At six, I found my first gray hair. It was on the top of my head, right in the center, and when my mother saw it, she hugged me close and told me it was a sign of wisdom—a prophecy about my future. Exuberant with pride, she ran to tell anyone who would listen that there was a light at the end of our suffocating tunnel of poverty: the prophecy of greatness foreseen by my gray hair. But I knew better. By the age of six I had already lived through more than many people have at sixty—and my one gray hair was all I had to show for it.
I was born in the middle of a terrible drought. My mother was fifteen, unmarried, and terrified—ostracized by all in the rural village except her own mother, my grandmother Esther. To be conceived out of wedlock was dangerous for an unborn child, and especially for a boy. In the village, it was common for the mother’s male relatives to kill baby boys born out of wedlock, or to take them to the woods and leave them to die. Such a boy was seen as a threat to the mother’s family’s ancestral land. Without a marriage to tie the child to a father, a boy might one day demand to inherit a piece of the relatives’ land. So my mom prayed for a girl.
In the village, there are elders who see and know things. They have a sensitivity to secrets and prophecies that we may not be able to see ourselves, and their powers are revered. One day, in the middle of the drought, a powerful seer had a vision. She came to my grandmother Esther’s hut and told my mother that a baby would be born on that exact night. To have a seer predict a birth was no small thing in my community, and the village was abuzz that entire day over the prophecy.
Indeed, I was born that night. My mother gave birth, at fifteen, in my grandmother Esther’s tiny hut, with no skilled birth attendants present. No one in the village wanted to help; even the traditional midwives were afraid of becoming tainted by my mother’s bad reputation. My grandmother’s hand was all my mother had to squeeze when she could no longer bear the pain. And then my feet came first. When my grandmother saw the feet, she knew why the seer had made her prediction. This was not a normal birth. It was the end. Esther feared she would perhaps lose both her daughter and her new grandchild, too—it was unheard of for a woman and baby both to survive a breech birth in my village with absolutely no medical assistance. My grandmother prayed that the passing would be easy while she sat holding her daughter’s hand for what she was sure would be the last time. But this was a night of many miracles. Both of us lived, and the story goes that at the sound of my first cry, the rains came. Odede—it means “after the drought.” It rained for days and days.
Following my birth, the village elders called a special meeting to discuss the fate of this baby boy. They considered how the mother was unmarried, and as such the boy would likely be a problem later. Maybe they should take the baby out in the woods, leaving him for the dogs as they had done many times before. Still, the elders gave pause because this baby was born feet first. In our Luo tribe’s lore, only kings and tribal leaders survive a breech birth. And then the rain—how could they explain the rain? Luos take signs very seriously. My mother always said her heart refused to beat on that day as she waited for them to decide my fate.
Many villagers assembled for the announcement. The village seer, Ojimbo Maloko, an old man, stood and decreed for all to hear that I was a blessing—my birth had brought the rains. My grandmother also told me how in this moment she burst into tears; the words “Nyasaye duong,” which mean “God is great,” floated from her lips up to the heavens. This seer decreed I was a baby not just for the village, but for the world; I needed the name of a leader.
The villagers spent the next several days coming up with names. They proposed Ramogi, the name of another great Luo seer, or Luanda Magere, a famous warrior. Maloko was not satisfied and continued to insist that, no, this baby needed a name of the world. Then my grandmother suggested the name of the American president whose “airlifting” program had taken so many bright young people from our area to study in America. When I was born, these young people were returning home to become the great doctors, lawyers, and leaders of Kenya—one of them was Barack Obama’s father—and because of them, everyone in Luo land knew of John F. Kennedy. And so I became Kennedy Odede.
Before I was two, my mother married Babi and moved with him to Nairobi, a place where he had heard whispers that work was plentiful and problems melted away. They left me in the village with my grandmother Esther.
