Hope Runs

by Claire Diaz-Ortiz

  When we arrive back at Imani, I have mixed feelings. I am happy to be here, where I have lived for a year, but sad to leave my new home of just a few weeks. When I come back, I find there are new faces at the orphanage, and I quickly make some new friends. One friend who will prove to be very important in my life is Hezron. About my age, he is a little taller, more slender, and less dark than me.

  That night as I sit to eat my portion of githeri, feelings of sadness and happiness fill me all at once. I realize that I really want to live at Upendo, not Imani, and so the next morning I will go to Eunice, Imani’s manager, to tell her what I want to do.

  Eunice is one of those women you look up to from the moment you meet her. You don’t have a choice in loving her, because she takes care of you as if you were her own son or daughter. She is smart and knows exactly what children need. When Eunice was first contracted as the new Imani Children’s Home manager, most of us kids at Imani were not very welcoming of the idea. We did not see why we would need her when we had two other matrons to help us, and it seemed she would simply deal with administrative issues for Imani’s elders. We were used to things happening in a different way, and we resisted the change.

  But because Eunice is very funny and a respected church member of the PCEA, she started winning our hearts immediately. As a musician, she revived the choir program, and we would regularly go to learn songs and sing them during church events. In this way, many of us would also spend more time with her.

  As the days have gone by, students have spent more and more time in her office, asking questions about new rules and talking about problems at school, even going to her when they are feeling depressed and need encouragement. As a teacher, she also helps us with our English class, our English homework, and any subjects we are struggling with. She knows how to handle young people and adults alike, and we all respect her greatly.

  Eunice also acts as a mediator with the matrons and the kids; she is just like a big bridge between the two groups. Every time something goes wrong between the matrons and the kids, she is there making sure that both parties can come to an agreement and respect each other. Until that point, there was no one to go to, since we often felt intimidated by the elders like Cucu and Guka, whom we respected so much. We needed someone we were much closer to, someone like Eunice, who would be able to solve our conflicts.

  She also started a Bible study group that I have come to love. Since it meets at 5:00 a.m.—an hour before we normally wake—I sometimes oversleep. But whenever I do go, I feel close to God.

  I didn’t get to know Eunice personally until I became friends with her daughter, who is in her twenties. She sometimes comes to visit on the weekends and stays with Eunice in the apartment on the second floor of the orphanage. Eunice’s daughter is funny and never looks at us like we are weird kids; she looks at us like we are her brothers and sisters.

  Over time, I’ve realized that Eunice is one of the smartest people I have ever met—eloquent and seemingly very young. She looks like she is forty years old, but one day when I asked her how old she was, she told me she was fifty-two! At first I thought she was a liar, but then I realized it was true.

  Eunice—or “Manager,” as we call her—is one of my African heroes.

  After my afternoon duties the next day, I go to the manager’s office and she tells me to sit down. She asks me how I am feeling. I tell her I am okay, but I think I’d be better off if I lived at Upendo, not at Imani. Kindly, she explains to me that what I want is not possible. When I question this—“But there are rooms available to live in! We stayed in them!”—she says that people at Upendo Children’s Home more than likely have had fewer chances in life than people at Imani Children’s Home, and we need to keep the space open for those kinds of people to get the special attention they need. She reminds me that many people would like to have the chance to be at Imani but do not have it, so I should be grateful for the opportunity I have.

  At the time, I am young and don’t understand the chance I have been given or the chance that Upendo gives to many disabled kids. So when I leave the manager’s office, I am stomping mad, asking myself over and over, “Why won’t she just let me leave?”

  When my friend Hezron sees me, he asks me, “Sammy, why were you in there with Manager?”

  When I explain to him that I want to live at Upendo, he asks me a question. “Sammy, why are you here at Imani?”

  I answer dumbly that I don’t have a choice. “I am here to live!” I say.

  And then he tells me, “Then do it! Live!”

  He reminds me that people like us often do not have lots of choices. Instead, we take what we are given. He reminds me that I have a chance to be in a great orphanage that provides me with food, a place to sleep, and a chance to gain the discipline I need in life.

  This is when I realize something about us as orphans. When life throws us a lemon, we must take as much juice from it as we can, because we don’t know when it might be taken away. I realize this is true not just for orphans but for all people. When life gives you that lemon, take as much juice as you can, because you don’t know when the lemon will be taken away and you will be left without any fruit at all.

  In January, schools start reopening in Kenya. However, first-year high school students—Form One students—start school in February. So we stay in the orphanage for a month before school starts, waiting for the KCPE results that will determine if we can go to secondary school. This gives me time to get to know the few new friends and faces at Imani that will be my family for the next four years.

  In Kenya, when you finish the KCPE exam, you wait for your scores to see if you can continue on to secondary school or if your future will be to leave school or maybe learn a trade instead. If you don’t get the invite, it’s very bad, and even though I pray hard for a letter, nothing arrives. Some of my friends receive letters, but I still haven’t heard anything.

  Finally, the manager calls me into her office one day. I find out my score—304 out of 500, which I think is pretty good—and I get a letter from Giakombe, the local secondary school next door to the orphanage. I jump up and down, saying, “It’s something! It’s something!”

