Last year.
I was on a shuttle from Kisumu. Took the window seat, plugged in earphones playing Oromo music and got on with Dostoyevsky I was reading at the time. Smooth ride.
At the stopover, I alighted to get Monster Energy because I had skipped coffee that morning and my head was losing function.
I stood by the shuttle sipping it, waiting for people to come back.
B had been sitting at the front with the dere. I could never sit at the front and feel safe. My mind will show me all the ways I’ll be flying through the windshield. B got back first and she struck a conversation on what I had been reading. I put aside my need for silence and gave her my full attention. She is beautiful, looked like her heart, and her face could tell you she’d had her fair share of life’s moments. She made my soul unfold it’s palms to hold hers.
So we talked about books and what we did and what we wanted to do. Our souls immediately paired.
When we got to Nairobi, we decided to do a quick supper and she said she’d connect me to someone who might be able to give some students from my place, a scholarship to go to high school. KCPE was around the corner. We had been talking a lot about society and social issues, in case you are wondering.
B wrote an email introducing me to N. And before I knew it, I was on the search for two students who had sat their KCPE and were in dire need of assistance.
Long story short, my students were in Nairobi juzi for a conference the organisation held for the sponsored students. It was their first time in Nairobi. They are doing so good in school. I held a brief one on one just to tell them how proud I was and how much more they are.
They will be in form two next year.
I know what education means and I constantly tell the kids from Marsabit that I speak to, that some of us have very few options. While we can say a lot about how fucked up the education system is, and it is, it is the only key some of us are handed and we have to mould it to open more doors than one. Heck, we gotta use it to build our lives from ground up.
I am grateful for the opportunity those kids got. And I cannot wait to see the beautiful life they will make for themselves, for all the difference they will make in the world.
Thank you RRBF.
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