I was the apple of Esther’s eye and, even as a toddler, I knew it. She always fed me first, saying I was a small boy who needed to grow big. She would play with me and hold me, tickle me, and carry me everywhere, because I could not walk long after the age I should have. I will never forget Esther’s gentle hands scooping me into her arms and gingerly setting me down, always within her sight. To everyone else, I was a burden.
Then, when I was three, a rabid dog bit Esther. She suffered greatly before she died. Not understanding the gravity of her situation, I climbed into bed with her and asked when we would go to the market again. I was with her at the end—tears came from her eyes as she told me that I should never forget, no matter what, that I had a place in the world. My uncles in the village didn’t want me, so my mother was forced to come take me with her to the city. My middle name, Owiti, means “unwanted or thrown-away child.”
In Kibera, there were no more soft hands. Just from the way people touched me, I knew I was a burden, another mouth they couldn’t feed. When they carried me from place to place, I could feel my own heft, could feel their disdain as they tossed me down. When I was nearly four years old my family had given up hope that I would ever walk. My lameness brought my family even more shame than our poverty. Then, one day, I took my first steps in Kibera. I stood near the river of sewage and actually walked across a makeshift bridge. The news traveled fast: the child of the people who brought their lice with them wherever they went, at least that child could finally walk.
At five, I had one pair of shorts—no shirts, no shoes. My sister Jackie, two years younger, had two pieces of clothing because she had inherited the shirt I had outgrown. Babi could not afford a belt, so he used a string. The women in our neighborhood often said that insects could not survive in the conditions in which we lived. The water sold by the vendors in Kibera was too expensive for us, so we filled our jerricans in the running sewage, which my mother tried to filter with sand.
At night none of us could sleep. We itched and tossed and turned—red marks appearing on our bodies—infected with lice and fleas. One day my mom was lucky and able to afford a small piece of soap, only the size of a coin, from a neighborhood shop. She woke us up early that morning and we each took a bath, using as little water and soap as possible. The unfamiliar lather from the soap made my body tingle, and Jackie cried. Then my mom washed our clothes and spread them out in the little space between our house and our neighbors’ to dry in the sun. I sat inside on the floor, shivering and clean, when I heard a commotion outside.
“You want to spread your diseases to us! Remove these dirty clothes from here!” It was one of our neighbors, Mama Omondi, shouting.
I looked at my mom’s face. She is a woman of great pride, and to look at her it was as if she didn’t hear. She didn’t move, didn’t dignify Mama Omondi with a response—she just kept slowly and deliberately boiling water for tea in our only pot, taking care to use as little mafuta (cooking oil) as possible to boil the water. Mama Omondi didn’t stop, continuing to hurl insults about our poverty, until we heard a flurry of activity. She had taken our newly washed clothes and thrown them onto the ground, stomping on them for emphasis. When I saw our clean clothes covered in dirt, I burst into tears. I knew we’d probably never have soap again. My mother came over to me and wiped my tears. She shushed me gently and told me that no matter what happened in life, I shouldn’t give up so easily. She winked and pulled another quarter-size piece of soap from her pocket—she had saved it for another day! She was my hero. It broke my five-year-old heart to see the neighbors treat her like that, but she taught me early that it didn’t pay to care.
My mother is the strongest, most courageous person I know. When I was a child, the sense of joy and strength she drew from defying expectations, or standing up for what she believed in, no matter how many people she alienated, often made me afraid for her. I didn’t understand why she was always willing to risk so much. Later, I grew to respect and admire her conviction.
My mother, Jane Achieng, or Ajey as we call her, was born a rebel. The eighth of twelve children born in remote and rural Kenya, she never got the chance to go to school because as a girl, her place in the world was to marry and have children. She was forced to spend her days toiling over housework, walking hours to fetch water, and preparing food, usually porridge, for her brothers’ return from school each day. When she could, my mom would sit with their books and try to teach herself to read. She kept it secret—a girl reading was rebellion—but she desperately wanted to understand this secret code of words.