  A few days later the students are called in to have measurements taken for the school uniform. At first I think it is a joke and am reluctant to go. “New clothes? Yeah, right!” But then the seamstresses send for me again and I know they are serious! I go upstairs and meet a wonderful Christian lady who takes my measurements. And as she does, I realize I am about to start a new life. Am I ready for it?

  During this season, I am really afraid. For the first four months of Form One, life is not the easiest. In Kenya, we have something called monolization. It comes from the word mono, meaning “one,” for Form One. Monolization, or mono, is bullying to the extreme and makes life a nightmare. Most upper-class students in Forms Two, Three, and Four don’t really think of it as bullying but rather as a form of payback for what happened to them when they were in Form One. Because they were monolized, they pay it back by monolizing other people. And this cycle goes on and on and doesn’t stop.

  The worst cases of monolizing, as we learn during our circumcision class, happen to boys who are not circumcised or boys from a different nationality. Let’s say you’re not a Kikuyu like I am but a Luo attending school in a Kikuyu community. That makes it even worse. There are stories where a Form One student is sent to the market by an upperclassman and told he must return with red jam, margarine, tea, milk, and fifty shillings in change. And he’s only given ten shillings! If he does not satisfy the impossible requirements, he may have to wash the clothes or the lunch and dinner dishes of that upperclassman for a whole year. Basically, the upperclassman will make the Form One student a slave if he doesn’t satisfy the demands.

  Sometimes Form One students are beaten up or bullied. Since my brother is in Form Three, I know he will help me, but I am still afraid. I know that life isn’t always fair, and mono is just one little example of that. Somet
imes, I have come to learn, you just have to deal with whatever you are handed. A better future is about the way we handle the situations we face—and the better we handle them, the better our results will be. In life, things come and go. It’s our duty to be satisfied with the results we have after our situations pass. I know this and am determined to start my life in high school—mono and all.

  By February I am ready to start secondary school with all my other counterparts: Kevin, Kahuria, Njoki, Maggie, Jane, Marion, Joyce, and many more. A lot of my new classmates are people I have seen from time to time in the streets of the village but who have not yet entered my life. Now I will spend the next four years with them.

  As we start classes, we also begin to take on the new customs of high school. On our first day of high school when the teacher enters the room, we all stand up because it is a habit from primary school, but the teacher quickly explains that we don’t need to do that anymore. New things are everywhere—new buildings to enter and new subjects to learn. We get new books and test booklets and are introduced to all kinds of new clubs. Hezron and I decide to join Scouts, and we also start eating lunch at school—which I find fun!

  I soon get the hang of things. Wake up at 6:00 a.m. on the days where there is no 5:00 a.m. Bible study, have breakfast at 6:30, be at school by 7:00, eat lunch at 1:40, leave school at 5:00, come home, have tea, wash my clothes, do my duties, have dinner at 6:00, watch the news, then head off to study hall until 10:30, when it is time for bed. This becomes my new routine.

  And then, a few weeks later, the white girl who had asked me about Obama comes back to stay and changes everything.

  When Claire and Lara come back, they bring a new friend with them—a man named Jonathan who likes to play the guitar and stays a few weeks.

  At first I don’t recognize Claire because she doesn’t have bangs. Then one day when I am coming home from school I pass by Claire, who is sitting on a chair on the veranda, playing with the kids. She stops me and says, “Hey, aren’t you Sammy?”

  “Yes, yes I am,” I say.

  She asks me, “Aren’t you in Standard Eight?”

  I can’t believe what she has just said, and all my friends start laughing hysterically. What Claire doesn’t know is that she has insulted me badly, saying I am still in Standard Eight when I have actually just started Form One. Essentially, this means she is calling me a kihii—an uncircumcised person. In Kikuyu culture, when we haven’t been circumcised, we are considered boys. To us, a kihii is not worthy of being called a man. But when we undergo circumcision, like I did the week after I first met Claire a few months earlier, we are considered men due to the pain we endure. Being a kihii in a Kikuyu community when you’re no longer a small boy is a bad thing, and if someone calls you that it means they have no respect for you. It is like calling a black person the N-word. It hurts and is very disrespectful.

  To me, Claire has committed one of the crimes of the century. I vow never to speak to her again, and I keep my distance.

  And I’m not the only one.

  When Claire and Lara move into the apartment at Imani, most of the kids are skeptical. Claire and Lara are much younger than everyone else who has ever come to live at Imani Children’s Home. Any of the teenagers or young people we have seen come over the years have only stayed for a few days, and no one can understand why seemingly young white people, or mzungus, want to come to live with us. Slowly, though, I begin to hear that Claire and Lara are starting a running program. Since Hezron is really interested in it, I get excited about it too.

  A lot of people sign up for the first practice. We do a lot of weird stretches and some games, mostly for the little kids, who can’t run much. Many people are just there to watch.

