A Life of Pain and Endurance

I am a 47-year-old Kenyan and was a druggie and had lived a life of extreme abuse by my parents. They were rich and we lived in an affluent neighborhood, but they isolated us largely and literally no friends visited our house. And the friends I knew were my desk mate at school. Otherwise, it was a rule not to have friends.

The man I called father was the most violent being I had ever seen, he used anything and everything to hit and yet as a banker he was respected and projected a different image in public. He was celebrated and honoured by many folks on the outside but created real fear in me when I heard his car turn into the driveway.

This man made me engage in a traditional ceremony that destroyed me as a child, a ceremony in which I was forced to walk naked and dance my genitals before a multitude of people for three days. Since he was honored greatly among the village folk and his clan he made me do these things yet they really messed me up. Walking naked in broad daylight while men and women stare at your genitals is not something a child expects from their parents or expects to meet in life. I was in grade school and life got very dark after this.

For many years I lived a life of pain and endurance and couldn’t even read my books coz of the daily pain and the thoughts of what going back home from school would be like. And to make matters worse I got sexually molested at school by a boy whose name I still remember.

Years later I joined high school and got expelled for stealing; I had resorted to stealing to get money for my own use rather than asking him for money. He always kept insisting on how poor he grew up. So he essentially made me experience poverty right in the middle of his ability to finance even the most basic of needs. Anyway, I got caught and was expelled and eventually passed my exam and later on went to neighboring Uganda to join A level. By this time, I was hopeless, and the constant insomnia was destroying me completely.

In Uganda I smoked weed like a chimney and even started supplying it. I was so immersed and used it to keep my mind from the dark depression I had lived to that day. About two years into my studies, I was put at night to smoke so that I could sleep when a young man in his first junior high year sat beside me, he wasn’t an angel but a kid I knew.

We started talking and he told me how would come to that spot to pray. I told him I’d come to watch the stars. It was true in part because I loved watching the stars. I asked him a few things about salvation and when he left I couldn’t muster the courage to smoke weed. But I remember going to my bed and lying on the top bunker in the dorm and looking out the window at the distant hills and starry sky and asking God to remember me and help me.

It was a seventh day Adventist school and mass was on Saturday. That Saturday that followed I sat at the back bench with more than 1000 other students. Me and my crew always sat at the back and chatted away cheekily. But this time the girl beside me didn’t talk to me and neither did the guys on my right.

God took over the space I was in, and I heard Jesus talking. I can’t really put it in words, nor aptly describe how He talked but I understood every single word that He said. And He didn’t rush what He said. He talked to me and at some point, I tested myself whether it was me talking to myself or if it was really God. He responded to that by assuring me that He was speaking to me. The mass was going on, but I was not aware of it.

In fact, from that day, I realised that God is on charge of understanding and sees it the way you clearly see an object. I understand how Nebuchadnezzar’s understanding was taken from Him so that he essentially acted like an animal. It wasn’t torture but his understanding was taken away so that he ate grass like an animal. When it was returned, he acted normal.

At some point I thought of my friends, and He released my understanding to my surroundings but to specifically the preacher’s words, just one sentence. The preacher said,

“Salvation is not about you and your friends”.

Then my mind was caught again, and He continued communicating.

Like I said Jesus didn’t rush a word at all. He spoke calmly and to be honest it was almost like telepathy, but I understood everything He said. Then He finished speaking and when my understanding returned to my environment everyone stood up and I heard someone at the front say,

“Let’s sing a hymn to close the service”.

I ran out the back door to look for the kid who met me a week earlier and since it was lunchtime and kids were rushing to get their plates. I met him running to go to the dining a hall. It was a boarding school and African boarding schools are quite a thing, almost bootcamps or military camps if you ask me, if you’re late you could miss a meal.

Anyway, I stop him and tell him that I heard God. He told me he would pray with me after lunch, and I insisted. So, he took me aside and led me in prayer. I felt a purity sweep through me and people told me I smiled all through that day.

From that day I slept through every single night and my insomnia dissapeared. I was very skinny and never ate a lot but my body changed as I recovered.

The national exams came around and I remember choosing topics which we hadn’t studied and knowing what to answer. I led the school academically alongside another girl and was even called upfront and given a standing ovation at the assembly as a teacher described me as one very unique Kenyan student that had changed from being an atheist to being an absolute example of a Christian. Up until that point I had joined a cult and had confessed Lucifer as my Lord but that’s a whole other story.