By the time Ajey was twelve, most of her age-mates were already married to older men from nearby villages. Rarely did a girl protest—when she did, she was kidnapped and forced into marriage. One of Ajey’s friends went to fetch water and never came back—the next news was that her family had received a handsome dowry, and this was a cause not for grief, but for celebration. My mother didn’t want an arranged marriage for herself. Despite her poverty, she had unrealistic desires of marrying someone she might choose. I can imagine that like any blooming adolescent girl, my mother longed to be touched, to be treated for a moment like the beautiful and spirited woman she was becoming.
When she was thirteen, the village council of elders, called a baraza, arranged for her to become the sixth wife of an older man from a neighboring village. Most of the villagers were dumbstruck—this man was far too wealthy for the likes of Jane Achieng. To have more than two wives was a sign of riches. The entire village was so proud—my mom had brought blessings on them through this prosperous match. Her bride-price was to be seven cows and ten goats, a sum the village had not seen in many years.
My mom saw it differently. She didn’t want to be married off to a man old enough to be her grandfather. But what choice did she have? My grandmother Esther sympathized—she loved my mom, and despite the fact that Esther was never educated herself, she was a progressive woman who didn’t want to see her daughter consigned to a life of misery. She was my grandfather’s second wife—his first wife, Alice, could not bear children. But Esther and Alice were best friends, like sisters. Although she could not bear children herself, Alice delivered all twelve of Esther’s.
Unable to directly challenge the elders’ decision regarding Ajey’s betrothal, Esther helped my mom escape in the dead of night. Esther sent Ajey to live with Esther’s sister in a village far enough away that my mom’s whereabouts would be unknown. Ajey stayed in hiding in my aunt’s village for many months, but when my mother’s father died, she had to return home for the burial. When Ajey arrived back in the village, no one besides Esther would speak to her. Ajey was cursed—even blamed for causing an oppressive drought. No parents wanted their daughters to associate with my mother; no one wanted to be around her lest she pass her terrible luck onto them. After she deliberately flouted the ruling of the elders, and the desires of a powerful man, she had no place in the society. The villagers tried to make her life miserable as an example to others, so that no girl would ever behave in the same fashion.
When Ajey was fourteen, the elders came to her hut and told her this was her final warning—get married; she was setting a bad example for the girls in the village. There was no one who could go against the elders, and my mom knew that any minute a match would be made against her will. After a few days, another man, old enough to be her grandfather, was found. This man hailed from another village called Sakwa. He had four wives, and my mom was going to be the fifth wife.
The old man came in a convoy of bicycles to inspect my mother. My mom sat quietly, frozen. Next, the old man sat with my uncles to negotiate the bride-price while drinking local brew together. Each side appointed its chief negotiator. My uncle touted my mother’s accomplishments—young, a good cook, and strong enough to do hard work. The old man did not bargain back. Instead he doubled the dowry in a show of great pride—he was also a man of wealth and wanted everyone to know this.
The agreement made, my mom was called from the kitchen to come and pay respects to her future husband. She would leave that very day to become his wife. My uncles handed Ajey over, knowing that the dowry would soon follow. In our culture the girl is taken first, and the cows come next. When she shook his hand, it was papery with signs of aging. My mom seethed and asked if she was allowed to finish her cooking before leaving for her new home. She went back into the kitchen and started to make porridge. When it was ready, hot and steaming, she poured it into a calabash and walked back to her brothers and the old man, everyone smiling at the show of respect that Jane Achieng was—finally—showing in the face of her marital obligations.
Instead of handing him the calabash, she threw the steaming hot porridge at his face.
The old man made a noise like a child, and everyone else went running. The elders and Ajey’s brothers fell over themselves in their efforts to get away from her, their faces flushed with embarrassment and anger. My mom ran away from the village, away from her fate. Word traveled to all the villages in the area. Something like this had never happened before. Her brothers made a vow to teach her a lesson, promising to tie her up and beat her in front of the entire village.
