School begins. In the spring semester 1984, we all began school. The late Jotham Wandu joined the Interdenominational Theological Center (ITC), and the children went to Oglethorpe Elementary school which was located next to ITC. I attended Morris Brown College, which was close to both ITC and Oglethorpe Elementary. Thus, our life’s journey in the US began. The children tested for English proficiency and passed. They had a healthy educational background back in Kenya. Two attended Musa Gitau private preschool and Muthaiga primary school in Nairobi. The third one began preschool in Muthaiga. The fourth one went to a private seniors’ preschool at my work place-Kenya Coffee Research Foundation Jakarada, Ruiru. Later the kids’ school background helped them benefit from the Dekalb school “Majority-to-Minority” (M-to-M) competitors and one child received the president Ronald W Reagan achievement award. They also gained from Wadsworth Magnet School for high achievers high school.
Late Jotham’s source of scholarship. The dean of Johnsobs C Smith seminary, a constituency of ITC, Dr. James H Costen, in his visit to Kenya in the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA) established a friendship relation with PCEA. He opened an opportunity that every year the Johnson C Smith will offer a scholarship to one pastor and his family to study a master degree at ITC, something that continues till today for about forty years today.
Late Jotham and his family benefited from the opportunity between 1984-1995. He pursued a master’s degree, and then continued to complete his doctoral studies in Theology, with a focus on family crisis management. His dissertation titled, “An integrated conceptual model of crisis intervention for Gikuyu people utilizing traditional family social support system, Christian resource system and crisis theories (Kenya), 1995.”
Onside. I also benefited from the generosity of the PCEA. I was able to do college education at Georgia State University in Atlanta Georgia. Following my late husband’s passing, at the age of 69 years old, I returned to school and received a master’s in Bible Studies from Beulah Heights University inAtlanta, Georgia. I owe great gratitude to PCEA, all the individuals and institutions that continue to make a difference in my life now as I approach my late seventies.
New love. A Gīkūyū widow traditionally hardly remarries because she is interwoven within clan fibre and property inheritance for the children. This is a subject for another time. I greatly appreciated my enlightened children for encouraging and supporting my idea of remarrying. Some of them went as far as recommended websites for finding a husband, others some other ways to do it. Many friends I shared my wish with and asked them to help search for that guy. I am very thankful for my children for their resiliency in assimilating to the combined marriage of a large family of about five dozen people.
The culture. As for me, a cultural shock in the US was an eye opener that helped me think out of the box and seeing a bigger picture of a big world. Thus, meaning different words for things I knew such as milk vs cream added to coffee , toilet vs restroom, blight sun day but freezing with cold. Accent-I am still told I have a deep accent after living in the US for about three decades.
Children marriages. Our two sons were little boys when we moved to the US and we maintained America was outside our house, but soon children entered the house they had to realise they were in Kenya in every mannar- language, food, dressing, etc. We blocked learning and assimilation to the larger culture until such time we could no longer prevent it anymore. Our son married an American beautiful girl vs marrying Gĩkûyû girl, the family was divided; it meant us parents had two votes against our five kids’ five votes in support of their brother. Meaning that you can remove a Gĩkûyû man or woman from Gĩkûyû land but it is very hard to uproot the Gikuyuness from the inside them.
The marriage distorted Gĩkûyû cultural ceremonials system, the dowry process, male arranging and decorating the event. and other traditions. Everything went upside down.
New learning gained. Today I appreciate the determination and strength of our son for standing up for the choice he made. A great wedding in Chicago happened leading to great understanding between two large families and friendship. Both families celebrate thanksgiving in Georgia and relatives come over to stay with us in Georgia and we celebrate Christmas in Chicago- we all go there and spend days there. The two persons that wedded pulled many relatives, friends, and community from the two sides together.
Grandkids. We celebrate our son’s industrious wife full of wisdom and their two grown kids-a son and a daughter both in college. We grandparents enjoy our grandchildren’s ride anytime, their hug, and great love. I became an enriched mother and grandmother because I am very informed from various ways in living with them all and learning as much technology as possible to keep up with grandkids. Our son was not the end of marrying an American, his sister followed the same line and married an American. At the time we were cool. We didn’t act, we observed, and listened and we contributed whenever asked.
The two marriages connected my family to many families in the US and other parts of the world. The third marriage took us across the ocean back to the village in Kenya. That time the traditional rituals somehow observed but not in full because all parties and ages were not able to be present in person. A few managed to fly over. We missed “thenga twarie” and “kīande”parts of goat because the party that asks for it was not present. The many aunties were not present to ask for rūrīnja, itangi rīa maī na thuti ya ithe wa mūritu na kabuti ka guka na mūrengeti wa cūcū, etc. Two merternal cūcū came over and two uncles. In all there was a warm celebration and joy.
We still believe will continue to the fourth and fifth parties perhaps that time we will step into another planet, who can tell.
