Xinyori xa Humba

This is my friend, James Njuguna Kamau. He started life with discipline stitched into his bones. Kingeero Primary. Alliance high school. Top of his class every single time. He graduated with first-class honors in Engineering at the University of Nairobi in 1967, then finished a PhD long before his peers even wrapped up their Masters. He never smoked. Never touched alcohol. Never chased scandal of women. Never stained his name. He chose one woman. Married her. Stayed faithful to her for life. He raised four brilliant children and sent all of them to the Ivy Leagues on merit, doors he opened with sacrifice, late nights, quiet work and money he never spent on himself. He gave them the life he never had. And they took it. And they went abroad. And they stayed there. Now he is in his seventies. A well respected professor. A man who shaped generations. But in the house he built with his wife, he is a ghost moving from room to room. He stood in his kitchen today, staring at raw chicken, trying to remember how chicken tikka is made. Because he’s alone. Utterly alone. His wife left four years ago to “help their daughter” in Melbourne after childbirth. Routine visit, she said. She never came back. She now belongs to the children. Birthdays are FaceTime calls. Anniversaries reduced to emojis in group chats. Her body is abroad. Her heart left long before her flight. And this man who lived right, loved right, did right, has been abandoned without ever doing anything wrong. A bachelor again. Not by sin. Not by choice. But by quiet, creeping neglect from the very people he built his world around. This is the lonely end of a good man. A man who never cheated. Never strayed. Never hurt anyone. A man who believed that doing everything by the book would protect him in old age. Yet here he stands: Alone. Heartbroken. Still loyal to a woman who forgot to come home. And the saddest part? His story is not rare. This is the silent fate of many “good men”, men who poured themselves out until nothing was left for them. So the hard questions linger: If he was a polygamist… would at least one wife have stayed? If he built stronger friendships, social circles, a life outside the family… would the silence be softer? If he had someone, anyone, who checked in on him the way he checked in on everyone else… would he feel this invisible? If he had lived even 20% for himself… would this ending still look this cruel? This is not an invitation to abandon virtue. It’s a plea to balance it. Because loyalty is beautiful. But loneliness is unforgiving. And love, when it stops being mutual in old age, becomes a slow, quiet heartbreak that medicine can’t treat and time can’t fix. To every man reading this: How do we avoid ending up like this? What systems, friendships and self-preserving habits must we build now so that at 75, we are not standing over a lonely kitchen counter, whispering to ourselves, “Where did everyone go?” Because in 2025, being a good man is no longer enough. Not by itself. Not anymore.