Chapter Seven: Leaving Kibogoji

Leaving Kibogoji did not happen all at once.

There was no announcement, no ceremony, no clear line drawn in the soil to mark the end. It arrived quietly, the way many endings do—through conversations held in low voices, through pauses that lasted a little too long, through the feeling that something familiar was slowly loosening its grip.

I spent four long years in Kibogoji.

Four years of rain and drought. Four years of hunger and survival. Four years of learning how to live with less and endure more.

It was in Kibogoji that I started primary school.

School was far—very far. Almost fifteen kilometers every day, a long walk there and back. We walked early in the morning, before the sun became cruel, and returned late, tired and dusty. Because the school was so far away, most days I never had lunch. I ate early in the morning before starting the walk, and then again only when I returned home in the evening. My body learned to function on absence. Hunger became part of the routine.

I went to school already knowing how to read and write. I had learned that during my hiatus years in Mabama. Words were familiar to me. Numbers made sense. Books did not intimidate me.

Most of the children at my school did not have that advantage.

They struggled. Kiswahili was difficult for them because Kinguu was the language of their lives—the language of home, play, discipline, and belonging. Kiswahili belonged to school and authority, not comfort. Letters came slowly. Words resisted them.

My first-grade teacher, Mr. Malepela, noticed.

He selected me to help other children learn how to read and write. I sat beside them, pointing at letters, sounding out words, repeating patiently. I became a helper before I ever became a learner.

And so, for the first two to three years of school, I did not really learn anything new.

I read all the books on my own—Kiswahili books, even English books. I knew basic arithmetic. Lessons passed over me without challenge. My days were filled with walking, hunger, and repetition, not growth.

By my fourth year at the school, my mother realized what was happening.

She saw that I was surviving, but not advancing. Enduring, but not learning. Kibogoji had taught me resilience, but it could not offer me the education that would stretch me further.

So she made a decision.

She arranged for me to be moved to a different school, far away in Mkindo. A school with smarter kids. With teachers who would challenge me. A place where learning would demand effort again.

That decision became my opening.

Leaving Kibogoji was no longer just about movement—it was about possibility.

By then, Kibogoji had shaped me. 
It had marked my body and my mind.

I knew its paths without thinking. I could tell time by the sun and seasons by smell. My feet understood the land. My ears understood the forest. Kinguu no longer sounded foreign. It sounded like home.

That was the hardest part.

Leaving meant more than moving away from a place. It meant stepping out of a life that had claimed me fully. A life where survival was shared, where hunger was communal, where belonging was earned not through words but through endurance.

I watched familiar faces become memories. Friends I had grown up running beside, eating beside, fearing beside. We did not say goodbye properly. Children rarely do. We assumed we would meet again, somewhere, somehow.

The morning I left, the valley looked the same. 
The mountains stood where they always had. 
The forest did not shift to acknowledge my departure.

That hurt.

I carried Kibogoji with me—not in possessions, because there were few—but in habits. I walked lightly. I ate carefully. I wasted nothing. Hunger had trained me too well.

Fear traveled with me too—not the fear of lions or drought, but the quieter one: the knowledge that stability is fragile.

But resilience traveled farther.

Kibogoji had not failed me. 
It had prepared me.

Leaving was not abandonment. 
It was graduation.

I did not escape Kibogoji. 
I carried it forward.

And when I stepped toward Mkindo, toward books and classrooms and challenge, I did so with a strength forged by rain and hunger, fear and endurance.

That was my way out. 
And it was the last lesson Kibogoji gave me.

Chapter Six: Learning Fear, Learning Strength

The cycles of rain and drought did not teach gently. 
They taught early.

The cycles of rain and drought did not teach gently. They taught early. As a child in Kibogoji, fear did not arrive all at once. It grew slowly, season after season, the way cracks spread across dry ground. At first, it was small—watching the sky too closely, listening to elders talk about clouds that never came, noticing how voices changed when rain delayed itself. Fear lived in questions no one answered.

Will the rains come? 
Will the food last?

When drought settled in, fear learned how to stay. It moved into the body. You felt it when your stomach tightened before evening. You felt it when adults measured flour with care, when portions became smaller without explanation. You learned quickly that asking for more was dangerous—not because you would be punished, but because there was no more to give.

Hunger sharpened awareness.

You noticed everything. The sound of cooking pots—whether they rang loudly or sat quietly. The smell of food—whether it drifted far or stayed close. The way adults ate last, pretending they were not hungry. The way children were sent to sleep early so hunger would not have time to speak.