My mother stayed in hiding with another aunt for a year. So it was that Ajey escaped not one, but two, arranged marriages. Sometimes I wonder what for. No matter where she ran, Ajey would need to marry—there was no place for an unmarried woman in our society. And then came my conception followed by Ajey consenting to marry Babi. The only boy in his family, Babi had dropped out of high school because of drugs. As a young man, Babi was already an alcoholic with a reputation for violence. He was considered an appropriate match for the monstrous Jane Achieng. Ajey married Babi to help provide for me, and so I too became a part of her suffering.
Babi I liked best when he was just a little bit drunk, since that was the only time he would laugh or make jokes with us.
“Sometimes being poor is the best thing in life. You kids know how rich people live their life getting worried all the time? We can be poor and happy!”
I interrupted him. “Babi, we are not happy. I want food, soda, toys, and TV. Rich kids have all those things and their parents also take them to school. How can we be happy?”
Babi turned to me and said, “I know that, but listen. I see the rich people in the city and hear about how they live; they are always scared that someone will steal their property, they can’t sleep content as you sleep, and their kids are not like you and your sister Jackie. Their kids are spoiled.”
Jackie and I giggled in superiority. I didn’t know what being spoiled meant, but I knew it wasn’t good, and like any child, I loved when my parents said something nice about me, which Babi rarely did. Especially to me: he always singled me out. He beat me even more than he beat my mother, his blows knocking the wind out of me. He took special delight in beating me while he forced her to watch, helpless. I learned early to stay out of his way.
I liked Babi okay when he was medium drunk, too. Medium drunk made him tired. He’d still hurl insults at all of us, but they seemed halfhearted. Sometimes he’d throw a few things, or push my mom a bit, but soon he’d fall asleep, and we’d all breathe a sigh of relief.
When he was really seriously drunk, we knew trouble was coming, and fast. Once when I was only five, he beat me so hard that feces escaped from my body—my only crime was asking my mom for another spoonful of rice. Babi hated to see me eat. Sometimes Ajey would try to feed me something before he got home, just in case. Once, he found her doing this, and he poured the hot water she was boiling for tea over her head. I screamed, knowing I was the cause of her pain.
In our Kibera neighborhood, it was easy to know if people had food or not. You had to light your charcoal stove, a jiko, outside in the open air for the charcoals to catch fire. If you did not bring your stove outside to cook, you showed the neighborhood the depth of your suffering. The women in our neighborhood liked to show off, especially our neighbor Mama Omondi. When they cooked meat, everyone knew. My mom would sometimes pretend that we were cooking, too, by lighting the charcoal stove outside, even if we had no food to put on it. She would tell us to rub our lips with oil so that they looked shiny, as if we had eaten something, in case a neighbor came to visit. She didn’t allow us to eat at the neighbors’ houses, warning us that the neighbors would “backbite” us.
“You don’t show your nakedness in public” was how she put it.
At night we sat on the floor of our single-room home and prayed in our native language, each secretly asking God in our hearts to hear us—this time—and grant us even a momentary reprieve from this suffocating poverty. My mom never went to school, but she could read and write in Dholuo (her native language). She loved reading the proverbs from the Bible, the one book in our home. After reading, we all sang hymns until it was bedtime. Many nights my stomach made noises so loudly, it was as if it wanted to sing along.
For a time, Jackie and I would sneak away during lunchtime to go to Mama Omondi’s house to eat, even though we knew my mom would especially hate our eating at this neighbor’s house. Then one day when my mom and Mama Omondi were fighting, Mama Omondi shouted, “Woman, do not argue with me when you can’t even feed your own kids! I always feed your kids for you. Why do you give birth to an army of kids and yet you cannot afford to feed them?”
My mom was furious. Jackie and I tried to deny it, to no avail. I was afraid to go back into our house. My mom, when she is mad is enough, could scare away even hunger.
