Children of men..

This picture is one of my favorite pictures. I love our shiny foreheads, sloppy collars, and wrinkled uniforms because they remind me of our journey, and that God has kept us.  I’m the girl on the first row to the far left with a frown on her face. Guess who’s taking this picture….yep, that’s right, my mom! She loved taking pictures and made us pose for pictures like these all the time. On the front row center is my cousin Grace and next to her, Damaris. The shiny forehead in the back and on the right is Harriet, aka Lulu. And the girl who never looked at the camera is another Damaris, aka Murugi. The only people who look remotely excited about this picture are Grace and Damaris in the front. 

Those uniforms are the product of Central Primary School. We used to walk to school every morning and return for a couple of hours for lunch, and then walk back to school. It's quite amazing we weren’t kidnapped, but then again, no one needed another mouth to feed. Our town was safe.

In this still moment, we were just kids with big dreams, and had no clue most of us would be living in other countries. We were only concerned about weekend plans, which mostly consisted of playing with neighborhood kids from sunrise to sundown. We were children of parents who had nothing but dreams of a better life. Now, don’t misconstrue what I’m saying. We didn’t live in the National Geographic stereotypical huts which most people assume all Africans live in. The two sisters, Grace and Murugi, lived in a house. My mom and I lived in my aunt’s apartments and my other two cousins, sisters Damaris and Lulu, lived in another city. Thankfully, we had food to eat and clothes to wear, which is a lot to say. However, trust me, we weren’t “living the dream.” We struggled, and as a single parent, my mother lived a hard life. In saying that, in that picture, we were children who didn’t know what awaited us in the future. We were intelligent, we were adventurous, but thank you God, our parents had unshakeable dreams. They nurtured us with those dreams. We've come a long way and I hope none of us ever toss pictures like these away. I pray that we don’t forget how little we had, and that we create opportunities for others to tell these same stories. God had a purpose for bringing us where we are now, and I hope we’re living in that purpose and destiny.

 I am bias, but I think we became sharp women.

 Those days, we were joyful children, burned by the sun and coated with dust. We were and are children of men, but most importantly, we are children of God.

For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar. –Psalm 138:6