CHAPTER VI

Jerome was born in Matter Hospital, Nairobi - a private hospital that was headed by their family doctor. This was in 1988. The family was now complete. John cried that night and the first time he did so since he got into a relationship with Nancy. He was extremely happy. Secretly there was nothing more he wanted than his own family. He had had a rough childhood. After his parents died in a grizzly road accident on the Nairobi-Naivasha highway, he bounced from one foster home to another. He stayed just long enough to get his annual grades and then moved on to the next. He was really bright though, even the really bad guardians that he stayed with could testify to that. He knew quite early that no one could give the unconditional love that his parents gave him and therefore not staying with a family for too long spared him the eventual heartbreak.

He fell in love with art at a young age. He was always fascinated by how artists could create intimate stories on canvas - some canvases even ten times bigger that the artist. He really wanted to understand the stories and the states of mind of every artist whose art he came across. His love for art intensified when he attended Johannesburg University. There he met artistic minds from Africa and around the world. He did not pursue art as a course though; he was also smart with numbers too. Two and a half years later he had an honorary degree in Economics. His tragic upbringing never really deterred him. He studied passionately and got several scholarships to pursue his undergraduate studies. Life in college was fairly comfortable for him. His curiosity for art and culture led him to learn a lot about other nationalities and he made a lot of friends. In fact, the only thing that his upbringing affected was fueling his desire to have a normal family of his own. With Jerome, his wish finally came true.

Jerome took after his father. But it was not just the looks, he also inherited the smarts. He was a great child. He grasped things very quickly. He literally taught himself how to ride a bicycle and started crossing the street by himself at such a tender age. He was reserved though. He was never jumpy or constantly trying to seek attention from his parents. He won two science congress trophies which his parents did not know about until three years later. His scorecard was always perfect, not always top of his class, but nothing short of exemplary. Besides the few years following his birth, Jerome never really had any tangible relationship with his father. But his younger sibling had it worse. He was born in his father’s absence. He was a little fairer than Jerome. He was also a little bit sickly. He gave her mother a much more difficult time. He inherited his father’s impulsiveness and bias for art. The two boys grew up in a luxury gated community, a far cry from the life their father lived. They played and fought just like other siblings. Jerome taught his little brother how to ride a bicycle and he taught him how to shuffle a deck of cards – he was only ten. They had different personalities, but under their mother’s care, they learned how to love and protect each other.

John’s investment business was flourishing. Even in the tough economic times, he could still manage to convince other business people and companies to invest either in his ideas or other startups through his company. He had managed to build a business empire simply by using his tongue and his vast knowledge of forecast economics. He was now a regional entity and that required him to be out of the country for significant amounts of time. This meant being away from home. At first, John and Nancy were young and free-spirited. The thought of them staying away from each other for more than two weeks was not really an issue. The boys had become old enough - they could go and come back from school without being accompanied. That was what was most important. When they were at home the nanny was there to tend to them. This gave the couple enough time to focus on their careers. One of the first businesses John invested in was Nancy’s bakery business. He proposed the idea to the bank he interned for immediately after he left college. They liked the young man’s idea and gave him a loan. The couple opened two more bakeries and employed six more people to help run the business. Nancy’s prowess in baking spread across the city like wildfire and soon, her franchise became the stop shop for quick pastry delights in the central business district. But just because they were married did not mean that it was all lovey-dovey. When it came to business they treated and respected each other as professional colleagues. Nancy was the executive officer for the franchise and John took a silent partner position. So, they were both equally busy. But the distance always made for fun times when they saw each other. How they laid in bed the whole weekend or take the boys out camping, private weekend escapades out of town, and the like. The wealth they created triggered Nancy’s shopping addiction. John was always okay with taking Nancy out shopping, he never really cared about the shopping (well, sometimes he did) as long as he got to spend quality time with his wife. Five years down and they had traversed all the holiday destinations in East Africa. They were a happy couple and a perfect family.