Gideon Musee Mulwa: The Master Architect with a Genius Creative Imagination

Gideon Musee Mulwa: The Master Architect with a Genius Creative Imagination

The iconic KICC stands tall above its peers. Mulwa was a budding architect. Photo/Mutua Matheka

By MUSYOKA NGUI

During my stint at the Kenya News Agency-Kitui I reconnected with my childhood genius friend Gideon Musee Mulwa. It was about a decade since we left our elementary school in Tseikuru. His record still remains in the annals of academic history-unrivalled.

We reminiscence our mischief as kids, the innocence of naivety, the beauty of pursuing dreams without deferring for tomorrow. That was us. We talked about women we loved. Our mothers, our girlfriends and our teachers. We shared many a denominator.

But what struck me like lightning is how death plucked the young soul from our midst without even saying goodbye. Without a premonition, nothing.

Kisee(in red cap) chilling out with friends.Photo/Manasseh Vundi

Our generation fondly called him Kisee which ironically means an old man in Kikamba. Kisee was not old at all. He was an overachiever whose legacy some of us will never achieve in a lifetime. He embodied the description of a real academic giant. Forget the pretenders, crammers and bookworms, Kisee had a magic hand and a photographic memory.

After his death this July I found myself in a debt. I owed him a story. I was to feature him in my website, at least. The rare gem never disappointed.

Kisee's mugshot. Photo/Manasseh Vundi

When we finished high school we had a lot of time and money. We travelled, drank and adventured. It was during some of the sprees at Tseikuru that Kisee and Mwendwa Katike and I staggered home at the wee hours. It must have been on a Friday so we didn’t mind the hangovers.

Kisee(in yellow  T-Shirt) was social. Photo/ Manasseh Vundi

After a few steps Mwendwa excused himself so me and Kisee walked home together. He told me about his stint at Mivukoni-where I also worked. How he dissed the Board of Management for believing that D students could score straight A’s without revisions. How the elders condemned his pragmatism and honesty. He never signed the performance contracts anyway since he knew the goals were unrealistic.

Kisee(in black T-Shirt) with friends. Photo/Manasseh Vundi

It happened that Kisee had a difficult childhood, according to his own account. He was at the Starehe Boys Centre and School no less. He expected his folk to visit him, send pocket money, the stuff which children expect from their parents and siblings. He says “nothing was forth coming”. He resorted to selling second hand clothes (mitumba) to make ends meet. I don’t know if he was receiving government subsidy at the Helb which was a street away from his alma mater, the University of Nairobi.

Kisee enjoys a drink. Photo/Manasseh Vundi

I worked with his dad, Mulwa Kangaangi. I have never seen a more proud dad. I doubt he took the my son, my son, my son refrain too far.

When watching TV, mixing reagents, supervising experiments and arguing with science teachers, Mulwa always reminded them how different his son Musee is. And rightly so. At times he came off arrogant, braggart, and insensitive.

Kisee was cut from a different cloth. Even within his family, no one was like him. He was a rare gene. He was immune to being put down. A teacher who expelled him for singing a “dirty song”, ended up readmitting him shortly before the national exams so that she opportunistically milks the credit of having Kisee at the top of the class. He did it with a world of a difference-bearing in mind he was in exile for two terms but beat everybody else this is no mean feat.

Kisee(in yellow T-Shirt) laughs with a pal. Photo/ Manasseh Vundi

What remains mythical is how creative Kisee was. At Kitui, he revealed to me that a former colleague stole his anthology of poems. We may never know the truth. Maybe therein he had addressed so many mysteries that remains shrouded in secrecy, conspiracy and lies.

The official accounts says that the young man met his death in the bathroom. He fainted. That he succumbed to epilepsy.  But there are other sensations that lack in sense and details but sadly which people believe nonetheless. A close cousin with whom he schooled with said “he was a collector, maybe he picked something that was not supposed to be picked.”

Euphemisms aside, I know that the nuanced rhetoric will generate more heat than light. My elder bro Manasseh Vundi (a former classmate of Kisee), a week after Kisee’s death, denied all those “nonsense”. He was of considered opinion that Kisee suffered from fragility of his heroism. It is said that heroes have fundamental flaws. Samson and his hair, Lwanda Magere and his shadow, Michael Jackson and his overdose of prescription drugs et cetera. It can thus be said that Kisee had a fundamental flaw and was weak at compensating for it.

Minutes after Kisee’s demise, a parent who knew him from childhood eulogised: Bad company. The university did not have kind words.  It nonetheless sent an administrator who read the VC’s condolence note.

But outside the crime scene let it not be lost on us that Kisee had haters. The fifth year architect student was unjustly arrested at the balcony of his hostel room and allegedly sued for “stealing pipes”. He stayed at the Industrial Area Jail for 14 days. He told me it is then when he lost his memory and relapsed to coma. He woke up at Kenyatta National Hospital.  Somehow he reconnected with is sister-a career nurse- who took him in. She cleaned him, gave him medicine, cloths and shelter. He was to end his deferment and resume college September 2015.

This is a gentleman we ate from the same pot in the strictest sense of the phrase, schemed together and dreamed together. Sadly, brother, I must say rest in peace. We will miss you and please smile down as you watch over us with the other angels.