It had been a great year for Nana. She was a star child in her school, a favourite of many of her teachers, and she was keen on her future. A future she was afraid of. Nana knew she was a great student, and she had big plans for her life from the start. Yet the battles that lay ahead were not lost on her. It was a matter of how much she wanted it and how much she was willing to fight for it. Sometimes the mere thought of the struggle could bring her such fatigue; that she almost gave up before she began. However, each and every time, the thought of living in mediocrity was the one thing that managed to keep her going. A phoenix doesn’t become until it can rise from the ashes; and rise from the ashes she was going to.

Nana’s story began like most of those in the so called cities that seem to have had a parasitic growth out of the Sahara. It was created, not out of the civilisation of the people, but rather to service the civilisation of another people. It was a necessary parasite that kept the other, more important living organisms, alive. A place no one was considered anyone; theirs was not to be identified or be seen, but to show up and deliver. All they had was their performance, which as it was, was considered non-special; replaceable. Like a cheap pair of shoes one buys to walk in the mud; if you lose it or it gets too dirty to wash, there is no second thought as you throw it away. Nana was the child of the Nairobi slums; places where the affluent of the city do not think much about but when they need cheap labour.

Depending on where you come from, children are brought forth into the world due to many reasons. For some, it is out of love; where there is a need and longing for the child and before even the child comes, there is abundance of love waiting for it. Some it is out of convenience, like in the days long gone Africa where the fields needed to be ploughed and the women needed something to keep them engaged every so often. In other cases, it is out of situations gone wrong- accidents; birth control pills gone wrong, lack of any pregnancy prevention skills, or knowledge on the matter. For this category, it is made worse by the idea that once a pregnancy is- it is God’s will. You do not do anything more but wait for your nine months and bring forth a being into the world. This is how Nana came into the world. It was not love, it was not for convenience; it was by accident.

Her parents never wanted a child; they never cared for any more. She was the 6th child in a household barely enough for one child. At best, she was a nuisance.

Drobo, Nana’s father was a mechanic with the city bus company. He had been brought up in the dry uplands of the west of Kenya. He did not come from much, and to him his moving to the city was already an achievement in itself. He was the sole victor from his family that was able to come up from under the illicit brew making chains and choke-holds that were his family. His upbringing was a struggle in itself and when he finally got enough money to move to the city, it was his chance at some semblance of freedom. Little did he know that freedom is much easier to perceive than achieve.

After leaving the village on clearing his high school education, Drobo and a friend moved into the slum to share a barely there house with his friend’s brother. The freedom that Drobo and his mate had sought from the village came to a halt when they realized they had to fend for themselves and the boarding was only limited. This in effect shoved both of them into the labor world as soon as possible. However, with no skills to help them find credible employment, they were at a loss. The next best thing was being an apprentice as they both had no proper education or money to continue their education to become anything better.

Their host, Akib; the god sent that he was, offered them an apprenticeship position at the garage he used to work for. This was a dream come true for Drobo. Finally he would have skills that would enable him to get out under the false freedom of Akib, move into his own house and truly enjoy his freedom. This dream lasted three years until he was finally able to be a mechanic in his own right and got a job with the city bus company. At the age of 21, Drobo was living the life. Or what to him was the life. He moved out of Akib’s house and got his own one room house. Part of the corrugated iron sheet train of housing that formed the Mathare slums. It may not have looked as much to any other person but to Drobo it was everything.

Literally; it was his everything. It was where his life begun and where it ended. He hadn’t been to the village in the three years since he left as he was trying to make up enough money to be able to get his own house and start his own life. Finally, with his room he was able to see some progress in his life. At least he was moving towards something. The lack of any space to do anything was not a deterrent to his positive look on the future. He knew that if he could get here then the world was open to him. He could achieve anything he ever wanted.

People rarely imagine that they will form part of the percentage of the world that will not succeed. Drobo was also part of this majority that believe that they are the ones destined for success. What separates them from the minority, no one knows. The sad bit was that he was not to be the ones who leave and become success stories. With time, he would fall into the same pattern that befalls all the other people who lived in the packed, dingy slum corridors that they reside in. Life happened and it surpassed any future that any of them once foresaw for themselves.

