Agus Nyang

My name is Isaac Agumba Ogutu. I was born on 7th January 1996. But that is not my real date of birth. I don’t really know my actual date of birth since my father died just a few months before I was born, and my mother also died a few months after she gave birth to me. But its around 1997, 98. It must be, else how can I be older than my older brother? I lived with some distant, non relatives really, all my life, in Suna West, Migori, Western Kenya.  My father was born and lived in Tanzania where his mother, my grandma, was married. He, believe it or not, was so badly mistreated at home and ran away, never to be seen again. That was around the 1980s. My dad then “sought asylum” in Kenya around 1982 where he had ran to, in search for a better life. He met my mother who is from Kano in Kisumu, West Western Kenya.

I am the last of 3, my brother is the middle and sister the eldest. Growing up, life was most horrible. The horror stories we heard of orpahned chldren being misreated by foster parents or guardians, we lived right through that, and much worse. We were constantly mistreated, beaten and went days without food, sometimes. I constantly ran away from home and would live in the bushes and survive on wild fruits for 2 or 3 days, or at a neighbour’s for 4 or 5, before coming back or being brought back to more beatings.

Our sister was so badly mistreated at home that she also, like her late dad, ran away from home and disappeared forever, never to be seen or heard from again, until 20 years later when she rose from the dead and reappeared. So we lived with just my older brother. He was slower at school, and repeated 2 classes, and so I was finished with school way before he did, and it was awkward all our lives.

I, we, had the most horrible childhood. We, as I said, were constantly mistreated and faced child labor, and worse hardships daily, for years. We often lacked food, shelter and clothing and more often, other basics. We were often woken up at 3am to go to the shamba and constantly pulled away from school to go to the shamba and look after cattle. I hated every minute, no, every second of it. But  I shocked everyone when I got 303/500 marks, which was an impossible fete considering everything, and I was the first one ever in that whole extended family, who had gotten that high marks.

I was to go to a good boarding school, but there wasn’t any money for school fees. I was sent to go to a day school far from home, and would trek over 40kms daily, sometimes barefoot and in tatters and hungry. I was later arranged to go live with a distant yet another non— relative who lived nearer, but his wife was hell to me, more than I had ever seen. I had been being beaten all the time all my life and that was the least of my worries, it’s the going without food.

In form 2, they sold our late father’s last parcel of land. They had long ago, years before, been selling our late parents’ wealth, cows, land, car, etc. In school, I constantly came last, especially in forms 1 and 2 and endured the hardships until form 3 when the school was changed to a full boarding school, and I had to board or drop out.

I chose to live like a rat in school, constantly hiding, living like I was a boarder but wasn’t. I used to sleep with a friend today, and another tomorrow. I used to beg for food from the cooks at the school dining hall, and friends gave me food, but I sometimes went hungry. But I always made sure to put in the work in class. I was lucky to get a 4cm thick mattress weeks later, and bunked at the screeching bed of a student who had been sent home for fees this week, and another the next. I had also been sent, but had snuck back in.

I went to school my whole life on bursaries, and help, here and there. Madam Beatrice, our teacher of English, who would have been very disappointed if I wrote “English teacher” instead, constantly encouraged me