In my Dreams I Dance

How one woman battled prejudice and setbacks to become a champion

Anne Wafula Strike

To Norman,

my son Timothy,

my dad George Paul Wafula

and Mama Florence

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Prologue

Chapter One Walking and Running

Chapter Two The Day My Life Changed

Chapter Three Joyland

Chapter Four A Terrible Loss

Chapter Five The Coup

Chapter Six Growing Up

Chapter Seven Romance

Chapter Eight Bachelor of Education

Chapter Nine A Proper Job

Chapter Ten Not Quite Mills & Boon

Chapter Eleven This Green and Pleasant Land

Chapter Twelve A Miracle

Chapter Thirteen Getting the Fitness Bug

Chapter Fourteen Going Home

Chapter Fifteen Athens

Chapter Sixteen Medals

Chapter Seventeen A Bitter Blow

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

‘Get down! Get down!’ barked the soldiers as they boarded the bus. Sweat dripped from their faces as they pointed their guns at us all. My heart was pounding, my mouth dry with fear and I was trembling from head to foot. I felt as if I was a character in a nightmarish action movie. The air was heavy with tension and the smell of stale sweat.

Many of the passengers obediently fell to their knees, sobbing and shaking hysterically. The soldiers were pushing down those who were too slow.

‘Please don’t shoot us! Put the guns away, we beg you,’ a few of the women murmured. I could hear some people whispering prayers for deliverance.

I started screaming hysterically. I was just 13 years old and had never been so terrified in all my life.

‘Get down, young girl,’ the soldiers said, turning their guns on me. All I could do was look back at them, too frozen with fear to explain why I couldn’t lie on the floor like the other passengers. Helplessly, I pointed to my callipers and crutches and hoped they would understand. Strapping and unstrapping the callipers took about ten minutes, so there was no way I could get down quickly.

The soldiers glanced at the callipers, but kept their guns trained on me.

It was August 1982 and we’d just pulled into the bus station in Nairobi. Everything was happening in slow motion. I felt as if eternity had passed since the soldiers boarded the bus, although in reality it wasn’t more than a few moments.

I searched frantically through the bus windows for my dad. He had promised my teachers that he would be waiting to collect me. At that very moment he hurried onto the bus. I was shocked to see that he was carrying a black machine gun and was wearing many magazines of bullets. Although I’d seen him in his army uniform many times before, I’d never seen him armed and ready for action like this.

‘Stop pointing those guns at my little girl!’ he shouted at the soldiers. They hurriedly lowered them.

In a lightning flash my dad picked me up and put me over his shoulder. Holding me with one hand and his gun with the other, he gestured to one of the soldiers to carry my crutches and bag.

‘What’s happening, Dad? Please tell me what’s happening!’

‘I’m going to take you somewhere where you’ll be safe, Anne,’ he said briskly. ‘We’re in the middle of a coup. I’ll explain everything to you when things have calmed down. Come, we must hurry, things are very bad in the streets.’

I wished he would put his scary gun and bullets down and take me home.

Before I could utter another word, he started running. As we hurried through the streets, I heard people calling out, ‘Run for your lives!’

My dad put a coat over my head to shield my eyes. But I had already seen some of the horror.

I started to cry.

Chapter One Walking and Running

You have to travel through the Great Rift Valley to reach the village where I was born. It’s a small place called Mihuu in western Kenya, about 500 kilometres from the capital, Nairobi. Only a few hundred people live there and it has little more than a modest market and a mill to grind maize. The nearest town is Webuye, one of the stations on the main rail line from Kampala, in Uganda, to Nairobi. Webuye is surrounded by the steep, rocky Chetambe Hills, and Mihuu, with its rich, fertile soil, nestles behind those hills. The red volcanic earth is good for growing many crops—millet, sorghum, bananas and sugarcane. Life is tuned to the rhythm of the seasons—everything revolves around planting, weeding and harvesting.

I was born on 8th May 1969 in a mud hut. My grandmother and many of my female relatives were there to help me into the world.

‘This one has come out more easily than the others, even though she’s the heaviest,’ my mum said, sighing with relief.

The women gathered round to coo over the new arrival. My grandmother cradled me in her arms and said, ‘This child is a real beauty and she’s slipped into the world so easily, she’s a blessing on us all. I’m sure she won’t give you any trouble in life.’

My mum’s friend Annah, a wonderful singer, had sung to me while I was in the womb. She had held my mum’s stomach and said, ‘This child is going to be great.’ My mum and dad named me Annah after her and this was later changed to Anne. My African name is Naliaka, which means ‘born during the weeding season’.

The language spoken in the village is Luhya, which is also the name of a big tribe in the region. My family belongs to the Bukusu clan, a section of the Luhya tribe.

I’m the fourth born of eight. First came Alice, then Kennedy, Jane, me, Evans and Victoria, who are twins, Goddard and Geoffrey. I also have three step-siblings, Irene, Melvin and Arthur. Kennedy, my oldest brother, was named after the US President Kennedy. My dad said he hoped he would rise up and be at least as great as Kennedy. Evans’ middle name is Lincoln, after Abraham Lincoln, and Victoria was named after Queen Victoria. Geoffrey was named after Geoffrey De Freitas, a British ambassador who became a Labour MP. Goddard was named after a British judge my dad admired.

My dad started life as a Muslim, Athumani Wafula, but later converted to Christianity and changed his name to George Paul. He is a very well-educated man and has always had a mind wide open to new challenges and ideas. He has always understood the possibilities the world holds for his children and has pushed us to strive to be the best we can possibly be. He admires the British way of doing things and is very well read in British and American history. He is a very fair, loving and upstanding man. I couldn’t wish for better.

When I was born he was a warrant officer in the Kenyan African Rifles and it was more than a month before he was able to return home to see me.

‘I was hoping for a son,’ he said, grinning and looking lovingly into my eyes. ‘But I’m just as happy to have a girl. She’s so beautiful.’

‘Yes, this one is the strongest of all our babies,’ my mum said proudly.

My mum was called Nekesa Ruth. Nekesa means ‘born during the harvesting season’. With Kenyan names, people can roughly guess when your birthday is.

My mother’s parents were very devout Quakers. My mum herself was a friendly and generous person and also strikingly beautiful. My dad often tells me that he fell in love with her as soon as he saw her and asked her parents there and then if he could marry her.

