Another Best Birthday...

This was one of the best years yet. The freedom was refreshing, the lifestyle was uplifting, the environment was consoling and the acceptance was like no other. I was attending another fellowship group that was situated in South B because in every area there was one. So I made new friends. I was the only one in High School. They were all working. Those days the fellowship was still both genders.

My house became the meeting point since it was central and I was mostly home alone. My cousin had no problem with it but he had a problem with ‘church people’. He used to say that our neighbor had created a bad image for believers since he was a church leader and also had fellowship meetings in his house but he was known to have different girls come sleep over at his house. I used to tell him everyone will be judged individually but am glad he never refused for the fellowship to be held in his house.

This was my last year in high school and we were about to do the final exams. Since my birthday was in September, we had covered almost the whole syllabus in school so we were doing a lot of revision work. So this particular day, it was on a Tuesday and the fellowship had landed on my birthday. I was home early to prepare some snacks. I finally heard the knock and rushed to open for them. They had hidden a cake so as to surprise me. Once they entered they started singing for me happy birthday and brought the cake plus gifts. Oh how happy I was. I shed a few tears and we had loads of fun as we just chatted the evening away. My heart was so blessed and I could not thank them enough as they left. My cousin loved the cake too and that was a great 19th birthday.

Light at the End of the Tunnel

Form four was a big relief for me. I was glad it was going to be my finally year in school and more so, it had been decided that I was to move to my cousin’s house since he lived near my school. My cousin had actually offered to host me since he was a bachelor living in a two bed roomed house. His house was actually five minutes from the school. I gladly embraced the offer. He came for me one Saturday and found me all packed up. That was an answered prayer.

I was overly excited to finally have my own room and freedom. I loved the new estate, I was looking forward to making new friends and the highlight of it all was the fact that I did not have to commute while going to school. Good times:-)

So I finally settled in. I quickly took up my new chores in the house. Since my cousin was always at work, I did not expect him to do much. He would come home and find food already made, the house cleaned, the clothes washed. He also allowed me to have my friends over so I was mostly at home. Since it was my last year in school, I would study sometimes until late in the night with my classmate who was also my neighbor, then we would go to a certain shop to buy some chips and walk home eating. Those are the nights I would find my cousin cooking or having cooked dinner. He never gave me a hard time, I guess because he wanted me to concentrate on my studies. We would have study discussions with my friends in the neighborhood sometimes until midnight and since I had my own key, I would go home at my own leisure. Oh how I loved those days.

No sooner had I started being the best cousin, than the estate idlers begun making my life difficult. My bedroom window was right above the 'idlers corner', that is where the estate boys would sit and smoke, having idle profane talks and arguments until very late. It even became harder when they realized that was my bedroom and would sometimes throw stones at my window. My cousin Caleb was not amused at all. He would come out very angry only to find that they had taken to their heels. I took it upon myself to put an end to this menace so I purposed to look for them. One day I approached them and warned them. In order to gain their respect, I decided to become their friend. So I would often say hi to them and they stopped making my life difficult.

One time, one of the boys decided to come see me at my place, talk of wrong timing and wrong idea. We were enjoying our dinner nicely with my cousin, catching up on the day’s events. I still had my uniform on as usual. So we hear a knock and my cousin goes to open. He tells the boy to enter and sit down. I was so tickled at seeing the panic and fear on the boy’s face. I knew my cousin could never hurt a fly but maybe he was merciless to such boys.

I waited anxiously to see what would happen. So the boy was thoroughly interrogated as to why he would look for me at such an hour, knowing very well that I was still in school. My cousin was so calm that it appeared as a bad joke. We offered the boy some food but he refused. He quickly excused himself, apologized and left. We were left laughing with my cousin. That was the first and last of any boy knocking at our door.

High School Life continues

I joined Form 3, still living with my sister Pamela. I was a day scholar so it was really tough commuting to school daily, reaching home when tired, trying to do my home work. One thing my sister did that helped a lot was to make sure that as soon as we reached home, we would always go to the boys room, which had the study table and we would all help each other out with our homework. I was the eldest in class so I did most of the helping. That trend was faithfully adhered to even in her absence, well also because my niece and nephew Christine and Nick would not hear anything less. 

We could not even be found watching television on a school night. My youngest nephew Dick was the stubborn one. Since he was the last born I guess he got the favors from his dad. He used to wait until the dad showed up, then go and sit with him as we are left studying.

 I had to wake up early since my school was far, my nephew would be picked with the school van so he used to sleep in.

My sister had this trend that when she is back on Fridays from Arusha, the next day she would go to the market and buy a lot of vegetables that needed work to sort and arrange in the freezer. It was quite taxing. Since we had Saturday tuition, I narrowly escaped that tiresome job. The days we had closed school I had no excuse.

Walking out my salvation begun being challenged in this very house. My nephews would wake us up every weekend with loud music. At times they would make me write for them the lyrics for some songs since I was keen on the words. I used to discourage them but I was out numbered. Soon I began bopping to the music. Whenever I would enter a public vehicle and hear a familiar tune, I would sing along. I then realized my weakness was music and I had to find a way to help myself.

I used to look forward to Sundays because I would go and repent and listen to worship music. I had a few music tapes that I would always find missing if I left them in the radio playing.

Praying became challenging too because I shared a room with my niece and the house help. I never even thought of being an early riser in prayer as I do now. So I was stuck to this life. I had saved friends, whom I would visit or we attended the same fellowship group. We would have retreats, meetings; hang out days at Jose’s, since they had a big house. We would cook, eat, listen to music and just have fun but I would still go back to the same house with the same challenges.