For Drobo, life came in the form of Nyathia. She was the beautiful girl who manned the shop down the corridor. Pardon me; using the word shop is a little ambitious. She manned the space that had a few of the supplies that most of the slum dwellers could barely afford. For the most part, her daily routine included keeping a record of the credit she gave rather than for collecting money. The end result was an almost empty shop that was only restocked briefly at the end of every week when the debts for the week were paid, only for the same cycle to start once again the next week.

By the time she was employed, Drobo had been a client of the shop for a year. He was one of the good ones who were able to keep a steady stream of income to pay off his debts every end of the week. Also, it did not hurt that he was fairly young and well-groomed than most of the scum that Nyathia saw come into the shop every other day.

It is hard to tell how they started dating, or even how they became an item. Nyathia, pretty in a rather plain way was not much for conversation. She mostly kept to herself, dealing with her book keeping duties as best as she could. She was short, about 5 ft 3inches. Her body was not a story to write; her hips were straight, no curvatures whatsoever coming through with her figure, save for her huge bosom. The best description to her look would be that of  'girl with boobs'.

On the other hand, Drobo had some skin on his bone but he was not muscled. His work as a mechanic did enough to give his bony frame the illusion of muscle, but that is as far as that went. He was an average height man; standing about 5ft9” tall. He had a dark chocolate complexion, with the chiselled facial features of a model. If he had not had his six lower teeth knocked out during his initiation, maybe modelling would have been an option for his life.

Within the first six months of their crossing paths, Drobo and Nyathia had managed to start a friendship and became a couple. Soon, Nyathia was expectant and their life had begun. True to their lowly lives and limited imagination, neither of them had given it much thought. In those days, pregnancy meant family and that was that. Nyathia moved into Drobo’s house and they were soon figuring out how to be a family. Drobo had to find out how to support the two of them since Nyathia had since been let go at the shop.  It would have seemed to some that they had been thrown to the deep end and left no fighting chance. However, this never occurred to them. They just accepted this as their fate and lived through it. Nyathia, still not much for conversation, and Drobo, still the hardworking man with a lost dream that he did not have the words to articulate.

The first year was the hardest for the couple as Nyathia could not do much in terms of employment and so she had to be looked after by Drobo. His once merger pay for one was now even more constrained when another mouth was included in the calculation. The idea that soon another mouth would join them was also not lost on Drobo. He started working harder and trying to get more opportunities to ensure he would be able to support his family. He took on more hours at the city bus company and tried to solicit as many opportunities as possible from his superiors. In the first year, he was so busy managing the life that had happened he seldom had time to think about his dreams and ambitions.

On the other hand, Nyathia; the ever soft spoken one, stayed at home day in day out as the miracle of life birthed inside of her. She wasn’t getting much in terms of interaction with people as she was to some level riddled in shame for her situation. Though she had found what could have been considered a good man to marry her; it was not all roses for her. Her family back home in the central of Kenya was not happy that she had become pregnant by a man who was also living in squalor. They had paid for her ticket to the city and given her the opportunity to work for a friend of her uncle, hoping and wishing that in time she would be able to contribute more than children to the poor villagers she left back home; anyone could give birth, you did not need to go to the city to do that.

What was worse than that was that she had ended up getting impregnated with the wrong type of man. She chose a man from the western part of Kenya; a tribe of which was not approved by her parents and their people at large. Thus, in as much as the disappointment of her being pregnant was still looming, the idea that she was going to have to be married to a man of low standing, and one from Western of Kenya was worse. Her family had many reasons to be ashamed of her. Yet, in her position, Nyathia had it worst. She felt like she had nothing more to live for in her young life.

At least when she worked at the shop there was the weekly wages she received. She could call home and find out how her siblings and parents were doing. There was also the excitement that existed in the early days when she had just seen Drobo. The waiting for him to come to the shop, the lingering non- conversations they engaged in for minutes on end as he pretended to be making some purchase or inquiry into goods they had never stocked long before she got there. It was somewhat romantic and it had given her something to long for and look forward to in her days, weeks, and even some type of future.