Our home was simple, but to us it was beautiful. The floor and walls were made of mud and cow dung, and a certain type of reed that grew near the river made a cool and shady roof. We had five rooms, so it was quite a grand place by village standards. We had no electricity, but used kerosene lamps to read by in the evening. Our entertainment was a radio and a battery-operated record player. We listened to Voice of Kenya, which began its broadcasts at 5.55 every morning.

My dad played lots of old Motown records and early James Brown. I still remember my older brother and sisters and my cousins wearing bell bottoms and platforms in an attempt to look like the singers on the record covers and dancing to the soul routines. We younger ones weren’t allowed to join in, but we used to peep through the door, enviously looking at them having fun. We would also make up words in Swahili that sounded about the same as the English words.

Life in the village was very traditional, with people looking after their animals and cultivating small pieces of land. A father would share his land with his sons and it would be passed down the generations. At that time people grew just enough food to feed their families and took very little to market to sell. But now things are slowly starting to change. Increasingly, sugarcane is grown to sell because it fetches a good price. My dad used to grow maize, cassava, potatoes and bananas, but now he, too, is growing sugarcane.

When I was a child, food was always plentiful because my mum and my grandmother were out working hard in the fields. Any surplus was given to our neighbours. Sharing, especially of food, is a concept deeply ingrained in African life.

Water was collected from the river in a very organised way. There was one part of the river where the water was pure enough for drinking and another part where clothes were washed and the animals would drink. It’s the same today.

When I was born many children in the village didn’t go to school. But for my dad education was a priority. He had trained as a teacher before he joined the army and he valued learning for its own sake as well as a passport to a better life. ‘Education is the key to everything,’ he would often say, and he encouraged all of us to learn at every opportunity.

He also loved imparting knowledge to me and my brothers and sisters. He used to read a lot and was particularly impressed with the history of ancient Greece and the strength of its people. He explained to us that all the strong sportspeople used to gather at Mount Olympus. Because I was such a strong and healthy child when I was born, he gave me Olympia as a middle name. He thought this would suit me. Even as a small baby, if I kicked against his stomach when he picked me up, he said he could really feel the power of my foot.

‘Olympia is a good name for you,’ he told me. ‘You are going to be a very strong and special girl. I believe you will achieve great things.’

Tradition was a very important part of life for our clan, as it is to this day. Bukusus believe in many things that Westerners would find strange. Most of the people who have never been to school believe in black magic. They call it ‘African science’. When someone has died mysteriously, people say, ‘Oh, we think African science was involved.’

When I was just a few months old, the women from our family went out to our farm. It was the harvesting season, Nekesa. My mum placed me carefully under the shade of a tree on an animal skin and some cloth. A little while later she came to check on me and screamed in horror: a black mamba was coiled around me.

These snakes are common in our village. Once my grandmother walked all the way back from the bush to the village with one wrapped in her bundle of firewood. She felt something tapping her on the back and thought it was one of the branches, but when she got home she discovered it was in fact a lethal snake. She carefully unloaded her bundle and called on someone in the village to kill the snake.

Faced with a snake wrapped around her precious baby, my mum fell to her knees and, with tears rolling down her cheeks, started begging the snake, ‘Please leave my child alone.’

My grandmother walked up calmly and hushed her. ‘This snake would have killed the baby by now if that’s what it wanted to do,’ she said quietly. She started praying softly and whispering something under her breath. The snake was obviously listening, because it lazily uncoiled itself and slithered away, leaving me unharmed. The tree where I lay is still there today.

At the time there was an old woman in the village who had a reputation as a witch, and the villagers started whispering that she had sent the snake to curse me because she was envious of my strength and beauty. No one could understand how I had survived such a thing unscathed.

In many ways I was a very lucky child. I was happy, lively, healthy, tall for my age and by the time I was nine months old I was already running around. Unlike my brothers and sisters, I’d never even needed to have any herbs gathered in the bush and boiled to cure various ills. In the first two-and-a-half years of my life, as I scampered around energetically on the soft earth, exploring my village and learning new words every day, none of us had any idea of the shadow that was about to descend.

Chapter Two The Day My Life Changed

I was too young to remember what happened next, but my family have told me the terrible story many times. As swiftly as a rainy season downpour drenches the earth, my happy, carefree life in the village ended.

My dad was away trying to stop the Shiftas, Somalian bandits, from crossing the border into Kenya and stealing livestock, when catastrophe struck. I had accompanied my mum to the river. As usual she was washing clothes and then washing us. I liked to carry a small pot of water on my head, copying the huge pot she balanced effortlessly on hers. But something was wrong with me that day. As soon as we returned to the homestead, I fell down screaming.

My family thought a snake had bitten me, even though none had been seen anywhere near me. But, after examining my writhing body all over, my grandmother, who was an expert in these things, pronounced, ‘No snake has bitten this child.’

My mum and grandmother could see that I was in terrible pain, but if it wasn’t a snake, what had caused it? They had no idea. Nor could they calm my screams. They told me later that I had cried for 24 hours, giving great heaving dry sobs when no more tears would come. At one point I was so distressed, I swallowed my tongue. And then my whole body went limp.

My grandmother was a Christian, so she prayed and poured holy water over me. When that didn’t work, she turned to traditional medicines. She was perplexed. Why was a previously healthy child suddenly unable to talk or eat? How could it be that I had gone down to the river apparently well and had returned terribly ill?

The more baffled everybody became, the more desperate the remedies they resorted to. My legs were massaged with donkey dung, tribal cuts were carved into my skin and foul-tasting potions were forced down my throat. Though my dad was an educated man, he too believed that the herbs could cure me because a British doctor had once told him that a lot of powerful western medicines were contained in them.

Alas, none of the traditional remedies did me any good. My condition was deteriorating and I was struggling to breathe. My family were convinced they were going to lose me.

In a flash of inspiration, one of the villagers found a plastic tube and put it into my mouth. Family and friends took turns blowing their breath into me to keep me alive. It was the primitive equivalent of an iron lung.

