Charles was shocked. He had tried to tell other people, such as his uncles, what he wanted to do, but no one cared or wanted to listen to him. Now his employer wanted to know. He stumbled over his words, afraid that they would sound too outrageous to a wealthy woman. “I want to study and go to university,” he said.
“University? Why university?” she asked.
“Because then I will have opportunities, and I will be able to make something of myself.”
“Hmm,” Mrs. D’Souza said. “You have passed grade eight, am I right?”
“Yes,” Charles replied.
“Then you would still have four years of full-time study at high school and another three or four years at university. You are eighteen, so that means you would be at least twenty-six when you finish, if all goes well. Is it that important to you?”
“Yes,” Charles replied. “I want a responsible job and enough money to have a wife and raise a family.”
“What if there was another way?” Mrs. D’Souza asked.
“How?” Charles asked. “Every good job needs qualifications, and I don’t have any.”
“Have you considered that there might be another way to find opportunities?”
Charles sat silently. He didn’t mean to be rude, but he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
“There are opportunities that do not involve going to university,” Mrs. D’Souza went on. “You might want to think about that. You have a bright future ahead of you. Keep trusting God.”
That night Charles thought about his conversation with Mrs. D’Souza. Had he been so focused on education that he was missing some other way to get ahead in the world? And if so, what was it?
A month later Mr. D’Souza asked Charles to join him in the backyard to talk. He smiled so broadly that Charles was sure he was going to get a raise. It was a good day.
“How would you like a new job?” Mr. D’Souza asked.
Charles frowned. Is one of the other servants leaving? he wondered.
“As you know, I work for Kakuzi Fibreland Ltd. We need a new field clerk. Normally we would want someone who has finished high school, but my wife tells me you are her best worker and very smart. The company is prepared to make an exception for you. The job is in Makuyu, about forty miles from here.”
Charles wanted to shake himself. Was this really happening? Were his days as a servant over? A field clerk? Yes, he could see himself doing that. “Thank you,” he said. “I promise you I won’t let you down. This is just the opportunity I have been looking for.”
Charles started his new job a week later on Monday, September 15, 1967. Life soon took on a satisfying routine. In the mornings he would head out into the fields to check off the names of the workers and make sure everyone was working well together. Before long he knew the names of all the twelve hundred employees he was responsible for. Then he set about discovering what they and their families needed so he could advise and help them.
In the afternoons Charles would return to his office to fill out the paperwork. He was given a small office with a desk and a typewriter. He immediately taught himself the art of typing. When his own work was finished, he made a point of helping out anyone else in the office. That way Charles soon learned all of the administrative jobs in the company and paved his way for promotions. To further improve his chances of promotion, he took a correspondence course in accounting and made it a point to be the first to arrive at work each day and the last to leave. All this made Charles a popular field clerk, and soon his workers were inviting him to their huts for meals. Charles took this as an opportunity to teach them about the Bible and how knowing God had turned his life around.
One morning in March 1968, after working for Kakuzi Fibreland Ltd. for six months, Charles walked along a path between the pineapple plants, greeting the workers and checking off their names. Charles was surprised to see a young woman picking pineapples whom he had not seen before. She was tall and slim, and her movements were graceful as she held the top of the pineapple with one hand and chopped the bottom of it with the other. His pulse quickened when he realized he would have to ask her name so she could be put on the payroll. For some reason he felt strangely shy. “Hello,” he said.
The young woman looked up. “Hello,” she responded, wiping sweat from her face and then smiling.
Charles smiled back. “I don’t remember seeing you before. Are you new?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “My name is Esther Ntheny. I’m working in my mother’s place. Her name is Grace Kavuli. She is too sick to come to work today.”
“Right,” Charles said, finding her mother’s name to check off the list. “I hope she gets better soon.” Charles secretly hoped her mother would stay away from the fields for a while—at least long enough for him to get to know Esther better. There was something about her that was different from any other woman he had met.
When Esther’s mother returned to work, the company decided to hire Esther as well. For many days afterward, Charles found reasons to stop and talk to Esther as she worked. He learned that she was fifteen years old, had one brother, and had gone to school for only two years. She had to stop because her parents divorced and her mother needed help earning money to live.
This was all interesting, but Charles soon learned one thing about her that impressed him a great deal: Esther was a Christian. Her mother and grandmother belonged to the Salvation Army, and her grandmother worked at the school for the blind that the church ran. Nothing made Charles happier than hearing this. Soon he and Esther began discussing spiritual matters as well. Their friendship quickly blossomed, and Charles found that talking to Esther was the high point of his day. He felt comfortable enough to confide in her about how his family had repeatedly abandoned him and how he dreamed of being an important person with a large business of his own. Esther, too, dreamed of making something of herself, and soon she found work as a maid for an army colonel in Nairobi.
