Agush Nyang

My name is Isaac Agumba Ogutu. I was born on 7th January 1996. But that is not my real date of birth. I don’t really know my actual date of birth since my father died just a few months before I was born, and my mother also died a few months after she gave birth to me. But its around 1997, 98. It must be, else how can I be older than my older brother? I lived with some distant, non relatives really, all my life, in Suna West, Migori, Western Kenya. My father was born and lived in Tanzania where his mother, my grandma, was married. He, believe it or not, was so badly mistreated at home and ran away, never to be seen again. That was around the 1980s. My dad then “sought asylum” in Kenya around 1982 where he had ran to, in search for a better life. He met my mother who is from Kano in Kisumu, West Western Kenya. I am the last of 3, my brother is the middle and sister the eldest. Growing up, life was most horrible. The horror stories we heard of orphaned children being mistreated by foster parents or guardians, we lived right through that, and much worse. We were constantly mistreated, beaten and went days without food, sometimes. I constantly ran away from home and would live in the bushes and survive on wild fruits for 2 or 3 days, or at a neighbour’s for 4 or 5, before coming back or being brought back to more beatings. Our sister was so badly mistreated at home that she also, like her late dad, ran away from home and disappeared forever, never to be seen or heard from again, until 20 years later when she rose from the dead and reappeared. So we lived with just my older brother. He was slower at school, and repeated 2 classes, and so I was finished with school way before he did, and it was awkward all our lives. I, we, had the most horrible childhood. We, as I said, were constantly mistreated and faced child labor, and worse hardships daily, for years. We often lacked food, shelter and clothing and more often, other basics. We were often woken up at 3am to go to the shamba and constantly pulled away from school to go to the shamba and look after cattle. I hated every minute, no, every second of it. But I shocked everyone when I got 303/500 marks, which was an impossible fete considering everything, and I was the first one ever in that whole extended family, who had gotten that high marks. I was to go to a good boarding school, but there wasn’t any money for school fees. I was sent to go to a day school far from home, and would trek over 40kms daily, sometimes barefoot and in tatters and hungry. I was later arranged to go live with a distant yet another non- relative who lived nearer, but his wife was hell to me, more than I had ever seen. I had been being beaten all the time all my life and that was the least of my worries, it’s the going without food. In form 2, they sold our late father’s last parcel of land. They had long ago, years before, been selling our late parents’ wealth, cows, land, car, etc. In school, I constantly came last, especially in forms 1 and 2 and endured the hardships until form 3 when the school was changed to a full boarding school, and I had to board or drop out. I chose to live like a rat in school, constantly hiding, living like I was a boarder but wasn’t. I used to sleep with a friend today, and another tomorrow. I used to beg for food from the cooks at the school dining hall, and friends gave me food, but I sometimes went hungry. But I always made sure to put in the work in class. I was lucky to get a 4cm thick mattress weeks later, and bunked at the screeching bed of a student who had been sent home for fees this week, and another the next. I had also been sent, but had snuck back in. I went to school my whole life on bursaries, and help, here and there. Madam Beatrice, our teacher of English, who would have been very disappointed if I wrote “English teacher” instead, constantly encouraged me and told me I had the potential to perform better academically. I gradually improved and was once or twice spared from being sent home for fees for I was a good performer in class, and was to represent the school in a Geography inter- schools exam contest at Sironga Girls High School in Kisii, where I met the first girl I ever loved but who didn’t ever, even once, let me hit it, and broke my heart. In form 3, the “grandpa” we had lived with all our lives passed on, and 2 years later his first of 6 wives, who we had lived with all our lives, also passed, and it was the saddest day. I shocked everyone when I became 2nd overall in the whole school, with A minus, in KCSE, 2014. I went back home. The hard life, hard labour, continued. I ran away from home never to be seen again. I went to Kuria, near Kenya- Tanzania border, to teach at a shanty school, for ksh 3500 a month. It was better than home. I was selected to join The Technical University Of Kenya, formerly called Kenya Polytechnic, to do B.com, but I didn’t have any money. I had to pull a “ the prodigal son”. I went back home and begged. “But I am the first ever in the whole extended family to get an A?”