By the time she got pregnant and had moved into Drobo’s house her future had arrived. It had begun. There was nothing exciting to long for. She now had to wait for Drobo to come in late in the night. He was the one who was making the money and sometimes even he could not provide what they both needed. Life was tough. The romance that once existed was no longer; lost between the hardships of her dealing with her disappointed family, and his disappointment for the life he was leading. They got to a point where any trace of relations that had started building up when they met changed into a boring routine of a couple. Often times it felt like they were playing a couple in a very boring low budget production in one of the poorly organised weekly concerts that came to town every so often.

Of the two of them, Nyathia seemed more affected by the situation. She had more time to think and ponder about her life and future; being left alone in the shanti that was now there home. There was not much to take up her days. Of course there was the kicking of the baby later on in her pregnancy and the morning sickness early on. But those occurred when they did and did not do much to take her mind away from her situation and her surroundings. After cleaning the house and making meals, her day was left for her mind to wander.

It is during these times that she remembered the teachings of her mother and her grandmother regarding the life of a woman. They had taught her that a man would never give her all she needed. A man would never be there for the children completely, and even for her. Her mother used to work on their acre of land back in the village for long hours a day to ensure they had plenty. She had never understood it then since her dad was also working at the same time.  Even during her first pregnancy the understanding did not come to Nyathia that well either. However, in due time it would, and when it did she would be thankful for these periods of loneliness.

It is funny how much you can learn from your solitude. The mind always has answers for us but we are often too busy being occupied to make any effort to listen to what it is saying. If Nyathia did not have the periods of solitude she had during her first pregnancy her life might not have turned out eventually as it did. Not that it was magically at the end, but it still turned out better than it would have.

Owing to the realisations of her predicament and the lack of any income on her part and the struggles that her now husband and she were facing; Nyathia decided to plan on how she would live the rest of her life. She decided that in as much as her family had written her off as a failure she was going to do the best that she could have to become someone that they would look up to and respect. She was going to do all she could to come out on top of the situation that had befallen her. She joined the group of dreamers who all have ambitions and dream of ripe futures that lie beyond the clouds. But just like Drobo, you wonder what her plan was from then on. How was she going to become someone and not end up as the millions who just stayed around dreaming through the night and waking up to their never changing daily lives?

The first baby boy came at the start of the short rains in April. By that time, Drobo and Nyathia had fallen into a good life routine. Their act had been perfected by months of practice. Drobo would wake up early, go to work and come home late in the evening; most of the times, he would bring some food that would form part of the next day’s meal. On her part, Nyathia became a home maker worth her salt. She would clean the house, do the house hold chores and make the meals. Of some of the money she had been given; she learned to save so as to have her own money. She had realised that the lack of a plot of land to farm was not going to keep her from having her own as her mother would have put it. Her plan was to eventually open her own shop and help her family grow.

Soon after the first baby, their life started to look a little better. Drobo was getting better at his work. He had gone up a rank and was making a little more than he had to start. Nyathia had started to sell some products during her days and looking after the first child. They got out of the dire situation they had started off with and they were becoming better at living together and carrying on with their lives. At times, Nyathia could have sworn that her life was on the right track; having a good home, a man that loved her and a good family. They still lived in the same corrugated iron sheet shack that she had been brought into, but she knew how to count her blessings.

If their lives would have continued as it were they might have had a chance at accomplishing each of their dreams. However, lacking any form of entertainment that is known to help man keep living they ended up in a cycle of child bearing that none of them had foreseen. It is like every time they had worked so hard to the point of managing the children they had; another pregnancy would rear its head and they would be forced to start struggling again. It became the cycle of their lives. Being in an amazing point of their lives, enjoying what they had and almost starting to live their dreams then a pregnancy would occur. Nyathia and Drobo would be concerned and angry about the whole situation. Lament on how unfair life was. Ask God to be with them and thank him for yet another blessing and knowing that he would provide for what he had brought forth. Then they would struggle further and start working even more to ensure they would make the dreams and ambitions they once had.

