What it’s like to marry your first love

American pop stars Usher and Alicia Keys sang about it as “the only way we know how to rock”. They were referring to the first love. The love that evokes some of the strongest feelings towards someone — magnified by naivety and amplified by the Utopian love stories in books and films.

“There’s always that one person that will always have your heart. You never see it coming ’cause you’re blinded from the start,” Usher sang in the 2004 song My Boo.

While it is common for most of the early relationships to fade away as the Romeos and Juliets in them grow up to the realities of a world full of betrayals, some last until the clichéd “happily ever after”.

As the world marks Valentine’s Day, we bring you stories of two couples that first fell in love while in primary school.

Austine Opiata and Irene Akinyi:

She made the first move

She didn’t even know what love was.

But there was a tingling sensation that whizzed up and down Irene Akinyi’s spine each time she saw Austine Opiata walk across the school field or the pavement to Standard Eight. She was a class his junior.

Irene liked Austin so much. She thought he was bright, poised and good-natured.

Austin had schooled elsewhere, but as fate would have it, he registered as a candidate at Atilili Primary School in Bondo, where he found Irene.

“You know the way you just like someone? He was a new student. He had come to do his KCPE. I sent him a success card,” Irene tries to piece together the bits of details that culminated into a full-blown love story; a story uninterrupted by any baggage of ex-lovers. In her heart, there was something more than just the wish that he passed with “flying colours” and have a “bright future ahead”, as were the common wordings in success cards in their days.

Austin, however, didn’t read much into the good gesture from Irene, who he came to know as the daughter of his mother’s best friend.

“We wouldn’t think beyond studies. We loved to study,” said Austin, now a health practitioner at the Nairobi Hospital.

Her prayers were answered and Austin excelled and joined Maranda High School in 2003.

It was her turn to face the examinations and he, too, sent her a success card.

In 2004, she joined Kisima Secondary in Samburu, worlds apart, but letters would still be “bombasticated” to each other.

And since they lived in the same locality, they would still bump into each other during holidays at the local centre, enriching their fondness.

It was in one of such meets that the titillating feeling Irene had felt in school finally caught up with Austin. “I was really fond of her and I felt that the woman deserved more than just friendship. However, we still didn’t take our relationship to the next level,” the soft-spoken man narrated.

Their meetings graduated from incidental to planned, and frequent.

They swam in the vast waters of Lake Victoria, took nature walks and told each other stories of anything and everything; just what their young and Christian nature could allow.

When together, they closed their eyes to the world and became free spirits. Unbounded. When they were not giggling at small jokes, they played like little children and smiled from ear to ear all through.

They felt around each other just what ideal best friends would: Excitement, comfort and a carefree mode, knowing you won’t be judged.

Austin was a bold young man. He dared visit Irene at home, and made known to her mother and siblings that they were best friends.

It didn’t raise eyebrows much because parents were already close, so they became family friends.

“When my mother asked what we talked about, I told her that he was helping me with some past papers. It was a safe answer,” said Irene.

Around the time when Austin was a candidate and Irene a Form Three student, mobile phones became common and both their mothers bought one, making it easier for their children to communicate with each other.

“After the fourth form, I did all manner of odd jobs, ranging from being a tout, driver to untrained teacher. It’s at that point that I looked for her seriously because I could afford to take her on dates with my little earnings,” Austin said.

The shores of Lake Victoria were their commonest meeting point.

Getting to know each other in their days encompassed asking questions around one’s likes and dislikes.

Coincidentally, both liked the colour blue and swimming.

He disliked lies and although she doesn’t remember what she disliked then, she started disliking how he reacted to disagreements; going quiet instead of ironing them out. But that mattered less.

“In 2007, he bought himself an affordable phone. He also bought me a Sim card, which is still in use to date. He asked me to call him using the line whenever I found anyone willing to lend me their phone, and so I kept borrowing phones to call him,” she recalled with a giggle.

Austin joined the Kenya Medical Training College in Nairobi and a year later, she joined a teachers’ training college in Kisumu.

Although they faced the tests of a long-distance relationship, they found themselves back together.

“It never crossed my mind to find another woman while in college. Having been raised in a Christian background, I remained faithful and focused on my studies,” the pharmacist said.

The first time Irene visited Austin’s home in Uyoma, Siaya County, was when she attended his mother’s burial, unbeknown to her that she was sending off her mother-in-law.

Time flew and she completed college and got a teaching job in Kilifi, defying Austin’s pleas that they settle down and start a family in Nairobi. She thought it was too soon for marriage.

The distance strained their relationship but they still kept in touch. In 2014, she yielded to pressure and visited Austin in Nairobi. Upon her return to Kilifi, she found that she was pregnant.

“When I briefed him, he asked what I intended to do then that I was carrying his baby. I was cornered. I asked him to quickly go home and formalise our relationship,” she recalled.

As she expected, her sisters teasingly laughed at her for keeping secret their love all the while, but they were happy to have a person knew well as an in-law.

Their son Danzel is now six years old and his sister, Judith, is 13-months-old. Irene dumped the chalk and opted to run a business — Ebenezer Cereals — in Nairobi’s Umoja Estate.

Clifford Agita and Cammeline Makokha: Love at first sight

A boy speaking to a girl in their sister school was a crime. They were there to study, get spiritual nourishment then return home; not to engage in meaningless tete-a-tetes.

