Josa could not sleep. He kept tossing and turning in his bed, his mind consumed by thoughts of her. His bedroom was pitch dark. He kept thinking about how hopeless his quest to win Sii’s love was. He dreamed about spending the rest of his life with her.

Sadly his attempts to woo her had gone unrequited. The most he had got out of her was a smile. He wondered what to do to get her attention. To make her notice him. To make her love him and agree to spend the rest of her life with him.

He resolved to wake up early and pray to the sun to help him win over Sii. Josa had learnt how to pray to the sun from his grandfather.

When he was a boy, his grandfather had taught him the importance of praying before making any major decisions or when he needed help accomplishing something.

“In order to pray for the most important thing, I would wake up before sunrise, get out of the house and stand on raised ground facing the rising sun,” his grandfather told him. His grandfather explained that the sun was at its most powerful at sunrise and so prayers were more likely to be answered.

Josa recalled how his grandfather had proved that the sun’s power was potent and real. “The gravest and most successful prayer I ever made was to win the heart of your grandmother. I was a poor man who wanted to marry her but I had no material wealth. The only thing I had was my faith in the Supreme Spirit.

Her family would never allow their daughter to marry a poor man like me who did not even own a goat. So I prayed to the rising sun to help me win her love, and the spiritual potency of the sun did it. You’re grandmother agreed to marry me, to everyone’s shock.”

Josa had been lucky enough to study up to the university level. He had just graduated but he was yet to get a job.

Josa was also facing a rival. A young man from their village was also interested in Sii. Unlike Josa, the young man had not gone to university but he was from a wealthy family, which gave him a better chance than Josa.

Josa could not imagine Sii marrying someone else. The thought made his heart ache. He believed it would literally kill him.

He had a problem with religious beliefs because his knowledge of physics argued against those beliefs. But now that he was confronted by a grave need for something or anything that could help him get Sii, he couldn’t dismiss it as easily. His Christian upbringing had taught him not to worship idols, yet he strongly felt that praying to the sun would enable him to get Sii.

Christianity demanded that prayers should be directed exclusively to God, although nobody knew what God looked like or where He lived. Josa had been praying to God to help him win over Sii to no avail. In fact, he had noticed that the more he prayed, the more Sii increased her distance. This made him decide that God either was not listening or did not want to grant his prayer.

It is said that a drowning person will clutch at a floating straw in an attempt to save himself and Josa had been going about clutching all kinds of straws, groping in a spiritual darkness.

Desperation pushed him to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. Josa woke up excitedly from a dreamless sleep. It was dawn, exactly the right time to pray to the sun. He jumped out of the bed and got ready. He sneaked out of the house quietly and made his way to higher ground.

He stood facing the sunrise. It pushed out of the clouds, leaving crimson streaks behind, marking the birth of a new day. As the sun emerged he prayed: “Dear rising sun, please, give me the confidence to address Sii and persuade her to marry me. I want her to be nobody else’s wife but mine. Dear sun, when I meet her this morning, enable her heart to open up to me.”

Upon finishing the prayer he felt instantly rejuvenated and confident that he would succeed. He walked back to the house to prepare himself to meet Sii. He put on his best shirt and tie and black trousers. He then walked to the junction where Sii passed every morning on her way to work.

Sii spotted him standing by the side of the path, looking agitated. “Josa, what are you doing here so early?” she asked. Josa was startled that she had noticed him but he managed to extend his hand to shake hers. “I was waiting for you, my dear.”

“What do you mean, you were waiting for me?” She had never seen him looking so serious.

“I came to escort you to work.” She let out a giggle that made him smile and relax a little. “Sii, I want you to be my wife. Please grant me this wish. You must marry me.”

“When?” She asked, without hesitation.

“Let’s go, I’ll tell you when,” he said. It was a chilly morning and, as they walked, he felt like they were the only two people in the world. He noticed that her face had suddenly changed and she looked intense. Somehow, he felt he had said everything that should be said that morning. In fact, he didn’t walk long with her before he said, “Sii, my mission is accomplished. Go on and get to work. We’ll see each other later, today or tomorrow.”

Nine months after the historic morning meeting, Sii and Josa eloped. He took her to Mombasa where he had finally found a job. Eloping was the only way they could break the hardness of Sii’s parents. The move came as a shock to everybody and stories started spreading that Josa had used a love charm on Sii.

One afternoon, a year and a half when Sii had delivered their first child, Sii asked seriously, “Josa, what actually did you do to me that morning we met? Something mysterious hit me. I also saw that you didn’t want to talk much. You didn’t even fulfil your promise of walking me to work.”

“What could I have done to you?” He asked with a knowing smile. He had never told her anything about praying to the sun and he had no intention of telling her. He knew that she wouldn’t believe him. Or perhaps, one day, he would thaw and say something about how he broke her spiritual hymen… Astonishingly, praying to the sun had worked successfully. The incident had changed the geography of his religious belief.

If only he could share it with someone else…