By Allan Olingo and Peter Oduor

It is never expected that innocent babies grow up to become archrivals but tales abound of siblings, even twins who do not see eye to eye.

Sibling rivalry is one of nature’s biggest contradictions. How can two people who share blood have so much hate between them?

Veronica Muthee, a mother of twins admits that the ferocity of emotions that her eight-year-old identical girls direct at each other astonishes her.

"Every uttered word is a target for controversy. They bicker about anything and everything. One would think they even compete for oxygen," she admits.

She further adds that her daughters argue about which side of the car they should enter when she is dropping them off to school and who should shut the door after they exit the car.

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"Recently, they woke up and started arguing about who would turn off the alarm clock and the argument continued at the breakfast table with a debate over who would read the nutritional breakdown of the cereal box. It is scary but I am helpless," she offers.

Big competition

Veronica does not comprehend why her girls are so resentful of each other.

"Why can’t they be happy with what they have, instead of worrying that either of them might get something better?" she poses.

Kevin and Mike Wesonga have had fights since childhood and there are no signs it will end soon.

"Mike performed dismally in KCSE exams as compared to Kevin and he repeated in order to get a good grade to undertake his degree course but this was done in order to be at par with his brother," offered their father Brian Wesonga.

Brian adds that he is really trying to moderate how his sons relate so that the rivalry does not turn ugly especially now that they are adults.

"It’s really a big concern to me and I am hoping that even as they grow into adults, this rivalry does not cause violence or such dangerous actions," he says. Recently, on the TV program Cheaters, a girl betrayed her twin sister’s trust by having a sexual affair with her sister’s husband. When asked, the victim said they have been rivals since childhood but she did not anticipate it would go to such extreme levels of her sister sleeping with her husband.

Her cheating sister on the other hand admitted feeling a sense of fulfilment by managing to have a sexual affair with her twin sister’s husband.

"Since childhood, she has been feeling like she is the best and most attractive and I am not remorseful of what I have done. After all I have proved a point that I am as equally attractive to her husband as she is," she said.

In Bondo District, there is a tale of the tragic end of two brothers. They grew up in a family where farming provided the source of livelihood.

Endless fights

The two appeared as brotherly as they could manage but when they could not hide it any longer, their rivalry emerged. The cause of the rivalry was simple. The younger man ventured into crop farming and it was clear his hands were blessed. He was soon earning good income from the crops and this led to his elder brother trying his hand on the same but with dismal results. The village began to notice the men were either avoiding one another or fighting. They were always setting up conflicts to outdo each other. The younger one would emerge triumphant most of the time and this only intensified the hatred.

One gloomy morning, as the sun rose to wipe away tears of the night off the grass and the spirits of the dead prepared their breakfast not knowing that they were shortly to be joined by two visitors, tragedy struck.

Tragedy

One morning the younger brother was walking around the village as he did every morning, selling milk to a few homes before taking the remaining to the nearest shopping centre where he would sell to hotels. Unbeknown to him, his elder brother lay in some thicket by the wayside waiting for him.

His brother jumped out and dealt him a mean blow with his club. He fell down and screamed for help thinking he had been attacked by thugs. When he saw it was his brother standing over him with a club in one hand and a spear in the other, he knew what was going on. He pleaded with his brother in a manner that would have moved even the meanest king but it was of no use, blows descended on him.

The initial scream fortunately attracted people to the scene who witnessed the final showdown of sibling rivalry. They tried to talk to the elder brother but he was adamant. He enumerated the ‘ills’ his brother committed against him. Apparently they were just excuses to kill the young man. And in a final act of blood letting, he drove a spear into his brother’s chest. With that, the villagers who had gathered descended on him and killed him as well.

In most cases, sibling rivalry comes when two people realise differences between them that put one in favour over the other. It may be talent or better opportunities.

This, incidentally, is not always the case. Some children do not see eye-to-eye right from an early age.

Brenda and Fiona are such. Now living oceans a part with Brenda in the US and Fiona in Kenya, their mother swears the two women had so much negative energy between them.

Too jealous

They were a study in contrast in all aspects of their lives. Fiona was the eldest and Brenda two years younger. She was dark with big round eyes and loved playing with everybody. Brenda was light skinned with small inquisitive eyes. She was introverted. Brenda did not like church while her elder sister would do anything to attend mass.

As they grew up, more differences emerged and a clear picture emerged that they were making deliberate attempts to sabotage each other. The two had fierce competition. It came to play out when Fiona was joining campus and she went to a local university. Brenda swore never to attend the local university. True to her word, she convinced her father to take her to study abroad.

"The most difficult thing came when we told them after campus to come help run our hotel as they looked for jobs. They could not work together and soon Brenda was fuming at the airport and left for US," their mother revealed.

Probably the people to ask questions are Jacob and Esau or more directly Cain and Abel as the Christians know those names are synonymous with sibling rivalry in the days when life was simpler.