I believe that every successful person has had a terrible thing happen to them. This experience is what keeps them moving – allowing them to share strength and light our candles.
When I was six years old, my father took me to live with my grandmother, far from my home and my other siblings. Two years later, my grandmother died and since I couldn’t stay alone I had to go back to my parent’s home. My father was not happy about it. From my birth, he never loved me because I was not his blood. My mother got pregnant by another man before she got married. My mother told me this when I was 15, after my father tried to kill me three times.
The worst part of my whole story is that my father was against my education. It was only because of my mother who supported me and endured hard blows from my father because of it. Sometimes my father physically dragged me out of school so he could beat me at home. Through luck and hard work I was able to complete my primary education after staying home for eight months because he kept me at home and gave me a lot of work. I did my best in my exams and became the third best in my class.
This, however, was not enough for my father to allow me to continue with my education. It was only after my mothers and the village elders talked to him that he allowed me to join Daraja Academy
The best thing of all is that reality came to my father and he learned to love me. He gave me money to do shopping before going to school and bought for me anything else that I needed. He also came to school during on Parents’ Day and encouraged me to continue working hard. What I liked was the fact that he said I was the best. He has been supporting me and he is also supporting me to date and he is one of the people who I know loves me passionately.
I am not the first girl in my home area to experience all of this pain and hardships. The sad thing is the other girls gave up and never wanted to continue schooling. Some are already married and others are still struggling, as they fear they might get married and not make it.
Since I am in my fourth year I believe that I can and I will be the best. I want to be a doctor because that is where I will interact with many people and get to empower them. I also want to support many other girls who might have gone through the same problems like me. I want to be the change that I want to see in the whole world.
