No one was waiting for him to arrive back in Kathithyamaa. Charles walked the familiar route to his grandmother’s house alone. Before he got there, he was intercepted by two of his uncles. “Why did you come back? Where are you going?” they asked him.
“To see Grandma,” he replied.
They shook their heads. “No, she does not want you back. We don’t want you back. You are not our responsibility. Go to your Aunt Muthikwa. She has no children. She might want you.”
Charles looked down the path toward his grandmother’s house. His uncles stepped closer, blocking the way. It was no use. He turned and retraced his steps. His father’s sister Muthikwa lived near the village, but Charles was scared of her husband, Masyuko. Still, by now he had no choice but to throw himself on his aunt’s mercy.
Aunt Muthikwa answered the door and smiled when she saw Charles. “Welcome,” she said with genuine warmth. “Are you alone?”
Charles nodded.
“Come and tell me how you got here,” his aunt said.
From her tone of voice, Charles could tell she really wanted to know. Soon the two of them were drinking hot tea as Charles told his aunt about his family in Nakuru.
Aunt Muthikwa nodded and interjected with a few questions. Although she was his father’s sister, the two couldn’t have been more different. “Well,” she said when Charles was finished, “you can stay with us here. We will make room for you and see about getting you back to school.”
Charles was ecstatic. A bed, someone to talk to, and the possibility of going back to school—what more could he want? It felt too good to Charles to be true, and it was. That night Uncle Masyuko came home drunk. “Why is that boy of Daudi’s staying in my house?” he demanded.
“He has nowhere else to go,” Charles heard his aunt say. He kept his eyes closed, pretending he was asleep. It seemed the safest course of action.
“He’s a waste. If they don’t want him, I don’t either. He’ll be a drain on us. Get rid of him now!”
Aunt Muthikwa began to sob. “But the boy is blood. He has no one. If we don’t take him in, who will?”
“I don’t care. He’s not our problem. He’s a nobody!” his uncle said as he tugged at Charles’s blanket.
Charles then felt his aunt shaking him gently. “Come on, Charles, you’ll have to sleep outside,” she said.
Charles stood and walked out the door. The stars shone brightly in the crisp night. He heard the door close and then turned to see the silhouette of his aunt beside him. “I am sorry about that, Charles. I will talk to Masyuko tomorrow. Tonight we will both sleep under the stars.”
Charles gulped. His aunt had sided with him and defied her husband. It was a risky thing to do, and Charles hoped she did not get beaten for it.
Chapter 4
Making His Own Way
It will get better, you’ll see,” Aunt Muthikwa told Charles a week after he had arrived. She paid for him to enroll in the local school. Because he had missed so much school, Charles was still in first grade. Rather than feel discouraged, however, he was determined to do what he could to catch up, listening carefully to the teacher and doing everything he was asked to do.
Charles lasted a month at school. The abuse at “home” from Uncle Masyuko became worse by the day, and Charles dreaded the thought that his Aunt Muthikwa might be punished for taking him in. The situation could not go on. Rather than wait to be thrown out of the house, Charles decided to leave and make his own way in the world. He was tired of being a burden to people, tired of being made to feel like a worthless beggar by his own relatives. He would strike out on his own. After all, he told himself, he was a strong eleven-year-old boy—old enough, he hoped, to be hired as a laborer on a farm somewhere. It was difficult saying goodbye to Aunt Muthikwa. Although she begged him to stay, Charles knew that it would never work out. It would be much easier for everyone if he did not bother his family again.
Within a few days Charles found a job in a nearby town digging holes to plant coffee and maize. The work was backbreaking, and he was paid only a few pennies a day, but he didn’t mind. He was on his own. He made enough money to pay for his food and a corner of someone’s hut to sleep in. He also set some money aside to pay for two hours of schooling each night after his work was done.
Life soon fell into a pattern for Charles. Sometimes he was able to save enough money to allow him to go to school during the day, and bit by bit he worked his way through the second, third, and fourth grades.
On December 12, 1963, when Charles was almost fifteen years old, the teacher announced at school that the day was the most important one they would ever live to see—it was Kenya’s Independence Day. That day a Kenyan government elected by Kenyans took control of the country. Kenya was no longer under the rule of Great Britain, as it had been since the late nineteenth century. Charles watched as the red, white, and blue Union Jack (the flag of the United Kingdom) was lowered at the school flagpole and the new black, red, and green flag of Kenya was proudly raised in its place. The teacher explained that of the eight and a half million people living in Kenya, only about fifty-five thousand of them were white. Yet white people owned almost all the property, businesses, and farms in the country. Independence Day signaled a new beginning for Kenya. Native Kenyans would now take their rightful place governing their own country.
Charles hoped that independence would make things better for him, but as the weeks went by, he lost hope of that happening. Every day remained a struggle to survive, to eat enough, and to concentrate on his schoolwork at night.
