A message from Mervyn Maciel from his Hospital Bed

Morning my dear friends. Want to write to each one of you but I am exhausted! Thanks for everything. You have done much for me. Being discharged today after three long weeks. Have to live with pain for the rest of my life!

Home at last, thanks to all of your prayers and kind wishes!

From Mzee Mervyn Maciel to all of you.

Morning Skip. Please don’t think I am or have been ignoring you – quite the opposite hard to spill it out with diminishing gufu (strength).

Wish they could establish what is causing the chronic bleeding in my brain region.

I want to sing again and write so much however gufu na shindwa mimi (lack strength is hampering me.

Please thank everyone for their prayers and for enriching my life.

I was the dunce in the family: My brothers Rev Joseph SJ and the late Wilfrid are my heroes. I owe them so much, also my darling Elsie and each of my loving children, including Conrad who suffered so much during his short life.

Our faith kept us going during those painful days in Marsabit (NFD) when my poor Els had to be flown out to Nairobi under oxygen tents. How much my darling Els must have endured during her very tender years!

My bongo wants to spill so much but lack of gufu na shindwa (hampering) mimi.

I have had a great life, an amazing life, wonderful children, three great grandsons. What more can I ask for. The Lord will shut me up.

My faith has been my anchor in life through the rough and smooth times. A precious gift given to us to cling to always.

Remember I was the dunce of the family, always interested in the girls, song and dance.

Please inform all my rafiki that I am not ignoring them, I love them always. I value their friendship always: Francis Noronha and my late friend Felix Pinto, Mel D’Souza without whom my second book would have seen the light of day.. Tony Fernandes who despite his disability does so much, put us all to shame. Dear Braz, a great write, a man who contributed much to the history of Kenya. I hope I have not left anyone out. .. My apologies if I have.

Can’t forget my cousin Jock Sequeira, great orator, singer and entertainer to whom I owe so much. Please tell his family and mine to save me writing individually (as if they would listen to that).

Sorry to give you kazi minghi. Please also thank Mike Owuor (Editor of the Sunday Nation) who I got to know through you. He has been very helpful and wanted me to write  on the forthcoming commemoration of the SS Tilawa being held in Durban SA on the 23d of this month, the day the ill fated passenger ship sank making orphans  of my two brothers and I. But thanks to my maternal grandfather Sebestain D’Sa of Zanzibar, I can write this today.  We brothers owe everything to him. He was a very pious man who strengthened our faith. He was a living saint and should have been canonised. But there was discrimination even in those days.

Sorry to be rambling but I must tell you that a Japanese Jesuit in Belgaum, whose Mass I often served at, gave me a holy picture to St Joseph with a prayer for a happy death. “ Oh death where is thy sting”.

Will stop momentarily as I might be making you work overtime without pay.

Will be back to trouble you.

Bwana Skip inform Terry Price of my situation.