The girl the world turned from - Owefu Part 3

The Girl the World Turned From

Ayuna (not her real name) is a girl with a golden smile. She shakes my hand and sits next to me smiling she doesn't talk much but every time our eyes meet. She smiles.

Hi I am Ayuna, I am 17 years old, she pauses in silence. I stopped going to school when I was in class 8, they sent me for my birth certificate to register for the main exams and I couldn't get it. I have been working as a house help ever since but it never works out and I always find myself coming home. Her pauses are loud, I dont have much to say, I just wish that I can go back to school or at least learn about hair dressing so I can also make sense out of life.

At this point I realise that she is not comfortable and I draw back my questions. She looks at me and smiles again, her voice is barely a whisper but her hope is loud. The house becomes so silent, he mother sends her to the shop then tells me her story.

We are not broken, we are becoming - again and again 

© Namatsi Lukoye

The Girl who ran from rain only to find the storm - Owefu Part 2

“I see myself as air,  you can’t hold me down. I pass through cracks and still rise.”

My name is Anita. I am 19 years old, and I have two children. Two years ago, I ran away from home to escape chaos and hardship. I landed in the slums of Matisi, life was hard but at the time softer than home, until I became pregnant.  As fate would have it, I returned to my mother's house, where I delivered my son.  

I started a small business selling chips by the roadside and started making some money. A couple of months later, a friend introduced me to her brother, who was looking for a wife. I packed my bags and moved to mombasa to meet and be with the love of my life. We lived well until I became pregnant, when he became unrecognizable. He would beat me. Once, he nearly killed me and our child. He brought other women into the house, turning my love into shame.

I knew that home was harder, especially with my ailing grandmother who was living with my siblings; I did not want to be a burden. I also heavily depended on him and felt that I could not leave. Before I delivered my second child, he sent me to his rural homestead, to a house with no warmth. Not knowing what to expect, I went there. I had to adopt his son and raise all these children by myself. I had never imagined life being this hard; the shops were far, and he would send 30 shillings in the evening for a day's meal for all of us. He never even met his daughter, and stopped picking up my calls. Eventually, I came home.

Now I am here, I want to focus on my children and also help my family where I can. If I once started a business and was doing well, I believe that I can do it again. With the support of kshs 5000, I will be back on my feet.

© Namatsi Lukoye

The House of Heavy Stories - Owefu Part 1

'Some stories are heavy, mama.'

Some stories sit on your chest like a stone on the ground. "Who do you even tell? How do you even start?" she asked.

In the heart of Transnzoia poverty plants itself like a stubborn tree. There, I met a grandmother battling sickness, a mother with wounds you cannot see, and 3 daughters caught in a cycle of generational poverty that spun long before they were born.

As she began to speak, tears raced down her cheeks. I had just interviewed her daughters and did not expect what came next.

“I was raised in a house of violence. My father, a building contractor in Milimani, built homes for others but broke the one he lived in. He found comfort in bottles, and when he came home, he came with fists and fear. My mother did everything, including building the house we live in. I remember once my mother returned home half-naked and with bruises from searching for him. Then one day, he vanished, and we’ve been breathing under a dark cloud since.”

The challenge of affording school fees slowly crumbled our dreams.  I became pregnant at 16 years, got married, and moved to Nairobi. I started working in a salon. Bore children one, then two, then more. My daughters Anita 20, Ayuna, 17, and Annie, 13, and my 3 sons. With 6 children, we had to work harder. I worked in salons, flower farms, and maize farms, but still, poverty followed like a shadow. Life was very challenging, and so was marriage. We fought a lot, but I never wanted to break my marriage.

Then came the fracture: Ayuna, my daughter, was barely 15 when she became pregnant and had to drop out of school. Angered, my brother decided to follow up on this matter, and the truth fell like lightning: Her father was the perpetrator. As this case escalated, he vanished. The child, rejected by our traditional beliefs, was left at the hospital, and we have never looked back.

Since that day, I stopped calling Ayuna my daughter; she became a wound, yet I know that she is wounded too. It was hard to face the community without feeling judged and humiliated. Her siblings blame her for breaking up our family. If this girl could talk, she would shed a lot of pain. How can someone who is destined to guide and protect his child do this to his own child?

I sometimes run to crowds so that I am not alone with my thoughts. Many things stopped working because many things require us to return to the wound! I must find healing somehow.

Now Anita, who is two years older than I, with two kids, after making the same bad choices I did, I have lost hope with my girls. I look up to my son to finish school and come help me.

In the silence of the family's home, the walls keep stories you can dare not repeat. Daughters tying to heal from their mother's traumas. Mothers trying to protect daughters form their own fate, A lineage stitched with sorrow and survival. This is a real-life story of  40-year-old Owefu, because this is a taboo that families do not voice these stories, they live with wounds and pass on wounds. This is not a unique story here.  

© Namatsi Lukoye