“It hadn’t been easy, you only have to find a way not to lose your mind as well,” said Magati Obebo,starting off the sorrowful interview at his house Friday.
The journalist spoke referring to the emotional experience he and his wife have been going through for the past four months with their ailing teenage son.
The narration evokes tears.
It is all about a journey of the journalist and his son, Finley Marube, 17.
He describes him as ”initially bubbly and full of energy before he fate brought a bout of Acute Psychosis to him in February this year.
Acute Psychosis is a severe mental aberration affecting a person’s way of looking at reality.
The patient suffers mental hallucinations and can often turn violent.
“My son was once so full of life , we looked to a bright future now that he was through with high school and had passed examinations. Today, he cuts a forlorn face, and appears stuck in a world I can scarcely reach,” he said.
It started subtly — withdrawn glances, sleepless nights and muttering words to people who are not there.
“I told myself it was just stress, maybe adolescence. But denial is a cruel comfort. I was wrong and denial persisted as the condition progressed rapidly,” said Mr Obebo, a former Daily Nation correspondent.
It all begun in one night in February 2025 during a family supper moment when the son suddenly lifted the food and poured it into the basin .
He claimed it was laced with poison.
“He (son) did not even eat the supper, instead he bolted out into the night sparking a four hour long hunt in the streets of Kisii town.
“We found him near Galilaya area near Kisii University panting and speaking incoherently about some people who were after his life,” Mr Magati said.
On occasion,he did wipe off a tear from his wet eyes during the narration.
At Galilaya, the distraught father and mother scrambled a team of friends who helped rush him to Kisii Teaching and Referral Hospital where he was sedated before being wheeled into the ward.
“For about three weeks ,the vast male ward at KTRH was like our next home. The son’s mother, Rose stayed by the bedside tending to him and taking care of him. Many were the moments she stopped him from slipping out into the hard pavement below by jumping the window,” he said.
At the Ward he stared blankly ahead often whispering to the unseen. Some days he’d laugh uncontrollably especially in the evening hours. Other days, he’d look at relatives like strangers.
“He clung to his food mug though but he hated the treatment regimen and often nudged us to take him home,” Mr Obebo stated.
Marube was among the hundreds of candidates who had scored well from Riokindo Boys in Kisii and was due to join campus in September.
Mr Obebo, however ,says all this now appears like it wants to slip aware unless God intervenes.
“My eyes tear up, occasionally giving way during unguarded moments especially when am alone.
At night,the pillows get stained by tear marks ,a testament of how painful this has been to our family.
“I cry in the dark , away from the view of my wife..I actually don’t share much to her lest I make her cry too. my eyes ache from constant dripping of tears….I have suddenly become too emotional like a woman… sliding from a stoic journalist I was little a year ago,” he narrated
The emotional toll has been immense- not just to me and wife alone,but also on my second son Brennan Nyamweya, 14.
The younger son recently returned from school to a silent home -his ailing brother actually had little to talk or share with him any more.
Their bond has severely been fractured forcing them to bring in another person to play with him.
They were too close, he says, playing among themselves no end indoors before disease visited.
“Such was the strong bond before the condition severed, some time I fear for good.The time he raised a knife on the young brother for failing. to bring rice from the shop during lunch,I knew I have lost him.The incident jolted all of us…we only felt relieved when he reported to school leaving his ailing brother at home,” Mr Obebo said.
A month after we returned from hospital, chances of his recovery are not on sight yet.
“There are moments in the middle of the night when I just sit and watch him gesticulate and whisper to nobody’s in particular. In moments like this tears freely give way. I am no longer that stoic journalist but rather ,a frail frame of humanity foraging for answers in a stack of the wild thoughts that often cross my mind each day and night,” the former Daily Nation reporter admits.
His wife who was all the while silent said their world was breaking part.
“I put on a brave face , but inside I’m breaking. I just want my son to recover ” she said, wiping a tear.
In moments like this, they feel abandoned to fate.
“It will once almost crossed my thought the my son was bewitched but as a Seventh Day Adventist believer I could scarcely come to the stupid thought of visiting mediums, I only wait on God even I as look for medical help for my son,” he said.
Sometimes, he says ,he asks if God why is leaving their son’s future ebb away into nothingness at a time they had invested so much on his education.
“Hope is all I have left—and I hold it tight, even when everything else feels like it’s slipping away,” he said.
He asks if there are parents out there living with children with such condition.
“If I could take his condition and bear it myself, I would do it a thousand times over. Watching my son suffer is the hardest thing I’ve ever faced,”he stated.
Mr Magati Obebo who writes for this publication can be reached on cellphone contact 0728724219.
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