Fare thee well Betty Caplan

It must have been at the French Cultural Centre where we first met, maybe ten, or 12, or perhaps even 14 years ago — the memories of meetings’ exact moments fade away in the mists, and the miasma, of time. But one cannot forget the first, and always, impression of Betty Caplan. That silver halo of hair, the lovely smile, but mostly, the twinkle of her eyes beneath her spectacles. Betty Caplan.

She had a newspaper gig at a local daily, writing about the arts and culture, which she felt with a passion. She liked to get into all sorts of passionate debates. Some about women empowerment. And she managed to do it with both grace and eloquence, not with the embittered ‘I hate all men’ and ‘Kenya is a patriarchy’ venom I, and Silas Nyanchwani, have often come across, across the bows.

Betty also often complained about her work permit, that is something else I distinctly recall. “It is like my second home is in Nyayo House,” she once told us. “Maybe I should rent the old torture basement there.” Because Betty also had the sense of the ‘gallows’ humour about her.

She never really discussed her past, prior to Kenya. It would be years before I learnt that she had a broken marriage somewhere out there in the hemispheres, that her grown daughters wouldn’t speak to their mother, blaming her for the divorce, and how terribly this hurt poor Betty C.

But as sometimes happens in life, it is one memory of someone that often comes back, even long after they are gone, whether to eternity or to someplace else.

Even for the apostles, one can bet Thomas always remembered feeling for nail wounds in Jesus’s hands, and Judas kissing his cheek, and Peter being (guiltily) awoken on that last night, and so on.

I remember it was that first Saturday of December, 2007, and a bunch of us writer types were at Betty’s lovely house in what some journas always refer to as ‘leafy suburbs.’

We were with Philo Ikonya, now in exile in Norway, and my late kid brother and younger sister, and my then new fiancée, and the Kwani brother/sister team of June Wanjiru and Binyavanga Wainaina. And some other folks I cannot now recall, including a young, good-looking man of whom there were some Caplan whispers, like it’s not all good, which it is, if it is.

The afternoon was sunlit, the talk both smart and funny, and there was an endless supply of wine, which made us all very light-headed.

One of those happy magical days, of which you later realise, you’ll never be together that way again, all of you.

Later, I heard Betty went to Lamu, then Istanbul, and we lost touch, and lots of life happened. Until Easter Sunday, when the news came in a ‘Facebook’ deluge from all those the lady had touched, that her life had come to its natural end. Philo paid her the poetic tribute I share here:

“I remember only a party happy Betty, Face suddenly thoughtful a while, before a radiant smile broke out, sun sweeping across a plain, except these last pains have taken her away/ and this has to be my g’bye on FB, our goodbye to Brave Betty;

Who made us family, for one afternoon. Moments shared from heartbeat, those lost at the hearth …

And earth spares no goodness to such as her.’ Goodbye Betty. You were Saturday sunshine.

Fare you well, Betty, and may you smile again, someday in the sun.”