The Gīkūyū empty house. Gĩkûyû loves to bring to the world a late child to be there in their advanced age, so it happened to us when all four kids went to school the house was empty. We got a fifth child. The income was not in our favor. Gīkūyū believes God gives to every born child at birth her or his portion. A church we went to was subsidising some of our needs, I decided to stop going to church imagining that someone might ask me “another child?” Yet we had not managed the six people in the family. I also feared my children would hear people talk about my expectancy of a baby and I wouldn’t be able to hide it from them. For the sex and pregnancy are silent topics in Gīkūyū house till in our time. I saw people talk openly to pregnant mothers and appreciate them in public and I didn’t want such a situation to occur to me especially, in the presence of my kids and their father. The familiar people to the mother, I saw they would even touch the mother’s stomach and even ask when the baby is coming- that would cause an oppressive embracement.
My children had not seen me pregnant, they found themselves born, and they had never seen me pregnant and still I didn’t want them to know.
In our time our mothers hid their big bellies under wide dresses and put a leso on shoulders and cover themselves from shoulder to hips. The children and other people wouldn’t see the mother with a baby inside her. The mother would have a baby and the children would not know where the baby came from. The mother easily said to her children that she bought the baby from the market since she goes to market to sell or buy things. Also, the mother who gave birth in hospital would say to the older kids that she bought the baby from the doctor in the hospital and the kids believed the mother’s stories. Sex and pregnancy were silent topics around Gīkūyū kitchen evening stories as metionened earliar.
The clinic. I chose not to visit the antenatal clinic. I felt healthy and everything was going well. I avoided creating expenses for no reason. I decided I would go to check in last month to the hospital where the baby will be born. I did. All was well, but the nurses complained of denying the health system learning from my baby’s process of development and me.
On the day of the delivery of the baby. At the admission hospital dest, the two adminitinting nurses asked me what sex of the baby I would like to have? I replied, I had no choice since I knew I was expecting to have a girl. The two nurses looked at me and they said to each other “listen to her, she believes in fundu.” I did not comment, but I knew it was a girl since I had two girls and two boys before and I had learnt some signs of of each sex.
The cesarean section. Therefore, my girl came, the bad thing, doctors argued, my age was not favorable for giving a natural birth. They optioned to do a cesarean section. I was so angry at their decision. They were full of fear that something might go wrong for both the baby and I. Finally, my baby girl we cherish was born, I was forty-five years. I had a chance to have more before I hit the age of fifty plus years, a thought came in me. But we needed one only. Gĩkûyû women of our time had children even in late years above fifty years. They would stop menstruation thinking they were done. Some have back pain and when they go to hospital treatment for the back pain, just to find it is labor pain and a mother return home with a baby instead of a bottle of pain medicine.
Europeans and Church. The other experience I had was a wrong belief that all Europeans were Christians. I realized that not all white people go to church as we believed in Kenya, our neighbors cut grass and painted the house on Sunday. I also learnt that their names were the names given them by their parents at birth. There was no separation of Christian name and the usual name. Their names were the first name, last name and maiden name.
In The Christian baptism name. In Kenya, in our time. one selected an European name or a name from the bible for baptism and added it to the native name. The baptism name supersedes the primitive native name since at baptism one became a new creation. After the baptismal name people address the person by baptism name. The native name was forgotten from that moment unless people wanted to trace back a name from the clan to know who the person was named after. The primitive native name was a non-godly one.
In heaven. An elderly Christian family friend back in Kenya learnt that our four kids were baptised their native name, and she became so much concerned and worried about it. That our children without Christian names from the bible or the European names will miss in heaven’s book of life’s roll call. She was elderly and had great faith in God, a saved and born again Christian, I could not argue with her faith. I just listened to her and was bothered that I did not have such strong faith in God.
The pronunciation of the names. When we came to the US, our kids native names were difficult to pronounce, especially in school, something that irritated them much. To avoid the mistakes in pronunciation of their names, they picked the baptism names of their relatives they were named after and added to their native names without telling us. The kids’ idea solved a great deal of a problem. Because an issue related to wrong name pronunciation of one of our children in school by a teacher in class caused the child to be transferred from one school to another within twenty-four hours time by the board of education in Atlanta, Georgia to avoid the escalating situation between the teachers and the child.
Alcohol beverages. One day we had an invitation from an old friend, a pastor’s home. We arrived before he bought a champagne drink. The wife brought all the food to the table but cautioned that the husband had stepped out for a few minutes so we held him. He came with a bottle of champagne and confessed he was late to buy the drink before we arrived. We were startled by what to say to him. Before he poured some into our glasses late Jotham politely said to him, “we are saved and born again Christians and we do not drink beer since it is a sin.” He continued to tell about the missionary that brought the Word of God to Kenya. The gospel of Jesus Christ from America and Scotland (a merger of Gospel missionary Society-GMS from America and Church of Scotland Mission-CSM in Kenya in 1946 became the Presbyterian Church of Kenya. We are Presbyterians. Thus, they taught us we must refrain from drinking beer if we want to go to heaven and inherit the kingdom of God and live with Jesus Christ in heaven forever. The people in our family that fall into the beer drinking find it hard to make it to their full potential and some die from excess use of it meaning that the gospel of Jesus in regard to beer drinking was a message of truth. The pastor accepted our confession and did not engage in further discussion on beer. We had a wonderful meal and glass of juice and water.