After a few weeks I recovered enough to breathe unaided, but my breathing remained very laboured and the bottom half of my body mysteriously withered, leaving me unable to move around. I was effectively paralysed from the neck down. I reverted to babyhood, no longer able to talk or to stop myself from dribbling. I shared a bed with my mum and she had to turn me over when I wanted to change position. With tears in her eyes, she fed me sloppy food because I could no longer chew anything. Her lively, inquisitive daughter had turned into a helpless rag doll.

‘What kind of illness is this?’ my mum and my grandmother kept asking each other. They had never seen anything like it before.

My immediate and extended family rallied round, but some of the villagers thought I’d been cursed and should be left to die.

Solomon, a local witch doctor, was called in to treat me, but he too drew a blank, muttering only that an evil spell had been cast on me. ‘This is caused by black magic,’ he declared.

People in the village started to shun our family. ‘They’ve been struck by a curse from God,’ they muttered. They couldn’t understand my parents’ determination to keep me alive. ‘She’s more or less dead—let her complete her dying,’ they said.

My dad didn’t discover what had happened to me until he returned home on leave six weeks later. He was distraught at this terrible transformation in his formerly healthiest child. ‘We’re not going to give up on our daughter,’ he said firmly whenever the villagers urged him to let me die.

So profound was his distress that he even forgot to shave when he went back to the army. Shaving regularly was a vital part of army discipline, but he told his superiors that he hadn’t bothered because it ‘wasn’t important’. He was promptly demoted for rudeness and lost out on being commissioned as a senior officer. My illness was not only affecting me but also those I loved the most.

Gradually some movement returned to my upper body, although from the waist down it remained like dead wood. Slowly and painfully I learned to pull myself onto my stomach, my thin misshapen legs and feet dangling inertly, and drag myself along the floor using my arms.

My mum and dad were delighted that I had regained some mobility, but this technique didn’t impress the villagers. ‘There’s a young snake living in that house,’ they chorused. ‘It is not right that it should remain amongst us.’ They gathered at our door and said, ‘You need to get rid of that child, otherwise the curse that has possessed her will spread to the other children in the village.’

My mum begged and pleaded with them to leave us in peace, but they were in no mood to compromise.

‘We’re going to burn your house down,’ they informed her. ‘It’s better that you leave now, before you all perish.’

Family members advised my mum to run away and we escaped to my maternal grandparents’ home in a nearby village. We stayed there until my dad was next home on leave.

The behaviour of the villagers made him sad and angry. ‘We have as much right as anyone else to live in our own village,’ he said. ‘This is our ancestral land.’

Defiantly, he rebuilt our home, substituting corrugated iron for straw so that the villagers couldn’t burn it down. But even with the reinforcements we continued to feel under siege.

My dad was confused by my illness. He had a modern, educated outlook but was also steeped in the traditions of the village and wasn’t entirely sure if my illness was a new disease or witchcraft.

He was also torn between staying at home to protect his family and continuing in the military so that he could pay for our schooling and give us the kind of life he had ambitions to provide for us.

Eventually, with a heavy heart, he decided to apply for accommodation in the army barracks in Nairobi for all the family. He thought that we would encounter less prejudice in the capital and hoped that I would be able to get some proper medical treatment there. He also thought that that way he could be closer to us.

His faith in me remained steadfast. ‘One way or another you’re going to recover, Anne,’ he said. ‘The local remedies haven’t worked, but in Nairobi you can get the most modern treatments.’

It was very hard for my dad to uproot his entire family and transplant us all into unfamiliar territory, but he felt he had no choice. He realised he wasn’t going to succeed in changing attitudes in the village and needed to keep his family safe.

So, one year after my illness started, our family gathered up our belongings and bade farewell to the villagers. Our relatives cried, but it was clear that many other people were glad to see the back of us.

In many ways it was a relief to my family to make a new start and our mood as we travelled to Nairobi on the JJ Family bus was quite positive. My mum and dad took turns at holding me on their lap.

The first thing my dad did after we’d settled in was to take me to Kenyatta hospital where I could be examined by a proper doctor. The hospital was overcrowded, dirty and chaotic and overflowing at the seams with people of all ages suffering from everything from malaria to malnutrition.

The doctor examined me carefully, moving my limbs in various directions and noting the shape of my spine.

My family gathered around anxiously. They hoped not only for a diagnosis but also a cure, so that the lively two-and-a-half year old who had suddenly been lost to them could at last be restored to full health.

Although my condition was a mystery to my family, the inhabitants of my village and assorted witch doctors, it wasn’t to the doctor at Kenyatta hospital. He looked at my body flapping helplessly like a fish on the shore and pronounced flatly, ‘This is polio.’

My mum and dad gasped.

I was too young to understand what was going on and lay oblivious to the sickening blow the doctor had just delivered.

‘But all my children have been vaccinated against polio,’ my dad said. ‘My wife walked many miles to the health clinic with Anne to make sure she had the vaccine.’

Some Kenyans chose not to vaccinate their offspring because they thought that whatever substance those strange syringes were putting into children’s bodies was a plan of the white man to reduce the African population. My family, however, didn’t share that view.

The doctor shrugged. ‘That’s too bad. But it happens sometimes. Maybe the vaccine was out of date and not that effective.’

He explained that the polio virus had attacked my spine, entering in an asymmetrical way and leaving it curved in two places. Some muscles had completely wasted away, though some function remained in others.

‘What can you do for her?’ my dad asked.

‘I’m sorry, there is nothing we can do for her now,’ said the doctor, shaking his head sadly. ‘She can have some physiotherapy to improve the movement in the muscles that are still working and a plaster cast to straighten out the limbs, but we can’t restore movement. We can’t repair the nerves the virus has destroyed.’

My mum started to cry. My dad put his arm around her and did his best to comfort her.

Polio is a virus carried in water and food that causes nerve damage. It attacks different parts of the body, leaving them withered and lifeless. There is a great deal of knowledge about how to prevent it now, but because it has been successfully eradicated in most of the world it is regarded as a disease of the past and not one that researchers are looking into anymore.

As I lay quietly on the examination table my dad sighed heavily, wondering what kind of life lay ahead for me. One thing was certain though: things were not going to be easy.

Still, he was determined to try to make the best of it. ‘Well, thank God my daughter has survived,’ he said. ‘We will find a way to make life as good as possible for her.’ He stroked my hair sadly. ‘You are a strong girl, Anne, and I know that somehow you will overcome all of this. I didn’t give you the middle name Olympia for nothing. I know that despite your polio you will still show the world how strong and powerful you are.’