Charles was glad for Esther, but he knew he would miss their conversations. He didn’t realize just how much until she was gone. Esther had become the best friend he had ever had, and he wanted to see her again. Charles wrote a letter inviting Esther to visit him. He was delighted when she showed up at his door on one of her days off. The two of them went for a walk together. And although neither of them said it, Charles was aware that this was a new stage in their relationship. They were no longer just meeting as part of the workday. They had deliberately sought each other out. Things were getting serious.
Over the next year and a half, Esther and Charles managed to see each other about once a month. In the meantime, Charles completed his course in accounting and started a new course in business management.
Their friendship having progressed to courtship, Charles asked Esther to be his wife. She accepted his proposal. Of course, Charles was aware that on his current income from Kakuzi Fibreland there was no way he could financially support a wife as well as his parents and eight brothers. To add to the burden, his mother was expecting another child. Charles began searching for a new employment opportunity that would make use of his new accounting and business skills. He applied for every job he thought he could do. Before long, he landed a position with an Austrian company called Strabag. The company had a contract to build new roads in the area between Lake Victoria and the Ugandan border. The job entailed keeping track of the company’s construction supplies. Charles’s salary would be twice what he was currently earning at Kakuzi Fibreland. The new job had just one catch. It was located in Eldoret, over two hundred miles northwest of Makuyu.
Once Charles would have thought nothing of moving that far away, but now that he was engaged to be married, it was another matter. Kamba custom dictated that a new wife live with her in-laws for the first few years of marriage. Ndalani, where Charles’s parents now lived, was over two hundred miles from Eldoret. After discussing the possibilities with Esther, Charles decided to take the job at Eldoret.
On December 22, 1970, Charles and Esther were married at Esther’s grandmother’s house. It was a small Christian wedding, and Charles sent money for a bus ticket so his parents could attend. He was twenty-two years old, and Esther was seventeen. Charles gave his new mother-in-law goats and cows as a dowry and advised her on how to use them to provide an income for herself and Esther’s younger brother.
Following the wedding, Esther went to live with Charles’s parents at Ndalani while Charles started his new job at Strabag in Eldoret. With money he had saved, Charles bought a Ford Cortina, which he drove to visit Esther and his family once a month. Other than that, the newlyweds would have to content themselves with communicating by mail, since neither his parents nor any of their neighbors owned a telephone.
At Ndalani, Charles built a simple mud hut next to his parents’ hut for Esther to live in. But she was not alone in the new hut. Following the wedding, Charles’s parents had given their youngest child, a one-year-old daughter named Miriam, to Charles and Esther to adopt. Rhoda explained that she’d had no luck with girls and that the gods must be angry with her because her previous three daughters had all died. Charles’s sister Katumbi had died of malaria, and twin girls had died soon after birth. Rhoda told them she hoped that giving Miriam to Charles and Esther would save the child from a similar fate.
Esther and Charles took Miriam willingly, and it soon felt as though she were their own child. Esther told Charles she prayed for Miriam and for her young brothers-in-law every day as she washed their ragged clothes and cooked their meals. On Sundays she took them all to Sunday school and church. Soon they were all calling her Mum.
Meanwhile, as he always did, Charles began looking for opportunities to improve himself and his situation at Strabag. He worked eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. As a result, he earned a lot of overtime pay, which he needed, since he had offered to give his parents 60 percent of his income with which to take care of themselves, his eight brothers, Esther, and Miriam. He was soon promoted to assistant manager of supplies and charged with making sure that all the heavy road-building equipment was kept fueled.
During his visits to Ndalani, Charles spent time with Esther praying about their situation. Charles was excited when he learned that Esther was pregnant. They both looked forward to the arrival of their baby and a sibling for Miriam. Charles was also proud of the way his wife stood up for her Christian faith. Esther had told Charles that his mother had brought in a red cloth a witch doctor had given her. Rhoda had instructed Esther to sleep on top of it or she would never have healthy babies. Esther refused to do so. She told Rhoda that the witch doctor had no sway over someone who belonged to Jesus Christ.
It was hard for Charles to leave Esther and Miriam at Ndalani after each visit, especially now that his wife was pregnant. Nevertheless, Charles knew that it was what was expected of him. He was determined to honor his parents and fulfill his role as the oldest son. He had no idea how difficult that would become.
Chapter 6
The Power of Life and Death
I’ve been trying to do my best, but I cannot do it anymore,” Esther sobbed as she cradled baby Jane in her arms. She and Charles were sitting on a riverbank not far from his parents’ hut. “It’s your father. You send him money, and he spends it on drink and cigars. He hasn’t paid the boys’ school fees, and there is not enough food to eat. He beats your mother and the boys too. I have never lived in fear like I do now. What happens if he turns his anger on Miriam or Jane? Are we to stay here and be beaten too?”
Charles looked at his wife and their new baby daughter. He felt glum. He had hoped that giving his family money and bringing his bride home would change his father. But it had not. He was just the same, except now Esther, Miriam, and Jane were caught up in the cycle of violence and abuse. It couldn’t go on. Tradition or not, his wife and daughters deserved better than this.
