The Street Boy, The House Maid and The Elderly Teacher

I want to tell you a story. Are you sitting comfortably?

If you are, then you may be missing the point.

Sometimes digging into the backgrounds of the boys and trying to facilitate reconciliation and reintegration is not easy. Sometimes it forces us to confront awkward or difficult situations

Franco’s is just such a case.

He came into our care aged 10, in our second intake of boys to Kibos in 2005. He struggled academically as he had missed so much school and even now, at the age of 17, he is about to enter class 8, the final year of primary education.

At school it seems, he doesn’t quite fit in. He is the oldest in his class by some distance and at Mamboleo, the small home run by Paul James on the northern outskirts of Kisumu, he has had his moments of conflict with other boys.

Nonetheless, he has stuck at it, he resolved not to go back to the streets, and we are proud of him. He is looking towards training when he finishes primary, he wants to do mechanics or bicycle repair or similar.

But there is something deep inside Franco that he is struggling to understand and wants to come to terms with. 

He wont find peace until it is done. 

Franco has never known his father. 

He wants to know where he comes from, who his family is, where their land is, what they do.

In the early 90’s, a young girl, fresh from primary school, took a job as a housemaid to a teacher and his growing family. She had come from a village in Uganda, but travelled the red dust road into Kenya looking for work.

She settled in Bokoli, a small community close to the Uganda border, in the district of Bungoma, near to Kitale in Western Province. She made friends with the other people who worked in the compound, keeping things clean, doing the washing and cooking, making sure the children were looked after. The teacher and his wife were strict but kind and she felt at home.

Then in 1994 her world fell apart.

She slept with the teacher and became pregnant.

How and why we don’t know, but suffice to say that it happened.

She had no idea what to do. She feared telling the teacher and his wife even more than she feared going home to Uganda and bringing shame on her family.

So, one night she left, quietly slipping away, never to be seen again.

She found her way to Kisumu, but with no income, a poor academic record, no job references and an increasingly expectant figure she had little chance of success. She rented a small room in Nyalenda slum for a few shillings a week, got together what little things she could and started buying and selling vegetables and then clothes and then small household nick nacks in the marketplaces of the slum.

Daily meals were a luxury and she often went without. Her son, now born, was a handful and restricted the things she could do to earn money. Unable to put him into school, and with no free primary education in those days, Franco grew up in the slums, familiar with the ways of the street.

As with so many children who found themselves in his situation, he eventually stopped going home. He found new friends, he discovered glue and other substances, he found, for the first time in his young life, a camerarderie amongst the street boys, somewhere he felt he belonged.

The Trust met Franco as part of our street outreach programs in 2005 and invited him to be part of our family. He was in our second intake of boys who, having progressed through the rehabilitation program, went to live up at Mamboleo with Paul James.

The Trust reintroduced Franco to his mum, who was delighted to see he was alive and well. He went to school for the first time, joining class 1 aged 10 ad now, aged 17, he has reached class 8 and will sit his KCPE exams next Autumn. He visits his mum in the school holidays, and enjoys those times, but always returns to Mamboleo.

Inside however, Franco was troubled.

When he turned 17, Paul James resolved to find out the truth.

He visited the mother a number of times, talking to her, trying to understand what had happened. She was reticent and afraid, but eventually began to trust him, and talked about what happened all those years previously.

Then, just a month ago, Moses and Paul James went to visit the, now elderly teacher in his home to explain what had happened. He was understandably shocked.

Today, a month later, we went up again, this time with Franco, his mum and me.

As we drove Franco’s mum was quiet, tense, unsure of what lay ahead.We drove down dusty, bumpy roads, Anton and I in the front, Moses, Paul James, Franco and his mum in the back. It’s fair to say that there wasn’t much room.

The roads got progressively smaller as we left the tarmac highway far behind. Then, as we turned down a narrow red dirt track towards the compound, Moses noticed a few men sitting by the hut to our left, in the shade of a tall mango tree. They were talking and drinking. We stopped the car and Moses went over to talk to them.

After a moment or two he walked towards us with one of the elderly men at his side. He called us over. This is who we had come to meet. He was warm, polite and welcoming, but clearly very afraid of the consequences of what had been revealed to him on his family. He met us at the junction of the road to the compound, rather than us go all the way down and run into his wife.

We talked very amicably.

We weren’t there for money or support, we weren’t there to judge, to condone or to condemn. We were there for Franco, so he knows his family, so he knows the place of his father.

The teacher has a lot to lose of course, he was happily married with a grown up family when Franco was conceived and he fears the consequences of the revelation. He wants the proof of a DNA test to confirm paternity.

We understand that and will do what we can to make it easier for him.

But we exchanged numbers, we talked about next steps, we initiated things, we started something, and I hope and pray it will take root. For Franco’s sake.

This isn't how things were meant to happen in Kenya. According to custom, when a woman discovers she is pregnant to a married man, she informs him of the fact. Over time the child is introduced to and assimilated into the family. The child enjoys the same rights as the man’s other children, a piece of land, an inheritance, a place to call home.

Franco’s mum had run away in fear, fled the compound and gone to the slums of Kisumu. Two lives had suffered hardship and pain and for what? I am lost for words.

Over the coming months we will work with Franco, his mother and the elderly teacher to uncover the truth of Franco’s heritage.

Reintegration is one of the programmes that we run, helping children, when they come of age, to know their rights, their lands and most importantly, their family and their heritage. It was the first time i had seen it up close.

Sometimes, being more than just another children’s home is painful.

But I wouldn’t want it any other way.