I didn’t understand what he was talking about and was absorbed in looking at the strange surroundings of the hospital, a place that looked nothing like the traditional village I had spent all of my life in. Things were already changing for me.

Our family moved into Kahawa barracks and without any fuss adapted to my newly diagnosed disability. My dad was given a small two-roomed place which was more luxurious than our home in the village because it was made of stone and had running water and electricity. My mum lavished enormous care and attention on me. Because she couldn’t do farming in Nairobi, she spent much more time doing knitting and needlework and completely devoted herself to her children. I lacked for nothing and she knew instinctively everything that I needed in order to thrive. She made sure I was always clean and comfortable and played with me a lot. My favourite foods were beans and sweet potatoes with fermented milk, mixed with dried leaves and mashed together into a thick paste. She often cooked this for me because she knew how much I loved it.

One of the best things about our new life was that nobody wanted to burn our house down anymore. Nobody living in the barracks pronounced that our family was cursed because of my disability.

Back in the village, our extended family took over the farming of my dad’s land so that we didn’t have to worry about it being neglected.

The doctors at Kenyatta hospital referred me to an orthopaedic hospital, Kabete, on the outskirts of Nairobi. The doctors there were very familiar with cases like mine and, as the doctor at Kenyatta hospital had predicted, put me in a heavy, uncomfortable plaster cast from my feet to halfway up my ribcage with just a space between my legs to allow me to urinate and defecate. I was very floppy and my knees and elbows were starting to bend. The doctors said that the plaster would straighten my muscles and help me to grow to a normal height. You see some polio survivors in Africa whose knees are bent permanently because they were not put into plaster.

‘I know it will be hard for you to put up with the plaster, Anne, but this is the best chance you have to straighten out your twisted body,’ the doctors explained.

I had to endure this for about a year, which would be hard enough for an adult but was particularly tough for a little girl like me. I couldn’t understand why my body was suddenly locked into this horrible white material. In the village I’d adapted well to only being able to use the top half of my body, but being trapped inside the plaster often made me cry. It was the worst kind of prison and always became unbearably itchy. A new cast was put on every three months and each time the medical staff removed the old plaster they found many wounds underneath it where I had managed to dig my finger or a spoon through the plaster to scratch the maddening itches. Sometimes lice got under my plaster and bred there in the warm conditions.

While I was in the cast my mum carried me around everywhere. My sisters Alice and Jane were very good to me and found ways to adapt their games so that I could join in. We liked to play a game with bottle tops where the person who could make the tallest pile was the winner. My hands used to shake a lot and my sisters helped me to steady them as I tried to place one bottle top over another. Unwittingly, they were helping with my rehabilitation.

The hospital staff always used a noisy saw to remove the old plaster and its harsh screech made me cry, but afterwards my body felt so free. I was allowed a few plaster-free days before the new plaster was applied. At these times one of my sisters would fling me onto her back. It was much easier for my family to carry me around when I was plaster-free.

To me the plaster was just a heavy burden—I couldn’t understand the advantage of it at all. Sometimes I poured ink from my dad’s fountain pen onto it so that it didn’t look boring plain white. My sisters helped me decorate it. We giggled over the designs we created and it made the whole thing a little bit easier for me to bear. When I got bored I would pick up sharp sticks and make chipped patterns in the plaster. Whether I liked it or not, it was part of me and so I just had to find ways to live with it.

My mum and dad did their best to stay cheerful, but both were devastated by my condition. Every time they looked at me they saw the happy, active child I had been before the virus had struck. Seeing their little girl struggle with a partially paralysed body caused them great pain.

‘Your sickness is like a knife going through my heart,’ my dad would often say sadly.

My mum and dad were members of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God and when I arrived at church with my mum, the people said, ‘Let that crippled child come forward and we will pray for her.’

Reluctantly my mum took me to the front of the church, where a group of congregants shook me hard and pulled my legs. I can still remember the agony of that pulling.

‘Don’t cry, child. We’re trying to cast out the demons in your body,’ they said.

‘Leave the poor girl alone,’ my mum said. ‘She has suffered enough.’

She and my dad were very unhappy with the church for the attitude they adopted towards me. But both were devout Christians, so they continued to attend services there.

When my mum returned to the village for a visit she encountered similar attitudes. Even though we were no longer living there, people wanted to come to our house to pray for the demons inside me to be cast out. They told my mum she needed to slaughter goats and sacrifice them if she wanted me to get better, but my mum and dad refused to get involved with these superstitious rituals.

‘Our daughter has polio and she’s trying to get help,’ my mum said firmly.

Although we didn’t encounter problems in the barracks, there was plenty of prejudice in Nairobi too. My brother and sisters faced abuse because of my disability when they attended school. ‘Our parents say we shouldn’t play with you because your sister is a cripple and you will bring bad luck to us,’ their schoolfriends said. But they ignored their jibes, loyally defending me and doing their best to protect me. They carried me on their backs to wherever they were going to play and put me down nearby so that I could be part of what was going on. When they climbed trees to pick fruit, they made sure they threw some down for me to eat.

My brother was often busy playing football with the other boys or killing animals or birds with a slingshot, so I didn’t get too involved with his games, but Alice, Jane and I often played together. To them, I wasn’t a girl with a disability, but simply their sister Anne.

My dad gave me the pet name Mamy, a term of love and respect, and my mum did everything for me—bathing me, wiping my bottom and putting me to bed, helped by my brother and sisters. No child could have been more loved and cherished by their family than I was by mine.

My family became very sensitive to my difficulties, but not all of my relatives understood my condition so well. I used to have long hair and one of my earliest memories is of sitting uncomfortably on the knee of an aunt while she plaited my hair in cornrows. Sitting in that position caused me great pain and I began to cry.

‘That girl’s body is aching all over. Don’t hurt her more by plaiting her hair,’ my dad said.

Although at that time I wasn’t fully aware that I was disabled, I was aware that I was different from other children and my parents spent a lot of time reassuring me. They told me that I was a beautiful, intelligent girl who would succeed in life. ‘Don’t listen to what anyone else says. You’re beautiful on the inside and the outside and everything will be fine,’ my dad often said. ‘Your middle name is Olympia and your destiny is to be great.’

