第三章

Chapter One

Growing up

Young village girl.

I wasn’t born with a silver spoon….

When people meet me, they think, I was born with a sliver spoon in my mouth, totally wrong. I grew up a typical village girl, who worked in shaba’s, fetched jerricans of water on her head, collected firewood from the jungle, cultivate land to get a good harvest, walked long distance to and from to a local village school, did pottery to earn a living, taught to me, by my late grandfather, so that I can earn a few shillings, to help out my mother, at some point this would help out, however, when we went hunting, my brother who loved it, he would position us, so that we kept shouting driving the animal towards the trap, funny isn’t, hahahaaaa, when I think about it, can’t stop laughing, etc. 

Growing up as a young village girl was as normal as any other village girl. My childhood wasn’t any different, neither was it any easy at all. I grew up in a family of six, four girls and two boys. Growing up was as ordinary as any other village girl. Skipping ropes, hide and seek, stone throws, etc, where my daily games.  There were no posh cars, no shoes, no holiday treats, etc. A time came, when our late father left home, in search of money, we never saw him again not until after very many years. I never recall seeing him around, not until his late years in life. I only remember seeing him, once in blue moon, once after many years, he would come home for Christmas. We used to hear, people speaking, or our mama, how, our father stay and lives in a far city. All we knew, he was a well to do man, who had catapillars, used for grading roads. He was a contractor, working with a well known and established Indian company.

I grew up a young hard working girl, may be because of the surrounding circumstances. At a very young age when a girl is supposed to enjoy her parenthood love, care, etc. I was found carrying out a lot of adult roles. At a very young age, life forced me into a whole different kind of life. I was left with no option but to look after my two young sisters and my older brother. The reason was very simple, my mama fell sick at such a time when I was the only old girl at home. My eldest sister, my other brother, had already left home, for better education. I was left home, with my other siblings. This didn’t make life any easier, I had “augments” almost daily with different situations that confronted me. At this particular point, my mama, I believe had decided to completely return to her family, because of the endless family issues. These issues affected my Mama to the point that she developed a heart problem. I remember one afternoon, one of our uncle, a brother to my Mama, came with a bicycle, took my Mama’s belongings. I knew at that point that my Mama had decided to divorce then our late father. This didn’t go down well, I still visualize the ugly departure of my Mama. It was from that point on that life was never the same again.