The period following independence brought turmoil, not peace and prosperity, to the countryside. Now that Kenya was independent and governed by Kenyans, most of the white settlers left the so-called White Highlands and the Rift Valley of central Kenya. Their former plantations and farms were broken up and given to native Kenyan farmers. Since the new government was made up mostly of members of the Kikuyu people, however, they gave the best land to their own tribal people instead of sharing it equally with the Kalenjin and Maasai tribes, who had also lived on that land before the white farmers came. This led to tribal clashes and uprisings. The land redistribution also meant that fewer jobs were available for people in the countryside to earn a living. Thankfully, Charles was still able to find field work.
From time to time Charles would hear snippets of news about his family. He learned that they had been affected by the changes taking place in the country. In the past his father had been able to make a few pennies here and there doing farm labor, but those opportunities were now greatly diminished. When the new government stepped in and relocated the poorest people from the cities to remote bush areas, it gave the people an opportunity to eke out a living on the land. Charles learned that his family had been moved from Nakuru to Ndalani, an area sixty miles northeast of Nairobi.
Charles tried to be optimistic about his own circumstances. He told himself that things would get better, that there was hope for him. But by the time he was sixteen years old, he had given up hope. He sank into a deep depression and wondered what the point was of struggling so hard to stay alive. His hopes for a brighter future had faded in the drudgery of digging and weeding ten hours a day under the blazing sun. He looked around for other people who might be enjoying their lives more than he was, but all he saw were men who got drunk every night and made life a misery for their families. What was the use of even being alive?
Charles wondered if anyone would even miss him if he died. Slowly he began to form a plan in his mind to take his own life, but before he had a chance to act on his thoughts, a boy who worked alongside him in the coffee fields invited him to a meeting. Charles followed the boy to a large hall in Kathithyamaa, just off the main road. As they approached the steps, Charles heard singing and clapping. He nearly turned back. The last thing he wanted to do was join a party, but something about the music captivated him. Charles followed his friend inside, and together they found a seat in the middle of the hall near an aisle.
Charles soon learned that he had landed in the middle of a youth rally sponsored by the African Brotherhood Church. All around him were young people—about three hundred of them—clapping, laughing, and singing enthusiastically. Charles noticed something warm and inviting about the meeting. After the singing and clapping had died down, the youth took their seats. A middle-aged man clad in a boldly patterned black-and-white shirt stood at the front and began preaching to the crowd. His voice was calm and steady, and to Charles it seemed to fill every corner of the hall.
While Charles had had some religious instruction at school, he had never seen anything like this. He sensed a power and a peace he had never experienced before. He listened carefully to the preacher, and what he heard seemed too good to be true. Was there really a Holy Spirit who would go with him everywhere? Would Jesus be his constant friend? Did God really love him and have a plan for his life? Was there a future and a hope for Charles? Something inside him said, “Yes!” He was sure of it. Somehow the preacher was saying things Charles knew to be true. Suddenly his whole world opened up. Someone loved him. Someone would always be with him. Someone would guide him and give him a future. What could be better than that?
When the preacher asked those who wanted to accept Jesus Christ into their hearts to raise their hands, Charles’s hand immediately shot up. The preacher asked them to walk to the front. Charles was the first out of his seat. Something felt different, very different. Everything seemed lighter, brighter, more real than before. At the front the preacher asked Charles and the others to repeat a prayer. “God, I need You in my life. I invite You to take control of my life. I ask You to forgive me my sins and help me forgive others who have sinned against me. Take me and make me Your child. Amen.”
That was all it took. Charles left the hall that night filled with joy. As he walked past the place where he had intended to end his own life, a surge of gratitude pulsed through him. “Thank You, God,” he said aloud. “You saved me from killing myself. Now I will live for You.”
Before going to bed, Charles knelt to pray. He wasn’t sure what to say, but one phrase kept echoing through his mind. It was something the preacher had prayed: “I ask You to forgive me my sins and help me forgive others who have sinned against me.” As Charles closed his eyes, he thought of his father, his useless, abusive father, the man he lived in fear of, who had beaten his mother more times than he could count and who had abandoned him at six years of age. If anyone had sinned against him, it was his father. Was he supposed to forgive someone that monstrous? Charles had hated his father for so long. How could that ever really change? He opened his mouth to pray, but the words would not come out. I have to pray for them, Charles told himself. If God forgives me, I have to forgive others.
Slowly, painfully over the next few minutes the words began to come. Charles asked God to help him forgive his parents and bless them. As he prayed, he felt incredibly free inside. The hatred that had bound him so tightly was dissolving.
After the first week Charles returned to the hall on Sunday for another meeting. This time he was introduced to the pastor of the African Brotherhood Church and several members of the youth group. They welcomed him warmly. For the first time since leaving his aunt, Charles felt as if someone really wanted to be with him—really cared for him.
Before long Charles was an active member of the church. He went to Bible studies and enrolled in a British Bible correspondence course, which came with a Bible. He couldn’t have been happier. He studied at night and wrote Bible verses on scraps of paper so he could keep them in his pocket and memorize them while he worked in the fields. Charles also continued to attend regular school whenever possible. By 1966 when he was seventeen years old, he finished eighth grade—at the top of his class.