When he returned home at the end of the day he always called out, ‘Where is my rose flower?’

My heart lifted when I heard him utter those words.

When I first went to Kabete I didn’t pay too much attention to the other patients, but by the time I was four I began to notice that there were others like me at the centre. I became friendly with a little girl called Rosa who also had polio and we used to play together at the hospital.

When I was four-and-a-half years old the staff at Kabete decided that I didn’t need to be in plaster any longer. The day I heard that news I clapped my hands together and whooped with joy. I thought that at long last my body would be left in peace. For a few months, it was. But my relief was short-lived.

‘It’s time to fit you with some callipers, Anne,’ the staff told me. I’d no idea what they were talking about, but I didn’t like the sound of it.

I cried when I was fitted with my first pair of callipers and crutches. They felt almost as restrictive as the plaster. I felt cheated. I had simply exchanged one prison for another.

The aim of the callipers was to keep my legs straight and help me to walk, but I could only wear them for an hour at a time at first because they hurt me so much. They were clamped to the whole of my legs, with an extension for the lower part of my ribcage. The metal was held to my legs with leather straps. The whole contraption was very hot and uncomfortable, totally impractical for use in a hot African country.

My right leg was a few inches shorter than the left and I was given ugly black polio boots to wear, one a few inches higher than the other to balance my uneven legs. I hated wearing these boots almost as much as wearing the callipers. I looked longingly at the other children of my age who ran around barefoot or in flip flops.

I did enjoy the gentle, relaxing physiotherapy treatment on offer at Kabete, but sometimes the physiotherapists pulled my tendons to stretch my legs and it was so painful that I used to scream. I grew to hate doctors in white coats and associated them only with pain. I tried to accept my situation, but I had reached an age where all I wanted was to be like the other children who ran around the barracks in nothing more than a few flimsy clothes.

Chapter Three Joyland

When I was four-and-a-half years old my dad found out about a boarding school for children with disabilities called Joyland School for the Physically Handicapped and decided that that would be the best possible place for me to go. English missionaries from the Salvation Army ran the school and the standard of education was said to be very high there. For my dad the school combined his love of education and of all things English, so he was delighted when I secured a place there.

There were actually two schools—one in Thika, near Nairobi, and one in Kisumu, about four hours’ drive from our village. It was decided that I would attend the latter.

I was devastated when my dad broke the news to me. I was used to being close to my mum day and night and the idea of being separated from her was too much to bear. My mum did everything for me—how would I survive without her? And how would I manage without my sisters? I was sure that nobody else would be able to play games so well with me.

‘Please don’t make me go. I’m scared. I can’t manage without all of you,’ I sobbed. I was surrounded by love and suddenly that love was going to be snatched away from me.

‘You can come home every three months for the school holidays,’ my dad said.

I had no concept of how long three months would last for, but I didn’t like the sound of it at all. And I didn’t want to be away from my family for even one day.

But my dad insisted. ‘You know I only have your best interests at heart, Anne,’ he said, stroking my hand. However much I cried, he remained determined I should go to school.

Finally the day dawned and my mum and dad took me to Kisumu on the bus. I sobbed throughout the journey and my mum spent all her time trying to hush me and wipe away my tears.

‘This school will be very good for you,’ she said, ‘and you’ll be coming home in the holidays, so we won’t be apart for too long. We are fortunate, too, that the Salvation Army makes no charge to attend the school.’

I wasn’t convinced.

‘I’m expecting great things from you, Anne,’ my dad said gently, ‘and how will you achieve in life if you don’t go to school? We’re lucky to have found such a nice school for you. They are used to looking after children like you and your life will be much easier for you than at an ordinary school. You won’t have to struggle here and so you can really concentrate on getting a good education.’

‘I don’t care about my education, I just want to be at home with all of you,’ I said.

Nothing my parents said could console me and when we arrived at the school my face was crumpled from so much crying. My dad carried me through the gates and then put me down in the grounds.

I became hysterical because I knew that I was about to be parted from my mum and dad.

Also, the school looked huge to me. I’d never seen anything like it. It was much worse than I’d expected. I’d thought maybe it would be a little school, not a massive place like this. I was sure I’d get lost all the time. And how would I ever be able to walk across the enormous grounds in my crutches and callipers? I could see some of the staff and older children walking around and they all looked like giants compared with me.

Joyland was actually a modern, sturdy building surrounded by beautiful gardens and everything about it was peaceful and well ordered, but even if it had been an exact replica of paradise it wouldn’t have impressed me at that moment. I clung to my mum’s legs and started to wail. I couldn’t imagine life without the woman who lovingly catered for my every need.

Some of the staff members came to greet us and advised my parents that it would be best if they left so that I could get used to my new life.

My mum and dad hugged me and whispered once more that I’d be home for the holidays very soon.

‘Please don’t leave me,’ I begged, but they walked away.

Feeling completely bereft, I stared helplessly at their disappearing backs. I felt completely lost and alone. How could my parents abandon me like that?

I looked around in absolute bewilderment. I was surrounded by strangers.

Then one of them, a well-built, bubbly woman with very short hair, came up to me.

‘I’m Mama Salome,’ she said, beaming. ‘I’m the house mother for your dormitory. I’m going to bring a wheelchair to take you to the place where you’ll be sleeping.’

I didn’t know what she was talking about. I didn’t know what a wheelchair was and I didn’t know that as well as teachers, Joyland employed house mothers, who were, as the name suggests, substitutes for our own mothers.

A few minutes later Mama Salome returned with the chair. I had never seen a chair like that with big wheels attached to it, but I was relieved when she lifted me into it. I was still struggling to get used to my callipers and crutches and it was hard for me to stand up or walk for any length of time. I was exhausted from the journey and all the crying, and desperately wanted to lie down and go to sleep so that I could block out this strange world I was suddenly alone in.

‘We only have two wheelchairs,’ Mama Salome explained, ‘so we use them as taxis to ferry around all the children who have difficulty walking. Sometimes we squeeze two or three children at a time into a chair.’

I had already noticed that some of the children could walk without assistance, although others relied on callipers and crutches to get around.

