By Morris Wambua

There is something sacred in the morning light that spills through the windows of a restaurant near the University of Nairobi, filtering in golden, dust-laden rays that cast everything in a soft, forgiving glow.

This is not Club 36!

The ambiance of the restaurant wraps around me—a gentle murmur of clinking cutlery, hushed conversations, and the scrape of chairs against wooden floors. It’s a weekday morning, and most people are here to catch up briefly, to slip into the familiar comfort of food and good company. But today, beneath the calm, I sense a strange, electric tension.

As if the very air thickens, brimming with a quiet, electric anticipation.

Then I see him.

He’s young, perhaps late twenties, his face a careful study of calm that, upon closer inspection, betrays nerves stretched taut.

He stands up, his hands smoothing his shirt—too crisp for a casual dinner, betraying the care that went into his choice this morning. Across from him, his date—a beautiful woman with a cascade of dark curls framing her face—looks up, eyes widening in realization.

She’s caught mid-sentence, lips parting as she takes in his stance. The world around them seems to dissolve, like ink spilling into water, fading until there is only the two of them.

He drops to one knee.

A collective hush sweeps over the room. Conversations falter, and forks pause in mid-air. It’s as if every person in this small bistro has been caught by the same gravitational pull, drawn into this moment that hovers between them, shimmering with possibility.

In his hand, he holds a small velvet box, open to reveal a modest diamond that catches the light in quiet, steady flashes. He looks up at her, his voice barely above a whisper but carrying a weight that stills the air: “Will you marry me?”

Her hands fly to her mouth, her eyes shining with the weight of the question.

Silence stretches like silk pulled tight, a moment suspended in the fragile place between hope and fear. And then, her face breaks into a smile, wide and bright, and she nods.

The applause is soft at first, hesitant, then swelling into something full and joyful.

Strangers cheer.

A middle-aged woman dabs at her eyes with a face towel, and an older man nods approvingly, a slight smile tugging at his lips.

Even the stoic waiter, probably a Postgraduate student of the Kibe School of Lambistic Sciences, who has seen it all, is smiling now, just a little.

In the space of a few seconds, this couple’s private moment has become a communal experience, shared and celebrated by everyone in the room.

I find myself clapping too, swept along by the tide of collective joy. But as the applause fades and the couple returns to their seats, flushed and laughing, a quiet question lingers in the back of my mind.

What, exactly, have we just witnessed? And why does it feel both beautiful and somehow unsettling, this display of love made public, this private promise declared under the gaze of strangers?

Public proposals.

Few things in modern romance spark as much debate. For some, they are the ultimate gesture—a love so grand it cannot be confined, a promise that demands witnesses.

There’s something undeniably thrilling about seeing love laid bare, vulnerable and unashamed, in a world that so often demands we guard our hearts. But to others, these displays feel like something else entirely: a performance, an imported ritual from cultures that live their lives on screens, where nothing is real unless it’s validated by the applause of strangers.

In many African communities, love is seen as sacred, private—something that flourishes quietly, away from prying eyes.

Proposals here have traditionally been family matters, intimate affairs handled within the trusted walls of home, rooted in rituals and customs that speak to something deeper, something woven into the fabric of identity.

To drop to one knee in a crowded room, to declare one’s intentions in the glare of public attention—some view this as distinctly un-African, a borrowed spectacle that strips away the quiet dignity of commitment.

And then there’s The Kneel.

The simple act of a man lowering himself before his beloved, gazing up at her with open vulnerability. In the Western context, this gesture is both familiar and romantic, a visual shorthand for devotion and humility.

But here, in the eyes of some, it is an uncomfortable sight.

A man on one knee, they say, is a man giving up his pride.

He’s “simping,” as today’s slang would put it—a term that conjures up an image of a man so desperate to please that he loses himself in the process.

They argue that true African masculinity does not kneel, does not bare itself in this way. To do so, they believe, is to sacrifice strength on the altar of vulnerability.

But there are others who see things differently.

They look at this man on his knee and see not weakness, but a strength that transcends pride. They see a man unafraid to be humbled by love, a man willing to make himself small so that his love might be seen as grand.

In their eyes, love is a force that reshapes you, a river that carves away at the hard edges of the self, leaving behind something softer, truer.

To kneel is to surrender, not to a person, but to the shared journey of love itself.

Yet, as I watch the couple return to their meal, flushed and glowing, another question lingers.

What of the woman?

How does it feel to be on the receiving end of a proposal performed for an audience?

I imagine the quiet panic that must have swept over her as he dropped to one knee.

A sense that, in that moment, her answer was not just her own, but an answer given to everyone watching.

She is, for a few precious seconds, the lead in a play she did not audition for, the subject of strangers’ expectations and assumptions.

What if she had wanted to say no?

What if her heart held doubts, hesitations?

To refuse would be to invite judgment, to risk not just her relationship but her very image in the eyes of a roomful of strangers.

A friend of mine, Christine (not herreal name), once told me that her worst nightmare was a public proposal.

“If anyone ever proposes to me in front of a crowd,” she said with a laugh, “I’ll say no just to prove a point.”

She’d meant it as a joke, but there was a hard edge to her words, a steely determination.

Christine doesn’t want love as performance; she wants love as intimacy, love that is whispered, not shouted.

And she is not alone.

There are those who believe that the beauty of love lies in its quietness, its ability to exist outside of
the spotlight, flourishing in the private spaces between two people.

For them, love should be something you carry close to your heart, not something you hold up for the world to see. They argue that real romance doesn’t need an audience, that the strongest promises are made not in crowded rooms, but in the small, silent moments that slip by unseen.

As the restaurant returns to its usual rhythm, as the clinking of silverware and sounds of conversation resume, I am left with a thought that lingers like the last note of a song.

Public proposals are, in some ways, a mirror held up to our society’s complex relationship with love.

We live in an age where visibility is currency, where every private moment is another potential post, another opportunity to say, “Look at me. Look at us.”

Love has become something to be displayed, performed, and shared in perfectly curated snapshots that reduce complex emotions to a handful of likes and comments.

But does love need witnesses to be real?

Is a promise somehow deeper, truer, when it is made in front of strangers? Or is this public spectacle a product of a world that increasingly values the appearance of romance over its substance?

In the end, I am left without a definitive answer.

As I watch the young couple laugh and hold hands across the table, their eyes still bright with the glow of shared joy, I wonder if, for them, the applause meant anything at all.

Perhaps they were simply swept up in a moment, a moment that felt too big to contain.

Perhaps, for them, love was a fire that needed to be shared, that needed air and light and space to grow.

So, dear reader, I leave you with this thought: love, like all great mysteries, is both simple and complex.

For some, it is a quiet flame that burns best away from the eyes of the world, a steady warmth that doesn’t need validation.

For others, love is an exclamation, a declaration, something that feels truest when it is shouted from rooftops and celebrated by strangers.

In the end, perhaps love is a story that writes itself in many languages. And perhaps the beauty of love lies not in where it happens, or who sees it, but in the choice it represents—a leap into the unknown, a willingness to build something together, something that will stand even after the applause has faded and the lights have dimmed.

The next time you witness a proposal in a crowded room, consider the meaning behind it.

Is it the romance of your dreams, love in its boldest form? Or would you rather find yourself in a quiet corner, in the quiet space between hearts, making promises that only the two of you will ever
know?

As I leave the restaurant, casting one last glance at the couple still wrapped in their private world within the crowd, I think perhaps the only question worth asking is whether, in the end, their love feels like home.

And in a world that is often loud and unforgiving, maybe that is the only answer that truly matters.