I led the school with another girl in a tie and was called to study Law at the prestigious Makerere University in Kampala. However, one year into my studies I was to retake a paper, I failed and when I went back to Kenya to tell my dad he told me to go to the university and get back his money and that he had reliable information that I didn’t want to continue with my studies. He was a rich man and was surrounded by liars every single day, most of whom wanted favors. He educated their kids even up to PhD level and took some to foreign countries to pursue their education.

I was devastated and knelt before him asking him not to do that, but he kicked me out of his house.

Here come the miracles: Before all this I had dreamt that I stepped out of a green into an extremely dry and hot wilderness.

I went to get his refund and was thrown from office to office by officials for almost six months. Since I didn’t return to class my position at the hostel was taken and I lived beside a dumpster discreetly on the university premises. But I will never forget that every single day I ate a meal or two. I never knew where it would come from.

Sometimes I’d pass a mini joint and someone who knew me would call me for lunch or tea or sometimes I’d meet strangers who’d ask me to help them do something and they’d give me a bite, there were so many variations of things that happened that I can’t fully explain each day here. But God fed me until the day I got the refund. Since dad told me never to use a single coin of his I was loyal enough not to touch a cent. I remember going to churches and asking for help and they would return me away.

But I will never forget three brothers who discovered where I was and one of them shared his bed with me until the day I got my refund.

Left with the dilemma of how I would travel I remember reading the scripture about God doing more than we could think or ask and I decided to have faith in that. I walked to the buspark and got onto a 13-seater minivan; they use these for public transport. In Uganda, unlike Kenya, clients that board such vehicles pay before the journey starts. So, I was a bit nervous about what I would do when the minivan got to the end of the 500km journey from Kampala city to the Kenyan border which was almost ten hours of driving.

As I pondered this, I noticed that I was the last passenger to get onto the vehicle but as they closed the door the driver stood some distance off with some two or three guys and they were talking animatedly. Then one of them walked to the van and called me, he told me they wanted to speak to me. My heart was racing when the driver told me that since his conductor hadn’t showed up to work, he wondered if I’d be his conductor for the day and collect the other passengers’ money!!!!

To say I was elated is an understatement. I kept my composure, but I was bursting on the inside with so much joy. God had done more than I thought or asked.

I agreed and even though he had said he’d give me a discount when we arrived at the border he dismissed me without asking for any money and said my collection was better than that of his conductor. I had only 50ksh tucked away in my jeans for all the months I had lain by that dumpster and my shoes had holes in their soles. But I crossed the border and paid that 50ksh (half a dollar at the time) and got to my hometown Bungoma with the bundle of money that my dad had told me to return. I walked from town through the 7km to his home and got there by midnight and he wasn’t in bed. I gave him the money thinking he would ask me to return to college and that it was a test but he didn’t. He told me I would learn the hard way about life.

I went up a local hill and lived on that hill praying and reading God’s word but from that time I knew that God alone was my father.

He never paid my fees and I never went back to study Law. The fellow students of Law whom I had helped went on and graduated and even started their own firms but I went on to preach the message of Christ and His love. Family basically ostracized me and I essentially became the laughing stock in the village since my old man was fired by the bank the same year he stopped paying my fees, despite serving the bank as senior management for over 30 years.

There are so many things I have had the honor of doing as God’s child and have even worked among the homeless and especially widows and abused children especially because of what I experienced.

I went back home to take care of the old man when he was dying of cancer and his words were all curses of how I’d be a pauper. Despite him being a know it all he ended up even preventing my siblings from marrying the people they wanted because of class. So by the time he died he didn’t have grandkids and we were all single. He had made us enemies of each other and just a few years ago I learned that these were narcissistic tendencies.

He fiddled with the will and essentially left me out of it, but I have lived every single day at God’s mercy and my mission is totally Jesus’s Word and ministry. Today I live in a mud-built house, but my siblings feel embarrassed to be associated with someone that lives in such a house especially having grown up the way we did. My mother kinda thinks I am cursed and despite having two kids and a wife, she will not say hi to them.

But Jesus has always been my friend and hope and a good old friend even asked me to go back to school since he remembers that I led them in A-level. I have tilled people’s lands for small fees and have walked miles to look for odd jobs, but God has always been faithful.

I can repeat this every single day. God is faithful.

Today apart from preaching, I identify widows and build them either,

• A hut
• A hut with an external bathroom and toilet
• A hut with external bath and toilet plus a shallow water well.

In my community widows are shunned and even being invited to a wedding is considered cursing that union.

I also especially identify abused children and rescue them.