Mama Salome showed me where the spotlessly clean bathrooms were and demonstrated how the flushing toilets and showers worked. I was terrified by the sound of the flushing and the ferocious splashing of the water from the shower. Later I discovered that many of the children were so frightened by these strange contraptions that the first time they saw them they ran away.

At home my mum had washed me using a bucket of water. I hadn’t been able to use the traditional long drop toilet—simply a deep hole dug into the earth—so she had allowed me to defecate onto a piece of paper that she then took outside to the long drop. Here, because the toilets were so clean and there were no stairs to navigate, the children could easily crawl on their hands and knees to them, something that would have been very unpleasant at a long drop toilet. All the facilities at the school were designed to make life as easy as possible for children with physical disabilities.

Next I was shown the place where I was sleeping, which Mama Salome explained was called a dormitory. I had never seen such a big room for sleeping in before, nor so many beds lined up in neat rows. They looked very comfortable, but I couldn’t lie down and sleep yet.

Next Mama Salome offered to help me unpack. She folded the clothes that my mum had packed for me, but then started scratching her head.

‘Where is your underwear, Anne?’ she asked. ‘There doesn’t seem to be any here.’

At first I didn’t know what she was talking about and felt very embarrassed that I hadn’t brought something with me that was apparently important.

At home I had always worn trousers and it had made life easier not to wear any underwear. At Joyland, though, all children had to wear underwear underneath their uniform of brown tunics or trousers and yellow blouses or shirts.

‘Never mind. I’m sure we can find something for you,’ Mama Salome said kindly. ‘Come, I’ll show you around a bit more.’

Joyland was surrounded by a wire fence. The staff room, library and Salvation Army major’s house were all close to the main gate. There was also a nursery school and I saw young children there wearing the tiniest callipers and crutches. I soon discovered that they were taught independence from a very early age.

There was a tailoring room where uniforms were made to fit each child, because many of the children did not fit standard clothes. Those with curved spines or misshapen limbs were given specially made clothes that fitted perfectly and felt very comfortable.

All the buildings were surrounded by well-tended flowerbeds. ‘The more able-bodied children look after these,’ Mama Salome explained.

After all the events of the day, I was relieved when it was finally time to crawl into bed. I was used to sharing a bed with my mum or my sisters and it felt strange and lonely having a whole bed to myself. I missed the warm bodies and breath of the members of my family as I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning I began to learn about how things worked at Joyland. The school day was highly structured, unlike life at home, which was much more laidback.

The house mothers woke us up at the same time every day. When I first arrived Mama Salome helped me to get dressed, as I was unable to manage this by myself, but the emphasis was on teaching us to become independent.

I was allowed to have breakfast in the dormitory at first, as I was unable to get to the dining room, but before long I managed the journey on my crutches and callipers and joined the others.

Our meals always followed a similar pattern—porridge for breakfast, maize and beans for lunch, and ugali for supper, a form of maize with vegetables. We were also given tinned salmon and tuna regularly and I grew to love eating them. The only fish I had tasted before was tilapia. We were given a big chunk of cheese three times a week and at first I thought it tasted like soap and used to trade it for fish. Eventually, though, I developed a taste for it.

Whenever I cried because I was missing my family, Mama Salome put her arms around me and said, ‘Don’t cry, my child, you and all the other children are here so that you can have a better life.’

She knew all the children in her dormitory very well and made sure all of us were well cared for and happy. She had a little bedsit next to our beds where she cooked her own food.

Although the children at Joyland had all sorts of disabilities, we were all equal and nobody stared at anyone else as if they were a freak. Whatever the disability, everyone fitted in. There were plenty of children who had been disabled by polio as well as those with conditions like cerebral palsy. Some children used to dribble and were unable to talk, but the staff found a way to make sure they joined in with everybody else.

A lot of love and care went into supporting us and as the weeks went by I stopped crying and actually began to enjoy myself. The physical longing to return home began to subside, although I still missed my family very much. The environment was comfortable, stimulating and much more suited to people with disabilities than the barracks in Nairobi. More importantly, I was surrounded by kindness. I began to realise that the school’s name was an accurate one—it really was a land full of joy.

I grew to appreciate the calm order and superb facilities at the school. There was a swimming pool and a gym for rehabilitation. I cried the first time they tried to get me to go into the swimming pool, though, because I thought it was like the river in our village at home, which was full of snakes and crocodiles lying in wait. Eventually the staff managed to explain to me that it was safe to get into the pool.

The gym was an empty hall furnished only with mats to lie down on and some walking rails. A physiotherapist who knew what kind of movements would benefit our limbs taught us what was called PE but was more like rehabilitation. She used to place me gently on my back, remove my callipers and try to stretch my legs. The more able children threw a ball at each other. However severe a child’s disability, the teachers and physiotherapists made sure everyone was included in these sessions.

We were placed in different dormitories according to our ages. There were four boys’ dormitories on one side of the site and four girls’ dormitories on the other side. The lights were switched off at 8 p.m. sharp and until that time we sang our hearts out.

Mama Salome often taught us new songs—hymns and traditional African songs—and encouraged us to compose our own music. As we sang she said, ‘If God is looking down from heaven right now, He will be so pleased with all of you.’

As part of the drive to make us self-sufficient we were taught how to wash our own clothes. Often we didn’t do a good job and the house mothers had to rewash them for us, but at least we tried. We were also taught how to fold our clothes and make our beds, and doing both quickly became a habit.

At home we all used tree bark to clean our teeth, but at school I was given two alien things instead—a toothbrush and toothpaste. At first I hated the feel of the brush and the minty taste of the toothpaste, but I soon got used to it and found I preferred it to tree bark.

Lessons were 35 minutes long. I loved Swahili, English and music, but hated mathematics, and also art, because I couldn’t draw. The standard of teaching was very high. A lot of money had gone into the school and the missionaries wanted to make sure we did well academically. We followed the same curriculum as other Kenyan schoolchildren, but we had some British textbooks and our education was a mix of Kenyan teaching and that of different European countries like England and Holland, where some of the Salvation Army people came from.

The headmaster was a man called Sammy, who was very popular with all the children. He put a lot of effort into making us all laugh. In the middle of an apparently serious conversation he would climb up onto the desks and dance. It was impossible to feel cross about anything when we watched Sammy performing. He used to make up songs for me about how much my dad loved me and that made me feel really good.