. But there was no money, they couldn’t pay if they wanted. I even couldn’t get my High School Certificate until years later when I barely managed to clear the huge fee arrears they held my certificate in ransom for. I begged and groveled at another distant non-relative, who agreed to lend to me Ksh 23,000 ( US $ 150), which was barely enough for university registration, and paid my bus fare, Ksh 700 ($7 ) to Nairobi and took me to the big city for I had never before, so much as gone past 20km away from ushago, my rural “home” in Migori. He also offered to talk to her brother to live with me in his Nairobi Huruma slums, 60km from TUK (Technical University of Kenya – located right in front of the Central Bank of Kenya) from where I trekked to and fro, everyday for a year on empty stomach, before I said I’d rather drop out than live another year there. He then left and left me at the hands and mercy of God, never to see him again, and with nowhere to get the rest of the fees. The “uncle” I lived with in Huruma slums had a wife who was very horrible and hell to me just because her own daughter who had also done KCSE, Kenya’s High School Exams the same year as me, but had gotten a D and couldn’t get into a village cattle dip polytechnic if she wanted, was also living right there. But I now kind of understand. I mean here I was, a stranger, barely related to your husband, eating your free food and crapping in your free toilet, going to university and will be successful in life, while your own daughter is also right there, languishing at home for she couldn’t get into any school, and is destined to be a mama mboga, a groceries hawker or worse. One day I was mugged near Mlango Kubwa area along Juja Road at Chai Road, and my neck twisted by the muggers, it hurt for days. They stole all my books. I couldn’t get new books. I borrowed from a friend. I prayed to God everyday to deliver me from the hands of this hell woman. When first year ended and we came back home, I vowed to drop out if I had to go back to that woman. I was arranged to go live instead with yet another distant non- relative for 2nd year. I schooled fast and joined university when I hadn’t turned 18 and so didn’t have an ID, so I couldn’t apply for the student loans. The second year uncle’s wife, his youngest of I don’t know how many, was the nicest woman ever. She lived with her younger niece, who we hid around the house and had s*x with when everyone was not around, and was my first ever s*x by the way. I would later invite her to my mabati, iron sheets hut in Landi mawe slums and we had the wildest s*x. The previous sexes had had to be quiet for we were hiding around. I had now, towards the end of 2nd year at TUK, gotten HELB student loans of 60k, roughly $ 600 a year (for I was a total orphan. Others who had parents got a mere 35k. Poor them. Who told them to not have dead parents like me?) I now afforded to move out. But only to a shanty in a slum for I was also paying for my own school fees and rent and bills and occasionally spared some and invited my girlfriend at the time, Teresia Wanja, to come and alleviate my then weeks if not months long s*x dry spell. I later couldn’t afford rent, for between fees, rent and food, 60k a year wasn’t enough. I was kicked out of the slum shanty. I went and begged to live with a friend at the hostels as an “unregistered immigrant” and “rat”. They were engaged in illegal scams and one day thought I’d stolen from him and beat me up. They bought stolen sim cards in bulk, and registered them using stolen Kenya Bureau of Statistics Census data. That was way back when you still could register sim cards that easily. Betting platforms had offers, for any account registered, with a new sim, (that they had stolen), they give you a free Ksh 500 betting bonus. They would place, with one sim card and betting account, a bet for say Man u to beat Arsenal. On another, for Arsenal to beat the Red Devils. On another, for it to be Draw. Regardless of the outcome, they still won, for it was not their money to begin with. They made like 400k daily. And I sometimes lacked even 30 bob for ugali and soup at the hostel mess. Life’s unfair. I once begged one of them, and they agreed, to let me work for them as mules, the one who placed the bets and were sent to pick the stolen sim cards. God finally answered my prayers, and I got a job through yet another distant non-uncle, at Standard Newspapers, a casual gig really, loading newspapers onto vans for 500 a night. We were later fired when we used to steal newspapers to go sell on the side. But the 500 a night, (around 5k a month at most for it wasn’t every night,) for as long as it did, complemented my HELB for fees, and food and when I spared some, I would give to my girlfriend to use as fare to come and spend the weekend. She couldn’t really be expected to eat the horrible Ksh 30 ugali and badly cooked sukuma wiki or beans stew served at the hostel mess when she had just done the hard task of removing my months long s*x dry spell, can she?