Why I am in this

In 1967, my dad was diagnosed with acute leukemia and advised he didn’t have much time left here on earth. I was seven and already late in starting school. Both my parents were very poor and with an ailing father, life became even more unbearable. My dad being a caring husband and a father understood things were getting harder and harder for mom. He also knew I needed to go to school, but wanted to take some burden off my mother’s shoulders. So, that same year, at his hospital bed, he summoned my mom and instructed her to take me to his younger brother so I could go to school there. Without hesitation, my mom and I left for Nyeri, about 400 km away from our home in Nandi Hill in Kenya. We got at my uncle’s late in the evening and the next morning, my mom left for home to go take care of my sick father and my siblings.

The next day, reality struck. I realized that my uncle was a polygamist with eighteen children. I was the newest addition to a very impoverished family. After a few days, I also discovered that my uncle was both alcoholic and a very violent person. And so, for the next seven years, Nyeri became my new home where i lived as a virtual orphan. I did not get to see my mother until four years later when she visited and broke the news of the demise of my dad who died a few months after my departure. I also didn’t get to see my siblings for seven years. I had no change clothes or shoes. My makeshift bed was at the sheep pen without a mattress, sheets or a blanket. I lived on one meal per day for seven years with hard labor which included milking several cows at the wee hours of the morning, taking the milk to the buying center an hour’s journey on foot and in the dark without a flash light and running back home to go to school on an empty stomach. All that in addition to a very hostile uncle who at one time almost killed me. For more of this, you may want to purchase my book, Trials into Triumph.

My seven years in Nyeri exposed me to the kind of life some children without their parents go through. I cried secretly many times and wondered why it had to happen to me. I missed my parents and my siblings. I missed being a kid and growing around my mom and dad. That is the reason I am in this.