I was in a class with children of all different ages—some children didn’t start at Joyland until they were a few years older than me but had to start in the first class because they had never received any education before.

At first I hated having to go to lessons. All I wanted to do was play with my dollies like any other girl of my age, but I soon overcame my dislike of the lessons and began to soak up the information my teachers gave me. I swelled with pride when I won an award for my handwriting.

To begin with I was very nervous in maths lessons, but once I learned to relax I began to do well. I even managed to bring about a change in our teacher’s approach to learning. He was extremely strict and caned us if we failed the tests he set us, even though the school policy was not to cane the children. When I failed one test I fell on the floor crying, asked to use the toilet and then locked myself in to avoid being caned. I refused to come out until the end of the lesson. When the Salvation Army bosses heard about this, they were furious with the teacher and made sure that he stopped caning children. He was unhappy about the ban and was scornful about the white people, who he said were ‘too soft’.

I started to do well in all my subjects and wondered if my dad’s prediction about my middle name Olympia really would come true one day. For the first time in my life, I started to feel successful.

I also made friends at Joyland. One was called Abigail. She was a few years older than me and was in one of the dormitories for the older girls. She was a lovely friendly girl who wanted to make sure that everyone was happy. She made me feel safe and protected.

I was also friendly with two girls called Monica and Grace. We would sit outside together playing with our dollies and giggling. We tried to do knitting with sticks and grass and fell about laughing at our rather poor attempts.

I still felt very homesick and sometimes I burst into tears when I thought about my mum and everyone else at home.

‘Don’t cry, Anne,’ said Monica. ‘You can have my dolly, that will make you feel better.’

‘And have my book too,’ said Grace, putting her arms around me and trying to wipe my tears away.

I still missed home, but my friends certainly made me feel more comfortable at school.

My best friend was a girl called Sarah. She had the luxury of one fully functioning leg and we all thought she was extremely able. Sometimes she stood up and danced for us or proudly walked for a short distance without the calliper that supported her bad leg. She was able to wear sandals and as I stared at my heavy polio boots I was very envious of her.

Generally, all the children got along well together. Of course we sometimes had disagreements and insulted each other, but like quick-drying showers these fallouts didn’t last for long. The emphasis on singing really bound us together as a group. We sometimes entered singing competitions, competing against able-bodied schools, and to our immense delight we always won.

One of the unexpected pleasures about Joyland was the library. I had learned my ABC from my family before going to school, but to begin with I couldn’t read. I started off using colouring books containing cut-out dolls and a cut-out range of outfits for them to wear. I also loved looking at books containing pictures of other countries.

The library was full of European books, along with a few Kenyan ones. Once I had learned to read, I read the children’s books over and over again. Jack and the Beanstalk was one of my favourites. We weren’t allowed to take the books home with us, but because I knew the stories so well I could recite them almost word for word to my sisters and brothers when I saw them in the holidays. However many times I reread the stories, I never tired of them.

My dad instilled a love of books into me and all my sisters and brothers from an early age. Other soldiers would go to the mess to drink when they’d finished working, but he would bring home books from the barracks library and read all kinds of enchanting children’s stories to us or listen to educational programmes on the radio with us. He really was a very devoted father.

I took off fast with my reading and writing. It was as enjoyable as playing for me. I also soon learned to join in with the tricks and games of the other children. If Mama Salome left her room after she’d cooked herself some tasty food, we sneaked in and licked out her pots. When she returned to wash up, she would see a trail of telltale finger marks around them.

‘Who’s been licking out my pots?’ she would ask, trying to sound cross. None of us ever wanted to own up.

There was a big organisation called Kindernottif, based in Europe, that raised some money for the school. The children also had individual sponsors and mine were members of a church in Germany. They sent me a beautiful doll that could blink with its eyelids and eyelashes. Not all of our dolls were so fancy—we used to try to make simple ones out of sticks. We were asked to write thank-you letters to our sponsors and sometimes they took photos of us holding the gifts they had sent us.

Along with our academic subjects, we girls were taught how to bathe properly. Health professionals came to talk to us about good hygiene—keeping our nails short and our hair combed. At first I struggled to comb my hair, but after a while I got to grips with it. My hair was longer than that of some of the other girls and the staff told my parents to cut it short to make it easier to manage.

My dad used to give me a soap called Fa that smelled of wild flowers and sometimes my friends asked me if they could use it. I loved the smell of their soap as well and sometimes got tired of my own. Giggling, we would agree to swap. We enjoyed smelling a little bit different from usual when we showered.

Although I adapted well to Joyland, I counted the days until I returned home for the first time a few months later. My mum came on the bus to pick me up and as soon as I saw her I flung my arms around her neck.

‘Oh, Anne, you’ve grown a lot,’ she said. ‘I can see that this place is treating you well. We’ve all missed you so much.’

On the long bus journey home I chattered all the way about the different things I was doing at Joyland. My mum listened patiently. ‘You’re certainly different on this journey than on the one when we took you there,’ she smiled.

My family were excited when I arrived home. We spent the first few days swapping stories. Excitedly, I told everyone about the running water, showers and flushing toilets at Joyland. They all seemed very impressed.

I had also now seen white people for the first time. I discussed these strange creatures with my sisters. We concluded that they weren’t the same kind of humans as us. I believed that they never went to the toilet and could not die.

Although I’d got used to living away from home, I slotted back into family life straight away. I loved the pampering I received at home. My dad slaughtered a chicken in my honour, saying, ‘Now I have all my family together.’ Chicken was a luxury that wasn’t eaten too often in most families.

I taught my siblings the songs I’d learned at school. They were very different from the songs they were learning. I proudly showed off the pens and crayons I had been given at school and received admiring gasps from my brothers and sisters, who didn’t possess such luxuries. My school books were also better than my brothers’ and sisters’ books and I was wearing nice clothes that the Salvation Army had given me.

When the other children in the barracks saw the good things I’d returned home with, they suddenly wanted to be my friend. But their parents forbade them from playing with me. ‘Don’t touch her or you’ll get an infection,’ some of them said.

I could never understand why these parents thought that my toys were safe for their children to be in contact with when I wasn’t.

