My mother was among those who had joined the Mau Mau group of fighters fighting for the freedom of Kenya. She was placed in detention together with her baby girl, Joyce, during that period of time. When she was released, Joyce was already walking and had lost one temporary tooth and a lower permanent tooth was already visible. Joyce was a plump little girl, and my mother was fat, a sign that they had been well fed in jail.
In about six months, those that had been released from detention were put through rehabilitation centers near the chief’s camp. The camp was at Kambaa, and the chief then was Kīmani wa Rūhiū. The detainees did community work each day. The only dress mom had, a khaki one that she went to detention with, was torn. The chief gave her one grey blanket and six sisal bags. The bags were for us to sleep on. We slept on a dirty floor, and the blanket was to cover us at night. We were a family of seven, and the chief set aside one rehab house for my mother and her kids to live in. The chief also excluded her from the unpaid community work, and instead she got a job that paid her 50 cents a day.
She always wore the blanket since her dress was torn, and she would use the same blanket to cover us at night while she slept naked. We couldn’t see her naked body because of the darkness. Before we slept each day, we had to kill the lice in the blanket and in our clothes or else we would scratch our bodies all night long.
We were always hungry. One day she fed us cassava but we were not full, and she threw the inner hard strings where we got to them and ate them. When she came back from work, we were constipated and our stomachs were swollen. It was so painful we were unable to speak. She got a castor oil leaf stalk, which was hollow inside. She made soapy water and using her mouth, pumped the soapy water into each one of our anus. When she finished taking care of us, she seemed to have enjoyed it so much that emptying feces was like a ray of sunshine on a rainy day for us. She later told us she had to blow the soapy water into us and then move her face away before the feces rushed into her mouth. Lucky for her, it all went well. That incident was a teaching moment for us, and we understood that the inner strings of the cassava were poisonous and could kill someone.
My mother joined Gathangari Presbyterian Church in Kambaa, where she became a born again Christian and joined the revival movement. The revival movements were composed of born again Christians from different denominations, and they held confession sessions of worship in the afternoon in a church of their choosing. My mother wore her blanket to church, and she became known as the sister in a blanket (dada was mūrengeti). She always took us with her to church, but I didn’t understand anything at the time.
One day, a man from the church called Njikū passed by our house, and as he waited for my mother to get ready so that they could walk together to the afternoon fellowship, he said to me, “There is a God who lives up there,” he said as he pointed towards the sky, “and He doesn’t love bad things children and adult people do since He sees them.”
I was scared that there was someone else who could see me do bad things, yet I didn’t know it or Him. I only knew that my parents were the only ones who knew the bad things I did. I loved eating sugar and the soft inner part of the bread, and I threw away eggs that I pretended to eat. There was no mirror in the house, so I couldn’t be sure that I had wiped my face clean after eating sugar. I would deny eating the sugar, but there would be crystals around my mouth. I would claim that I didn’t see the person who ate it, and I was made to drink sugarless tea as punishment. On the days I ate sugar, the other kids were given tea with sugar as a special treat for the day. The treat made me sad, and I cried bitterly. I also used to chew eggs fast and drop them inside my dress, then I would go outside, dig a hole and bury them. I used to eat the soft inner part of the bread, then put back the loaf. My father baked bread for the family and to sell. They grew wheat and rice to make flour. My father worked as a cook for a white settler (Mzungu), where he learned how to bake. When Njikū told me about the God I didn’t see but who saw me do all the bad things, my desire to eat sugar disappeared instantly.
I became born again and gradually learned more about the Word of God. I had the favor of God. I married a minister of the gospel of Jesus in the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA), the Late Dr. J Wandu, and under him as the pastor’s wife for forty-some years, I learned much more before he went to live with the Lord. I enrolled in a master’s degree program in Bible Studies, and served in the church we started in the United States in Atlanta, Georgia. God’s favors have been abundant, and I remarried Pastor Geoffrey Njiraini of the Joseph of the Holy Spirit Revival Center in Nakuru, Kenya. We are now living in two worlds, Georgia and Kenya, to serve a greater crowd of the members of the combined family.
I am telling my story because as I was taking a nap one day, the following words came to me: “God saw you growing in your mother’s womb deep in the land of Kenya in the continent of Africa, and in your late seventies, He is seeing you right now lying here in this bed in the US, another continent.” I began thinking of how I didn’t know Him as my God, as the father of my savior Jesus Christ and as my help. Many miracles of life have happened in my journey, as well as trials and tribulations. Through all that, God remains my help.