  The second practice I go to, though, is different. We do a 5K run and follow it with some stretches. There are a lot fewer people, and things are calmer. There is an early practice with games for the younger kids, and then the older kids are able to do a real training run. Whenever I go, I get the chance to talk to Lara. By and by, I start talking to Claire as well. I realize that in life you’re going to meet people who are going to make you angry without the intent of doing so, especially when they come from different cultures. Tolerance and forgiveness are of the utmost importance when someone doesn’t know everything about your culture. Instead, it’s your responsibility to teach them or show them what your culture means.

  So I decide to ignore what Claire said, because even though it was painful, Claire seems like an awesome person. Although that incident now seems very petty, at the time it helped me discover one of the skills I have in life, which is to forgive others. We all hurt people. When you think about it, if every person you have ever wronged—knowingly or unknowingly—never forgave you, that would make you feel very bad. So we must learn to forgive, even when white girls call us kihiis.

  Little by little, the running program helps many of the kids get to know Lara and Claire better, and we all start spending more time with them outside of practice. They know more of our names, and they start learning some Swahili. They are also really funny, and we all laugh that they have the same kind of humor we do. They call all the little kids “crazy” and “troublemaker,” and they trust we are smart enough to understand their jokes. Slowly, everyone starts to see they are more like us than we realize.

  One Saturday I go for a run. Lara is running also, and she is really sweaty and dirty. When I come close to her, I can tell she is stinking and she needs a shower—she really needs one! That’s when I realize that there’s nothing special about people who look different; we really are all the same. Lara is stinking and sweating just as much as any Kenyan does.

  To be honest, when Claire and Lara came and lived with us, they changed our perception of what mzungus were. Until then, and with only a few exceptions, we hadn’t really liked mzungus much. To us, mzungus just represented money. When they came, all they did was look down on us and feel sorry for us. Then they would sign a check and leave it with the manager.

  When Lara and Claire came, they were different. They used a different resource than money. They stayed with us and showed us that they’re the same as we are.

  Sammy

  Chapter 7

  Along with the new running program, Claire and Lara bring something special for us. They bring us shoes.

  At the time, only about three or four kids at Imani have proper sports shoes. Most of us run on bare feet or in our black heavy school shoes, which ends up ruining the shoes very fast.

  One Saturday morning my friend Hezron and I are coming back from doing duties in the garden when we find out that we are all going to be given a brand-new pair of shoes. It turns out that when Claire and Lara left Kenya the first time, they went back to the United States and did a shoe collection, and now they are giving us the shoes.

  In the afternoon they start passing out the shoes, starting with the little kids and working their way up. When it comes time for my turn, Lara takes me by the hand. Claire is busy helping other people fit their feet into the shoes and is dealing with many complaints from students who say their shoes don’t fit or their shoes aren’t good enough.

  Lara helps me try on different pairs of shoes to find a pair that fits well enough. The problem is that I have long, thin feet and can’t find the right ones. She eventually gives me a pair that almost fits. I don’t like them, though, and leave with a sad face. They aren’t shiny or good-looking like some others that I see. Like everyone else, I want so badly to look good and to have shoes and clothes that look the best they absolutely can, since I don’t have much.

  I know I’m not the only one trying to get better shoes, and I also know that Claire and Lara may not understand and may think this doesn’t make sense. I can hear them asking themselves inside their heads, If they don’t have any shoes, why do they not just take what they can get?

  But it is just the way I feel—and the way many other students feel that day. We want to have the best pair of shoes so we can look
our best with the little we have.

  Lara tries to tell me that the shoes she chose for me are in fashion in America, but I won’t budge. I see some dark sneakers I like and ask Lara if I can have them. Lara says I can only if they fit. She puts the shoes on my feet, and they fit—barely. I can walk in them, but I know I will never be able to run in them. When she asks if they fit—and if I have a little bit of space in the front for running—I lie, and she lets me walk off with my new dark sneakers. I walk out of the room that Saturday with my sneakers tied around my chest, giving them kisses.

  The next day, Sunday, everyone goes to breakfast as usual. After breakfast, it is time for church, and as we walk in, Claire and Lara see that all 170 of us are wearing our new sneakers along with our fanciest church clothes. Claire and Lara cannot believe it, and I can see their eyes sparkling with water drops. It is a special moment for them.

  On Monday we have running practice. Lara and Claire come for the run as usual, and they are surprised when they see that almost no one is wearing their new shoes, even though they had just worn them to church the day before! Instead, everyone is in bare feet or school shoes. Like the other kids, I don’t want to wear my new shoes to go running because I want to keep them new and pretty as long as possible.

  As part of Hope Runs, which is the name of the nonprofit organization they have started to support the running program, Claire and Lara have worked to get funding to put a few dozen runners in a marathon many months from now. Because Hezron and I have been showing up to the new running program every day and practicing hard, we are chosen to take part in the marathon.

  As we start training for the marathon—and they do make us wear our shoes!—our practices are taken to a whole new level, and we start running long and hard, up to thirty kilometers in one day, as we prepare for the forty-two kilometer marathon. As we run, I often get to the point where I almost stop when my muscles run out of energy, but then I keep going. Hezron always encourages me, telling me never to stop and to keep pushing.