I was expecting a visit from the three Lisori kids today, so I didn’t make any other plans. Unfortunately, they never called, and the number they'd used yesterday was out of service. I’m a little disappointed but not upset at them—I don’t really know anything about the dynamics of that family, and for all I know they could be mistreated. I really hope they were studying for their exams tomorrow though.
Instead, I worked on my blog entries all day, ate a lot, and went to look at Joy’s phoenix mural in the computer lab. It is absolutely stunning. I’m actually jealous. I have not painted for so long, I don’t think I could do it anymore!
At a little after 3p.m., two of the WISER girls, Faith and Florence, came into the dining room where I was working. I spent the rest of the afternoon talking with them, showing them my photos, and teaching them to use e-mail and Facebook. Faith is from Lwanda. She asked me to greet them when I go to see them at the WISERBridge exams. I’m looking forward to going in the next three days—I want to see the kids again, and cheer them on. It’s the least I can do to let them know I’m still thinking of them. Also, it feels quite awesome to go to an exam when I’m not the one who needs to sit the papers. :D
I went down to the market at Tagache at five to get some vegetables and fruits. When I got back to WISER, Joy was just leaving with Bill and Caston, the two Shining Star kids she is close to, to “go see the German musungu girls” who were teaching at Shining Star. They'd just arrived a week ago and were staying with the director of the school. Of course, once I heard that I felt compelled to go as well—gotta check out the new blood and all that, you know. We walked down and turned off the main road by Shining Star to go to the compound where the girls were living. The director was building a new house for himself right by the school building, and as we walked past Bill excused himself and said he needed to speak quickly with his uncle. It turned out that his uncle is the director himself. I don’t know Bill very well, and I’ve become so accustomed to hearing about these extended family relationships that I wasn’t really surprised at the news, but Joy seemed shocked. The director came out to greet us and invited us to tour his unfinished house, quite a grand one too. He is currently still living at his mother’s compound, which is why Bill is with them too.
The walk to Bill’s compound was very scenic and cool, because the path was bordered on both sides by some of the tallest trees I’d seen here in Muhuru Bay. The compound itself was very comfortable too, with a large, open space surrounded by trees and several mud huts—I don’t know if they were well-off, but it was clearly a large family. Bill introduced us to his aunts but there were just too many children running around. The German girls were somewhat of a disappointment—they didn’t seem very eager to become acquainted, and only one of them came to talk to us. They are only here for one more week, and then they leave for safari in Nairobi and fly back from Mombasa. I was surprised that she had no idea what I was talking about when I asked her how they felt about being called musungu; it makes me think that they haven't been out in the community much by themselves.
It was only when we were back at WISER that Joy told me about Bill’s family. His mother left when he was younger, and his father has too many other wives and children to look after him. He lives with his uncle, who is also polygamous, and is treated like the Cinderella of the family—made to do the dishes, clean up, finish manual jobs. Joy said that he had so much work to do that often by the time he is done in the morning, school is half over, and it is a wonder that Bill manages to stay at the top of the class with the amount of school that he misses. I realised that this was why Joy had seemed so surprised to hear that Bill’s uncle is the director; it means that he knows how often Bill is absent from class.
Bill wants to be an accountant. His favourite subject is Mathematics, which is also his best friend Caston’s favourite subject, and the two of them help each other in classes. He is also very, very humble. He wouldn’t admit himself that he was the top student in Shining Star and told us to ask Castor instead. When Joy asked him how he managed to do so well in the exams, he said, “God helps me, I think.” But Bill won’t be able to go to secondary school if he has to pay anything for it. His uncle won’t give him the money, and he would have to find some measly-paying manual work around Muhuru Bay, and probably be chained here for the rest of his life. And those wonderful qualities of his—they would all go to waste.
There are only three WISERBridge boys’ scholarships, and it’s pretty certain that Derek from Winjo is going to get one of them. As much as she hopes that Bill can get one, we know that there are many more than three needy, intelligent boys in Muhuru Bay, all of whom could do so much with a full-ride scholarship. I completely agree that as a whole the girls here are far more in need of financial incentive than the boys are, but kids are kids—they deserve an education, regardless of what their genders are, regardless of how wealthy their family is. Why must so many conditions be met, so many things be considered, before a child is allowed to go to school?