Fear made me cautious. 
Resilience made me resourceful.

I learned to read seasons before I could read words. The shape of clouds. The direction of wind. The way insects behaved before rain. I learned which fruits survived drought and which disappeared first. I learned how to stretch one meal across a whole day, how to drink water slowly so it felt like eating.

In drought years, play changed. Laughter became careful. Games shortened. Energy was guarded. We still ran, still played, but not recklessly. Every movement carried calculation. Childhood learned restraint.

But something else grew alongside fear.

Endurance.

You learned that a day without food did not end you. That sleep could come even with an empty stomach. That morning would arrive whether you were ready or not. You learned to wake up and walk anyway—to fetch water, to clear land, to follow instructions without complaint.

Fear taught me humility. 
Resilience taught me dignity.

I learned not to measure myself by what I owned, because ownership disappeared with drought. I learned not to depend on certainty, because certainty was seasonal. Instead, I learned to depend on people—on shared silence, shared labor, shared survival.

Adults did not explain resilience. They demonstrated it.

They worked fields even when the soil refused to answer. They shared food even when it hurt to do so. They made decisions slowly, carefully, knowing mistakes in hard years cost more. Watching them, I understood that strength was not loud. It was steady.

The cycles carved patience into me. 
They carved caution. 
They carved resolve.

Rain years taught me joy. 
Drought years taught me discipline.

Together, they shaped something lasting. A quiet toughness. An understanding that comfort is temporary, but survival is learned. That fear does not disappear—it becomes a companion you manage, not an enemy you defeat.

As a child, I did not have language for these lessons. 
But my body remembered them.

Even now, long after leaving Kibogoji, I still listen for the signs. I still respect seasons. I still know, deep inside, that abundance can leave without warning—and that when it does, you endure.

That is what Kibogoji carved into me.

Not despair. 
Not bitterness.

But the knowledge that I could survive hunger, fear, and uncertainty—and still wake up ready to live.

And that knowledge, once learned, never leaves you.

When rain did not come, the villagers went to the witch doctors to pray for rain. The witch doctors knew everything- from bringing rain to treating all human illness.

The worst drought came later. 
1983 to 1984.

By then, I was no longer new to Kibogoji. I understood its rhythms. I knew how to wait for rain and how to endure when it delayed. But those years were different. The rain did not simply arrive late—it almost did not arrive at all.

The land dried completely.

Rivers vanished into memory. Wells sank deeper and gave back less. Trees shed leaves early, as if conserving themselves. The earth hardened until even a hoe struggled to break it open. Fields stood empty, exposed, humiliated by the sun.

There was nothing to harvest. 
Nothing to sell. 
Nothing to exchange.

The village tightened.

Meals disappeared quietly. Once a day became rare. Some days, there was nothing but water. Children learned to sit still to preserve strength. Adults stopped pretending things would improve soon. Hope became cautious.

That was when people went again—more urgently—to the witch doctors.

This time, it was not ritual alone. It was desperation.

Prayers for rain multiplied. Sacrifices increased. Drums sounded longer into the night. The witch doctors spoke with authority, naming causes invisible to ordinary people—offenses committed, taboos broken, spirits angered. The drought was not just weather. It was punishment, imbalance, warning.

As a child, this drought carved fear deeper than hunger ever could.

Hunger could be endured. 
Uncertainty could not.

Every morning, I looked at the sky first. Every night, I listened for rain that never came. Sleep was shallow. Dreams were dry. The land that once felt demanding now felt threatening.

Yet even then, resilience took root.

People shared what little they had. Families combined meals. Children were fed first when possible. No one survived alone. That was not allowed. Survival became collective, enforced not by rule but by necessity.

I learned that strength does not look heroic during drought. 
It looks quiet. 
It looks tired. 
It looks like waking up anyway.

The 1983–84 drought stripped Kibogoji to its bones. It exposed fear, belief, endurance, and the thin line between faith and despair. And it left its mark on me.

Long after the rains finally returned, something in me stayed alert.

I never fully trusted abundance again. 
I learned that hunger can return without warning. 
That land can turn away. 
That survival is never guaranteed.

But I also learned this:

If you can live through hunger in Kibogoji, 
if you can sleep through empty nights and still rise, 
then fear no longer owns you.

It walks beside you—but it does not stop you.

That drought finished carving what the earlier seasons had begun. 
It left me cautious. 
It left me durable.

And it left me prepared for a world that would, again and again, demand endurance.