These went on for years. Seven pregnancies and five children later, Nyathia was realising the problem with their situation. She could not help but feel like they might have a chance if they could stop with the child bearing. The problem was how to stop. She did not want to perform an abortion. Many women who tried to abort their children either ended up dead or with complications. Furthermore, abortion was a sin by the church teachings and it was heavily looked down upon if found out. She considered herself morally upright to engage in anything so immoral. In addition, she was no longer a young girl and she imagined she would soon not need to worry about getting pregnant. Drobo was also getting less and less interested in sexual relations and thus she thought they might finally be over and done with the struggles and finally their lives were set for the promises they had given themselves.

It was during this period that the conception of Nana happened. The country had been going through plenty of political tensions and tribal politics was at its peak. The country was going through a period of fending for democracy, and everything was tense. The second president who had taken over from the founding father of the nation was not very popular among the political class and this trickled down to make matters worse for the likes of Drobo and Nyathia. The situation was getting worse by the day and eventually a coup was rumoured to have occurred.

During this night, Nyathia had been home listening to the radio service of her neighbour to the left, as she waited for her husband. It was past 10pm when the service talked of the arresting and quarantining of males who had not gotten to their homes; as they would have been assumed to have been part of the political plot to over throw the government. Drobo had not yet come home, and in as much as it was not uncommon for him to keep late hours; Nyathia was really worried. She could not have said they had a passionate lover’s relationship but she did lover Drobo and he was the father of her children. Plus, what was she going to do with five children and no husband. All these went through her mind.

She had tucked in her kids into their bed; the lone bed that was there in the house. On normal nights, she and Drobo would have shared the bed with the younger kids, the older ones sharing a mattress in the middle of the house. However, on this night, she was too worried to sleep and she waited with bated breath to see if by any chance the night was going to turn her into a single mother or the wife of a prisoner.

At 11.45pm there came faint knock on the door. She approached it, wanting to not shout as the noises in the streets of military vehicles patrolling had also given her enough fright.

‘Who is it?’ She managed; trying to force her words through the cracks of the door.

‘Open up… It’s me’, an even fainter response followed

For a moment she was not sure if she could figure out who it was. She hoped it was Drobo but the voice was so faint and unlike his deep voice that she could not be sure. She also had to think of her and her kids alone in the house. What if it was a thief who had come to rob them? Or more plausible; a rapist or a murderer?

A million thoughts ran through her mind in the space of a split second. She finally figured that there were too many police and military patrols for thieves to be at it this late in the night. At worst, it would be one of their friends seeking refuge in order to not walk so far down towards their own apartments; maybe in an effort to avoid the arrests.

She unbolted the door, slowly opening it just to ensure it was someone she knew and not some assailant.

At first, even the flimsily lit room could not confirm to hear that it was Drobo. Yes he had the right height. His frame was also more or less the same. But there was an unfamiliarity that he exuded that she had not seen in a long time. As he advanced further into the room, she did see it was him and her heart was at peace. She realised just then that it had been a long time since she had looked at this man that she could not have said she had fallen in love with the way the movies in the theatres portrayed love. Their union had started out nice and it would have been meant to progress maybe to the heights of the theatre love. However, it had been interrupted by the coming of their child and life that followed.

Ever since they had started living together; she had not had enough time to just look at him and study his features. In her mind the features that existed were those that she had known back when she still worked the shop. When they used to flirt and stare at each other for hours. Today was different. They were not flirting and he was not looking back at her. He was shaken. Something in his demeanour lacked the arrogance and pride that he had in his gait. He looked rather defeated and beaten. She noticed that his complexion had gotten darker; must have been from the sun and hard work he had put in over the years. His eyes were not cheerful, not that je was ever the cheerful type. But the few lights that once shown through his eyes were even less present on this particular night. His gait was also more lowered, and he looked older.

Yet, in that moment she also felt an overpowering of love for this man who she had been together with for 15 years. From where it came from she did not know but the desire carried her to him, and as if feeling the same pull he took her that night like he hadn’t in a very long time. Maybe it was the close call with death that brought them close, or just the danger that lurked in the slum; making them doubt the surety of tomorrow, whatever it was that night resulted in the conception of Nana.  

