Especially the challenges we were going is about finances, paying the school fees. You know, my mum was alone. My father wasn’t around. Actually, he has never been around because they divorced with my mom when I was in grade one. So that I was very young. By then, I didn’t understand what was going on.
I was with my mom and my mom wasn’t fully employed. She did some casual work from one place to another. Sometimes we’d go to school and we were chased back home because of school fees. My mom struggled to get the school fees, we go back. We started like that until we finished our schools.
But when I was in class eight going into form one, my mom got a job in a hardware. I studied until form two, and when I was a form two, she got out of the job again. Now I had to drop from my boarding school to a day school. That’s when I went to a day school in form three and form four. And by the time I was in form four, my mom now had no money to pay my day school again. I almost didn’t do my exams.
But because the exams—once you have already paid, you have to sit for the exams. So I sat for my exams, but my school transcripts and my results were held by the school until I could finish my fees.
What I can say is it’s a miracle because after four years, I was schooled. Because it was just a day school and the growing school—the school was about to be closed. So they had to give us our transcripts. I was happy because I didn’t pay the school fees because it was a lot and I got my transcripts.
That’s when I decided to join college. I joined college with a struggle because I had gone to work in an MPESA. I was able to gather some money and my mom got us a few coins and then I joined school. When I joined school, I studied for almost like a year. Towards my examination, my mom couldn’t raise the money to pay for my exam. So I didn’t do my examination. I dropped [out]. I dropped [out] and went back home. I stayed home for like two years again. I went to work in Mombasa. I got my job in my hometown.