Today I remember an old pal of mine who tragically died in a gruesome accident. Okello, and not the gadget hawker, was immensely gifted with knowledge of surveillance systems. In my earlier days in that business, he was the person who did onsite installations whenever I had clients.
The lad never asked for money up front. He asked only that materials be onsite as requested, and even after the job was done, he would not come to you for his pay. It was I who laboured to settle his dues before his sweat dried, as the Bible instructs masters to do. Sometimes I paid him a few days later, but I always cleared the debt. A man’s conscience is a demanding creditor.
Now, many gifted craftsmen come with factory-installed problems. Either they are spectacularly lazy, or they drink and smoke with the commitment of a professional. Okello had chosen drink, and he approached it not as a pastime but as a vocation. He drank in one sitting enough to last him several days, like a camel, except camels are known for reliability, and Okello was not.
Doing business with him required an arsenal of patience that I did not know I possessed until he forced me to find it. Getting him to a site on time was an achievement worthy of celebration. There were days he arrived two days late, three days late, and on memorable occasions, a full week past the installation date, by which point my blood pressure had written its own resignation letter. Several times I would begin the preliminary work myself, buying time, so that when he eventually sobered up, he could arrive, clean up, and finish what I had started. The boy drank like it was a competition, and he had sponsors.
But when he showed up at the site, something shifted entirely. There has never been a man who worked with such tireless dedication once he was in his focused state. He worked until every camera functioned exactly as expected. He cut his wire with precision and never crimped any twice. He took a short lunch break, and many times it was wiser to have his meal brought onsite, because releasing him for lunch carried a meaningful risk that you would see him again the following week. He worked late into the night. He hated the idea of spreading a job across two days. And when he finally left a site, his work was immaculate.
Okello was the equivalent of an assassin and a cleaner rolled into one. One hell of a craftsman.
In 2017 or thereabouts, news of his death reached me while I was in the middle of trying to secure a contract. I got the business. But my knees went weak, and my heart became instantly heavy, and I spent the rest of that day wondering how I would proceed without him. My biggest grief, perhaps, was that he never fully realised what he was capable of.
The accident that killed him involved a Land Cruiser hitting a parked trailer at an estimated speed of over 160 kilometres per hour. It was a UK-spec vehicle with 280 on the clock. He and his friend had been drinking before the trip, judging by the broken bottles found in the wreckage. Their bodies were ripped apart. Their heads were detached. At the mortuary, their families were called in to guess which parts belonged to which son.
Wherever the lad is, I hope he is at peace, if there is such a thing on the other side.