Any schoolboy spotted talking to a girl would have his name taken down and, as sure as day follows night, he would receive punishment later. The same applied to any girl trying to as much as converse with a boy.

But even with those strict rules at St Peter’s Primary Boarding School and St Anne’s Primary Boarding School, both in Mumias, Kakamega County, there was a fire that lit up in Clifford Agita’s belly whenever he set his eyes on Cammeline Makokha.

The year was 2008 and they were both in Standard Eight. The only venue where pupils from the two schools would interact was in church.

Clifford says he was simply spellbound by her whenever their eyes met, especially during church meetings on Saturdays. But it was all within a safe distance lest he received a hiding from his teachers.

“Lazima ingefanywa chini ya maji sana (It had to be discreet),” he told Lifestyle with a chuckle.

The chance came after they had sat their KCPE. Somehow, they met and got to hold a conversation. It is from that talk, Clifford says, that he learnt that the sense of attraction as mutual — though Cammeline was not the type of girl to just let a boy into her life.

In a couple of days, KCPE results came out. Clifford would later be admitted to Butere Boys High as Cammeline secured a place at Kaimosi Girls.

During the first half-term break after joining secondary school, Cammeline made a move that must have broken Clifford’s pulsating heart. Apparently, she didn’t want any more of this relationship.

“She told me, ‘Just go to school. Let me be.’ I almost gave up on it,” Clifford recalled.

As he pondered the next step, he was awestruck when Cammeline sent a friend to bring him her autograph book to sign. His heart beat a tattoo.

“I was very surprised and didn’t return the book immediately. I stayed with it for a week just to savour the moment,” he recalled.

Then he made sure to write a phone number prominently on his page in the book. Looking back, he says the number was his most important inscription in the book, not things like the movies he liked and such.

“And who is God? She saw the number and texted me,” said Clifford. “That was the day I exchanged my number with her.”

He added: “The rest were calls, messages. There were times when I had no phone and would use my mother’s. One day my mother noticed.”

Then came the blunder. Assuming Clifford was with the phone, Cammeline called to get Clifford’s mother and asked where the phone’s owner was.

“My mum was very annoyed and told me to leave the girl alone. By then, so many things had happened and parents from both sides knew we had a thing,” said Clifford.

Following that tongue-lashing, their communication went quiet for the better part of their Form Two. “Then we revived it after closure of Form Two. We met and continued,” said Clifford.

Cammeline says such meetings were few and far between, and that they never spoke much.

“Holidays were short and we would meet once maybe and not talk much,” she recalled.

They started holding longer conversations after secondary school. Because they didn’t live very far apart, they could get moments to talk. And they had their own phones, which aided communication. Then she went to university at Masinde Muliro while he joined Zetech. Both were studying mass communication.

This was a major test for them. Her base would be in Kakamega as he lived in Nairobi with his father. Knowing that university is associated with all manner of debauchery, Clifford saw this as the end of their relationship. He wanted them to call it quits.

“I told her, ‘I think for me and you it’s over. You’re going to university — and you know what we mean by university. And you know what it means to have a long-distance relationship. It won’t work. Just go to university as I go to Nairobi. It was nice meeting you,’” Clifford recalls.

It did not pan out that way. Somehow, they would find themselves talking over the phone for hours on end. Luckily for them, one mobile provider had a very cheap call tariff where one would pay Sh10 and talk for hours. Clifford describes the phone calls as “talking till one ear got sore and you had to change to the other”.

Said Cammeline: “He kept insisting that this would be over. And I kept asking, ‘End? How?’ You know, you need to convince someone. You know someone tells you it’s over to mean you’re not honest; not trustworthy. So, I told him, ‘We’ll just be fine. I’ll hang on.’”

Clifford calmed down a bit when Cammeline got a part-time job while in university. He was now confident that she would stay focused on their relationship and not go hunting for money.

“Sometimes he would sneak from Nairobi into my hostel. That at least kept us strong. We would meet for a while then he would return to Nairobi. Had we been financially unstable, we would have flipped,” Cammeline narrated.

In the second semester of her fourth year, Cammeline became pregnant. It was a turning point of their relationship and, with difficulty, Clifford informed his parents and they later went to Cammeline’s home for introductions.

Fast-forward to April 2019. They held a wedding at St Peter’s Catholic Church, Mumias. Now they live in Kahawa West, Nairobi. Their eldest son Gavin is aged four while the younger one, Ace, is seven months old. Clifford is a businessman in Nairobi engaged in branding, graphic design and photography.

Theirs is a marriage of boos without ex-lovers; who say they have never suffered a heartbreak in their lives. We asked each to share a Valentine’s message to Kenyans.

“Valentine’s is just a day like any other; just that it was marked to be the day of love. But love is always every day. Watu wapendane (people should love one another)  Let them be honest, truthful in their marriages, faithful and God-fearing,” Cammeline said.

Cliffford chose to speak about courtship.

“I’d like to advise men about courtship. Court for however much time you might want. You know, this is someone you’re going to engage all your life. And remember these are two lives meeting. So, if you want something different from whatever you’re expecting, court. Know each other very well before anything happens,” he said. “

Number two; don’t waste time bringing someone into your life and you know you will disrespect her. Don’t. It’s optional. If you don’t want, forget about it,” added Clifford.