That night, it rained. Wet and hungry, I sat in an alleyway near our house, hidden by the evening shadows as I passed time by drawing in the mud. I didn’t mind being outside. I hated our house when it rained. Our roof, cobbled together from cardboard and old iron sheets, allowed the water to pour down, drenching the cardboard boxes we used as mattresses.
“Here,” said a voice, as an outstretched arm appeared offering a precious piece of bread.
Omondi. My dear friend and playmate, son of Mama Omondi. I hesitated before accepting his deeply generous offer.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell,” he said.
Omondi and I sat in the rain together as I ate, slowly savoring each morsel. Then we looked at each other and exchanged mischievous smiles—our favorite thing to do was to play in the rain together! We ran through the alleyways, sliding in the mud and laughing with glee. We found the torn-up remains of a black plastic bag on the roadside and strutted down the street imagining we were rich and holding a dignified black umbrella.
Omondi and I made our own toys. We made a soccer ball using discarded plastic bags and string. We made buses and cars out of cans. Other kids admired our handiwork, and sometimes, when another kid wanted to play with our ball, we would trade time with the ball for food. My aunt Atieno called me Ogwanjo, which means a sportsman who is brilliant and brave, because I liked to play soccer and made these soccer balls from trash and string.
One day I saw something very strange, people walking around who looked like they had come directly from the grave, their skin was so pale. Mzungus. They carried a black machine that flashed bright when they pointed it at me. I screamed. I thought the machine was going to harm me, and so I fled. Later I learned it was a camera. Its flash and their voices terrified me. We didn’t see them often, less than once in a year. But whenever I saw them, I ran and hid.
I had many ideas about them; first, I did not expect them to be smart, because they loved to take pictures of silly things like chickens on the street, shanties, and other things that were not interesting. Second, since I had seen a kid touching their skin and shouting, “How are you?,” for many years I believed the name for all white people was “How are you?” I touched their skin as well and found it soft, but I was surprised and a bit disappointed because I thought touching it would leave a mark on my skin too.
Omondi attended an informal local school because his family could afford the fee of about five dollars per month. Of course my family could not afford even the minimal fees, but Omondi shared his lessons with me. When he did his homework, I would do it with him. He’d teach me what he was learning, and I would trace letters with his one precious pencil, writing mine first and then erasing so he could write his.
But then, out of the blue, Omondi started feeling sick and weak, no longer strong enough to play. I sat for hours on the floor of his home, watching him lie there motionless. No one knew what he had—maybe measles, maybe malaria, maybe just poverty. My mom told me not to go to their house, because I might get whatever he had, but I didn’t care. He always disobeyed his mom to help me; I wasn’t going to leave him when he needed me.
Then one day, he was dead—at eight years old. His family could not afford to take little Omondi’s body to the mortuary. So he lay on the floor of their house, and after a week, his body actually became taller and started to smell. Children were not allowed to see the dead, but I would sneak in to see him because I wanted to know if he would come back. No one explained what was going on; I was lonely and scared. Every night the community would come together and play loud music, pray, and collect money to take Omondi to the mortuary until they had raised enough. I saw Omondi as he was carried away. My friend is not the same, I thought. He is sleeping but it seems he is just gone.
After that I woke in the middle of the night, sweating and screaming with bad dreams. I wanted my friend Omondi back. I realized how much he had helped me, how generous he had been at such a young age. I couldn’t sleep for fear that I would dream of him again. I refused to walk in the dark, for fear that I would see him.
Only weeks later another neighbor died, a girl in her early twenties. Her death caused much fear. In those days, no one really knew about HIV/AIDS, and so when people got sick and died from the disease, their bodies covered with sores, everyone was afraid. The bodies were wrapped in cloth until the family could afford a coffin, and the house was shunned. Everyone was always afraid that the ugly deaths people died would affect them too. I was seeing how harsh the world could be; those with the most misfortune are always afraid of how quickly, how unexplainably, it can always get worse.
