In a world where friendship has been reduced to WhatsApp groups, likes and people who only come when there is food and money, true friendship has become rare. We have many contacts but few friends, and many followers but few who can follow us into the valley. Yet history and scripture remind us that a true friend is not the one who claps for you when you win, but the one who sticks with you when you lose.
Friendship is tested not at the dining table, but in the wilderness.
Jonathan and David
Jonathan was the son of King Saul and heir to the throne of Israel. David was a poor shepherd boy anointed to take that very throne. By human logic, Jonathan should have hated David, fought him and eliminated him. But the Bible says Jonathan loved David as his own soul. He stripped himself of his robe, his sword and his bow and gave them to David. He protected David from his own father, who wanted to kill him. He chose loyalty to friendship over loyalty to power.
That is trust, and a friendship that survives jealousy, politics and succession. How many of us can love a friend who is about to become greater than us?
Chuma and Susi
History gives a second picture on African soil. When Dr David Livingstone, the Scottish missionary and explorer, died in a small village called Chitambo in Zambia in 1873, his two most loyal African servants, Chuma and Susi, did something the world will never forget.
They did not run away with his belongings, and they did not leave his body to rot. They removed his heart and buried it under a tree in Africa, because Livingstone had said his heart belonged to Africa. They then carried his preserved body for over eight months, for more than 1,500 kilometres to the coast, through hostile territory, wild animals and slave traders, so that he could be buried in Britain.
That is not employment. That is friendship beyond death. They stuck to trust when there was nothing to gain.
Tom Mboya
Closer to home in Kenya, Tom Mboya, the trade unionist and statesman, was assassinated in Nairobi on July 5, 1969. At his home on Rusinga Island, the writer says, there is a story that still teaches us. Mboya had a white friend, bound to him not by tribe or blood but by shared vision and genuine affection. The friendship was so deep that they were buried near each other, facing each other, a symbol that true friendship knows no colour, tribe or class.
In a Kenya often torn by ethnicity, Mboya teaches us that a friend is a friend, whether from Alego or America. He stuck to his friends across racial lines at a time when colonialism made it almost a crime.
Romeo and Juliet: a negative lesson
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is often called a love story, but it is also a story to learn from carefully. Romeo and Juliet were not really friends. They were two teenagers struck by infatuation, a storm of emotions. They met, kissed, married in secret within days and died for that rush. Theirs was passion built on impulse, not friendship built on trust, time and testing.
Infatuation makes you die for a feeling, while friendship makes you live for a person. Infatuation is fast, and friendship is slow. Infatuation says "I cannot live without you" after three days, and friendship says "I will still be here after thirty years."
The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is also what happens when a society fails to guide young people, when families feud and children are left to make life-and-death decisions alone. It is a lesson in collective failure.
At the individual level, we must ask: am I a Jonathan? Am I a Chuma or a Susi? Can my friend trust me with his secret, his wife, his money, his weakness? Can I celebrate my friend when he is promoted above me? Many friendships die not because of distance, but because of jealousy and betrayal.
At the collective level, as a school, a church and a nation, we must ask what kind of friendships we are modelling. Are we teaching our children to stick together beyond tribe and clan? Are we building a Kenya where a Luo can trust a Kikuyu, a Kisii can trust a Kalenjin, and a Christian can trust a Muslim, as Jonathan trusted David? Our politics has failed because we have no trust. Our development stalls because we cannot trust a friend with a group project, with harambee money or with a secret.
Trustworthy friendship is not convenient. It is costly. It requires sacrifice, forgiveness, confidentiality and time. It is not built in a hotel in one night but over years of walking together.
In the end, we will be remembered not by the cars we drove or the degrees we earned, but by whether anyone could say, as David said of Jonathan, "Your love to me was wonderful."
Enock Okong'o is a senior journalist, culture and business consultant
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