The closeness that Drobo and Nyathia shared the night of Nana’s conception did last, but not for long. Their rekindled love for each other was around for about 2 weeks. Till they were faced with the realisation of yet another bun in the oven hat was Nyathia’s ever fertile womb. As if hell had been waited for an opening to pour forth all the evils in the world, the realisation of yet another pregnancy spelt doom for the house of Drobo. Nyathia herself was not happy of the situation at hand. But Drobo’s anguish and disappointment was the harshest of them all. It was worse as he directed it towards Nyathia and not himself. As if she being a woman and the one with the womb should have known how much they did not need another being right now and found a way to prevent it. The undertone of the assault on her was also owing to the fact that she had been the one who had started the onslaught of passion the night of Nana’s conception. Nyathia had already been at sorrow for all the same reasons but having them hurled at her from Drobo did not help the situation. It felt like the sticking of a sharp knife in a wound that has just begun to heal. This would be one of those events that would again change the course of Nyathia’s life.

It is in the aftermath of this blame game with Drobo that she had found the courage to find a solution to her fertile womb. Even in the months that Nana developed in her womb, Nyathia looked tirelessly for a solution that would mean the end of this cycle that had become their life. If they did not bear more children then maybe peace would have come to their house; she thought. Also, if they figured a way to maintain the ones they had, and worked harder, the dream might just be near their reach. Nyathia was getting tired of the daily struggle that never seemed to result to anything. She did not wish to live out the rest of her life the same way. Toiling and suffering from dawn till dusk with nothing to show for it.

It is with this spirit of resilience that she carried Nana for the nine months. Finally finding a solution from a midwife that would ensure she had no more children regardless of what more would have transpired between her and Drobo in the future. On the day she gave birth to Nana, Nyathia had her tubes tied to put an end to her ability to give birth to any more children in her lifetime; forever putting a seal of the last of her brood on Nana.

The birth of Nana happened on a Wednesday evening. It was nothing extra ordinary. The pains caught Nyathia as she was closing shop for the day. She had not wished to slow down at all until she had to. By the time the pains had started, her first born son had just arrived from school and he was able to get her the help that was needed to get her neighbour friend to accompany her to the clinic. It was not a long walk so Nyathia was able to manage the 30 minutes before it got too bad.

On reaching the hospital, the nurses were their usual rude selves; no one happy to be working the night shift. Even worse was the notion of the pregnant woman coming to disrupt a rather peaceful evening that would have been spent looking after the newly delivered mothers and their babies. The mothers would be in charge of their babies if they cried; and thus, for the most part, the nurses just had to sit around and be present. Taking a nap or passing time any other way would have been what they would have done. And now, here was Nyathia, having to be constantly monitored to ensure that her delivery was done well. The maternity records released the previous month in the counties showing the lack of care by medical practitioners was also not on their side. So, for every effort the nurses had to put to take care of her, it was an effort taken out on Nyathia for her carelessness at deciding to deliver a baby at night.

It was not until three hours after getting to the hospital that Nana was delivered; a scrawny little child coming in at about 2kgs. She was declared healthy and thus the mother was allowed to leave with her daughter soon after. Nyathia, not having told Drobo about her separate procedure had to find a way to recover in silence without bringing too much attention to her. To her credit, Nana ensured that her mother was able to recover quickly as she was not a needy child. From the beginning, she was rather self-sufficient. She never cried much, never needed a lot of feeding, and figured how to deal with rough situations when there was no one there to look after her. In that way, Nana’s birth might have been the least restraining for her mother. She recovered quickly and was able to get back to her duties in a month’s time.

For her upbringing, Nana was a shared duty by the entire household; that is, with the exception of Drobo who was never there to care for the child. Her four older siblings were fourteen, eleven, eight, five and three years old. All but her predecessor, Onyi, were in school. Whenever Nyathia had to do any errands that could not be done with a baby on her back, Onyi was left in charge of the toddler. It may sound odd but the concept of babies looking after babies is common place if you live in poverty without any options to manage otherwise. The rest of the siblings would take care of Nana when they came from school and before they left, and over the weekends.