One night, our door was kicked open and two policemen stormed inside our house. They were tall, wearing big boots and touting even bigger guns. There was a flurry of confusion. My sister Jackie clung to Babi’s leg, and the new baby, Liz, began to wail. I jumped up from the cardboard box I was sleeping on, shielding my nakedness by hiding, doubled over, in the corner.
“Him.” They pointed at Babi.
Babi had been lucky enough to get a job welding that day, but as the police kicked him, the story came out. Apparently, some things had been stolen at the site that day, and they blamed him. My mom screamed as one of the policemen savagely threw his boot into Babi’s rib. In our house, Babi was always the aggressor, never the victim, and so I didn’t know what to think as I watched him get beaten. I silently prayed for Liz to be quiet—she was like my baby, as I spent my days looking after her. The other policeman tore through our house, breaking one of our plates and damaging our few other belongings as he looked for the stolen goods.
“They aren’t here, I don’t see nothing,” he said to his comrade.
Babi lay shaking, holding his broken ribs, his eye banged up and his nose bleeding. I felt bile brewing in my mouth. I was going to be sick if I looked at him; seeing him vulnerable was both thrilling and terrifying.
“Take him anyway,” the other policeman barked. “Maybe he hid them or sold them. We better give them something.”
“No—please! I am pregnant! I have three children! Please! We have to eat!” my mom sobbed hysterically, throwing herself at Babi and displaying the most outward affection I’d ever seen between them. The police roughly shoved her out of their way, dragging Babi out of the house.
As my mom lay on the floor holding her belly, crying and broken, I promised myself that I’d become an ogwanjo, a warrior, for her. I knew deep down how much my mom loved and always helped me, even though she was often scared to show it because of what Babi might do to her, and I wanted so badly to help her. I scooped up baby Liz and held her in my arms, rocking her gently. Looking back, I was just a child comforting another child, but that night it didn’t feel that way. It felt like the entire world rested on my shoulders.
With Babi in jail and not bringing home the occasional money he earned—what little bit remained after he drank most of it away—we were desperate. There was no one to help. Our household was infamous for causing a lot of noise and chaos in the neighborhood, and my parents’ frequent fights and this latest encounter with the police didn’t help.
But then, my mom had an idea. That next Saturday morning, my mom called a group of women to meet at the church. She left Jackie in charge of Liz and told me to come along.
“Kennedy, I need you to help me write.”
I hadn’t been formally taught to write, but I had learned from Omondi and another friend, Boniface. Boniface was the neatest boy in the ’hood; his clothes fit him perfectly, and he went to informal school. Kids were often told to stay away from me so that I didn’t influence them, given my family’s bad reputation. But Boniface was brave and did not care what other people thought.
Boniface and I made a deal that we would both learn how to read and write so that we could write letters to each other when we were older and lived in different and far-off places. I would eagerly wait for his return home each afternoon, hungry for the knowledge he carried in his scrappy notebooks. While Boniface was in school, I looked for old newspapers on the street and in the garbage. I struggled through them, highlighting with pencil the difficult words, which Boniface then wrote down and took to his teacher. Every day, Boniface went to his teacher with this long list of words that we could not read. Even though I was not the one in school, I became better and faster than Boniface. But at some point, Boniface’s teacher tired of our curiosity and told him to stop compiling extracurricular words and to focus on schoolwork instead.
So I kept compiling my words and waited for Sundays at church when Father Francis held the service at St. Michael’s. After the mass, I asked him to help me read those words. Still in his gown, he’d look at me. “Kennedy, how can I help you?” he would say jovially.
“Father, please help me read these words.”
“Can you try first, then we can work it out.”
I struggled. He took the paper from my hands and started reading them to me. He suggested that I repeat after him. I did, and he was impressed. “Kennedy, can you now read them by yourself?”
