! Had an angel passed by? Yes! Not surprisingly, that angel was Ruth! I didn’t appreciate what I had until morning when neighbours started knocking on my door one after the other. They all wanted the same thing. “ Kuna msichana alikuwa hapa jana tulimuona akiletewa maji na mkokoteni,” one of my neighbours said. They wanted the contact of the mkokoteni water vendor.
When I got the supplier’s contacts from Ms Right and shared them with the first neighbour, the rest made a beeline to my door with the same request. That’s when I knew Ruth didn’t pull the water from behind the sofa. She must have done something my neighbours and I had not attempted in one week. She explained that when she found I had less than 20 litres in the drum, she walked from our estate to the next looking for water.
One contact led to another and voila! There was a water vendor in the next estate! She paid some tidy money for it but it was worth it in the grand scheme of things! From that day on I knew I had a gem in my hands. I had the Proverbs 31 woman and I didn’t know it! I had a girl who could walk from estate to estate looking for mkokoteni water vendors! I hit the ground running and have never looked back.