On August 28, 2025, David, a graduating student, offered to donate a number of items on the students' Donation WhatsApp Group. This group, for all the chaos and busyness that student life brings, must be commended for always showing up when it matters. It has a way of saving the day, coming to the rescue of new students, and making available things that Coupang simply cannot offer. It is an online platform for donations and the exchange of items among KDIS students, where only donation-related posts are permitted. Its slogan reads: Recycle, Reuse, and Save the Environment. And it lives by those words.

It was in those early, disorienting days as new 2025 Fall students that I first encountered Albert Excel Kabaghe. We had both reached out to receive the items David was giving away, but Albert had gotten there a few seconds ahead of me, and David, naturally, gave them to him. The items were generous: food, clothes, an electric fan, beddings, clothes hangers, detergents, a laundry basket, and men's football kits. I had barely processed the missed opportunity when a message dropped in my WhatsApp DM. It was from an unfamiliar number. "Hey. I have talked to David, and we can share the items once he drops them. I'm Albert 102 Building, Room 2304." That was the beginning.

What started as a kind gesture over shared donations quietly grew into one of the most grounding friendships I have found in student life. Perhaps it was luck, or perhaps something less easy to explain, but I soon discovered that Albert and I had far more in common than a shared interest in donated goods. We were both Master's in Public Policy students from the 2025 Fall intake, and in our first semester, we sat together in Quantitative Methods and Korean Language and Culture. That shared academic ground brought us closer in a way that proximity alone rarely does.

As though that were not already enough, the African Development Forum at the school, as part of their orientation programme, assigned us both to be mentored by the same person, Samson Dadu from Kenya. From that point, we moved through our first year almost as a unit. We went to Sejong Clinic together for our vaccinations. We walked into Woori Bank together to open our accounts. We were both accepted to attend conferences in Seoul under the Global Knowledge Exchange and Development Programme. We ran together on the school football field in the evenings, and I will say plainly that Albert is a marathoner in the truest sense. The man runs for three hours without gasping, without pausing, without reaching for water, as though the road beneath him asks nothing of him at all.

Last November, our Korean Language and Culture lecturer, Professor Yuri Kim, took us on what I can only call an indelible memory expedition to Nami Island. We went there with our phone cameras, but what you bring home from a place like that has nothing to do with pictures. Albert and I were there together, and we made memories that no lens could hold.

Through all of it, Albert carries a quiet but deep love for photography, something we share. He takes the kind of shots that make you look twice. He is soft-spoken and self-contained, yet he radiates this warm, bubbly energy, a kind of celebratory aliveness that draws people in without effort. You love him simply for who he is, without needing a reason beyond that.

He is, without question, the kindest person I have met in student life at KDI School. I remind him often of how much harder Quantitative Methods and Analysis of Markets and Public Policy would have been without him sitting across from me. Albert has quietly become my unofficial academic mentor. He understands the school's guidelines on nearly every subject and always seems to know before anyone else does. Whenever I find myself drifting through the foggy maze of deadlines, requirements, and school obligations, he is the one I turn to, and he never once makes me feel like a burden for doing so.

I have always believed that friendship is itself an act of kindness. When someone chooses to show up for you in the middle of their own full and demanding life, that is already a form of giving. Albert chose that, and he keeps choosing it. Despite the grinding weight of academic life at KDI School, we keep finding new ground to share. We both now serve as Executive Members of the African Development Forum, with Albert as Treasurer and myself as Communications Officer.

Some friendships begin in the grandest of ways. Ours began with a donated set of student items and a WhatsApp message from a stranger. I would not trade it.