“Yes,” I said.
I read for him, and he told me that I have what is called a “sharp brain”; I didn’t see any blade but I just nodded in confusion. I asked him if I could bring some more words for him again. He suggested that we should always do it on Saturdays, and so it became our routine. As I went to leave he asked me, “Where did you even get this vocabulary?”
“From the old newspapers I found on the streets, in the garbage.”
He looked at me and, nodding his head, said that was impressive. He promised to bring me magazines next Saturday.
I improved my English so that even Boniface was amazed. I was much better than the kids who were going to school. I kept disturbing Father Francis with requests for definitions, and I could see he too was tiring of me. He could not keep up with me and said my vocabulary was getting hard even for him. Finally, he gave me my own guide to the world of words: a dictionary.
Now what did my mom need me to write? Why? She always refused to tell me until she was ready.
When we reached the small iron-sheet church, there were twenty women gathered. I don’t know what my mom said to get them to come because I knew for a fact that many of them didn’t like her. But my mom could have been a professional political strategist; she always knows how to get people to follow her.
Ajey got straight to the point. Without pleasantries or pretense, she addressed the women, commanding the room like she was born to make speeches like this:
“We can be as proud as we want, but we all know we have problems with money. When we get it, our husbands take control of it, and we never have enough for what we need. I have an idea for how we can get our own money.”
Now she had the attention of the women in the room! I watched my mom, captivated by both her bravery and her ingenuity, as she continued.
“Every week we meet, and each of us brings fifty shillings to each meeting. We combine the money, so fifty shillings becomes one thousand, which each week goes to a different person. With this money we could start our own businesses, we could make more money, and we could even save some for emergencies. We keep rotating until everyone has gotten the one thousand, and then we can start over again, with each person contributing one hundred shillings per week.”
“We could survive,” Ajey added softly. She sounded like a preacher or a fighter.
For a moment the room was quiet, and then suddenly everyone was talking at once. My mom had struck a chord.
“We must all sign our names and make a promise to attend every week and to contribute without fail. If one of us fails, then we will all fail. Can anyone here write?”
No one raised her hand; my mom made eye contact with me and winked. Now I understood. At ten years of age, I became the official secretary for the women’s lending circle.
“Can we start tomorrow?” one woman asked urgently.
I saw my mom’s breath catch in her throat; it was the question on her mind too. Chaos broke loose again as everyone began to talk about whether they could gather fifty shillings today. Everyone was determined to try.
The next evening all the women met back at the church, and all but two people had managed to get fifty shillings. My mom had removed our last fifty shillings from her secret hiding place below her cardboard “mattress.” She had planned this all along. The group held official elections, declaring my mom the chairwoman and me the secretary. I helped all the women sign their names or initials onto a piece of paper, feeling myself swell with pride. Then it came time to decide who would get the first week’s collection of money. My mom selected Mama Otieno as the first beneficiary.
As soon as I saw Ajey handing over all that money, panic rose within me and I elbowed her and hissed, “Ajey! What are you doing? That was our last fifty bob; without it we will have nothing! We needed that money most!”
She glared at me. “Kennedy, sometimes trust demands sacrifice.”
I didn’t talk to her the entire walk home; her big words would leave us hungry for a week.
Three weeks later it was our turn for the money, and I did a little dance on the street! After the meeting, Ajey and I went straight to the market and she doubled the stock of her tomato business, buying onions and sukuma (kale) too. We sold the entire stock in one night. For the first time in weeks my mom could proudly make dinner outside in the open for all the neighbors to see.
My mom shared some wisdom as we ate: “You have to know in this world that we live in, there are two things: God and small gods. You see, there is one God, but he is very, very busy. He has the problems of everyone in the world to worry about so don’t expect that he will get to yours anytime soon. Then, there are the people we meet. These people become our small gods, able to help us in our daily lives as we struggle along on our journeys.”