Many of my aunts and uncles visited me while I was at home and showered me with love and affection.

‘Anne, you’re doing so well, you look so strong and healthy,’ they exclaimed.

It was hard returning to Joyland after having such a lovely time at home, but I soon settled back into the school routine. I loved being at home but I also loved school, where I felt equal with the others. School also made me aware that some children were less able than me. School and home became my two heavens.

Christmases at the school were very special. A strange-looking man called Father Christmas would give us all a gift with our name on it. I hadn’t known anything about these western traditions before I started at Joyland and felt worried at first because Father Christmas was dressed from head to toe in red. Plain red is associated with lightning in the area where my family’s village is, so I was afraid to approach him in case he struck me with lightning. When the staff reassured me, I was brave enough to sit on his knee.

As part of the Christmas celebrations every class had to perform a nativity play. I was always given the part of an angel, but one year I became bored at the thought of doing the same thing again and refused point blank.

‘No, I want to be Mary this year,’ I said rather petulantly.

‘No, you are very good at being an angel. You must be an angel,’ my teacher replied.

‘But I want to be Mary. Angels don’t wear callipers and crutches,’ I protested.

The teacher slapped me for my impertinence and I went flying across the room. I wasn’t hurt, but I reported it to one of the Salvation Army staff and the teacher was reprimanded. Violence from staff was extremely rare at Joyland.

I had lost a lot of co-ordination through the polio, but the physiotherapy I received at Joyland helped me to regain some skills. Because I had so much love and positive reinforcement from my family and from the staff at the school, I rarely regarded my disability as a curse, but rather as an inconvenience that I had to work around. Some of the children, though, seemed very miserable about their disability because it had led to their families rejecting them. I always came back to school after the holidays looking immaculate because I had been well looked after, but some of the children came back with scabies because they had been neglected at home. I realised how lucky I was to have a family who loved me.

My years at school were very happy, but by the time I was eight I was more aware that I fitted in at school and at home, but I didn’t fit in with the rest of the world. I felt as if the wider community were shouting in my face, ‘You are so different, Anne!’ because they stared at me wherever I went.

One school holiday when my mum came to pick me up and we got on the bus to go back to Nairobi, the bus conductor said to my mum, ‘You have to hold your crippled daughter on your knee and cover her legs so that nobody sees her.’

I burst into tears at his harsh words but, wanting to avoid a fuss, my mum did as she was told.

I was beginning to understand that the world could be very cruel. Whenever we went out in Nairobi during that school holiday I felt that people’s eyes were burning through my clothes to stare at my withered polio legs. I was convinced that they dismissed me as an inferior cripple. The stares made me self-conscious and withdrawn in the company of strangers and I longed to return to Joyland where the staff worked hard to instil confidence and a strong sense of self-belief into us. As soon as I walked back through the school gates I came alive again.

Chapter Four A Terrible Loss

It was Saturday 30th June 1979, right in the middle of the rainy season. I was nine years old and had been at Joyland for four years. Saturday was the day we sat outside and styled each other’s hair after we had completed our chores. We wore our own clothes at weekends and were all in a happy mood.

The day started like any other. The more able girls weeded the flowerbeds, while the rest of us cleaned our dormitories. Then one of the teachers came in and said abruptly, ‘Oh, Anne Olympia, you need to go home.’

I started laughing and said. ‘I’m not a fool. It’s not closing day yet. I can’t go home until the end of term.’

‘Yes, you can. Get your things together. You have to go home because your mum wants you. Come with me to the office.’

I had no idea what the teacher was talking about, but we had been taught to obey our teachers, so I did as I was told.

When I got to the office I saw my big sister Alice there.

‘Hi, Alice,’ I said breezily. I wondered why she had come to my school. It was usually my mum who picked me up at the end of term and brought me back afterwards.

‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked. ‘The teacher says she wants me at home.’

I was beginning to feel uneasy. Something wasn’t right.

‘Oh, she asked me to collect you,’ said Alice, trying to sound casual but not quite managing it.

‘But where is Mum? And aren’t you supposed to be at school?’

‘Come, Anne, we need to return home,’ she said, without offering any further explanation. ‘There’s a taxi outside waiting to take us to the bus station.’

She had got a bus from Webuye to Kisumu town and from there had got a taxi to Joyland.

I hurriedly packed some things and anxiously followed Alice into the waiting taxi and then got the bus to my mum’s village. My cousins and uncles were gathered at the bus stop with a bicycle to transport me to the centre of the village. I couldn’t understand why we were there rather than in Nairobi and why there was such a large group of family members waiting for me.

As I was wheeled along the dusty track local women kept running up to me, wailing and crying, ‘Oh, Ruth, you have died and left this flower. Who is going to look after it now?’

What on earth were they talking about? Surely my lovely mum couldn’t be dead. The village women must have made a mistake.

I started screaming. ‘Where’s Mum? Where’s Mum?’ I cried.

Nobody answered. We arrived at the main part of the village and the terrible truth was confirmed: I could see that my mum was laid out on a bed outside her family’s home.

Nothing felt real. My mum had been a strong and healthy woman and she wasn’t old. Was I stuck in a horrible dream? I couldn’t take in what was going on.

One of my relatives carefully placed me next to my mum. I flung myself on top of her, willing her to start breathing again.

‘Mum, Mum, wake up! You promised to make me a jumper, where is it?’ I sobbed. I hoped that she would hear me and remember her promise and that would be enough to coax her back to life.

The shock was too much. I told myself that it was all a terrible mistake and that she’d wake up and give me a cuddle very soon. How could she leave me when I needed her so much?

‘I’m sorry, Anne,’ Alice said, with tears in her eyes. ‘We don’t know what happened to her, but she really has gone.’

At that time nobody had mobile phones and few Kenyans had landlines, so circulating good or bad tidings always took a long time. It had taken five days for the news of my mum’s death to reach my dad, who was working in Nairobi. One of his friends had travelled from the village to the district commissioner and asked him if he could get a message to my dad. The district commissioner had sent a telegram to the Department of Defence in Nairobi and only after that had my dad been informed of his wife’s death.

He couldn’t believe it. ‘She only left Nairobi a few days ago and there was nothing wrong with her then,’ he said over and over again.

My mum had been in her village attending a memorial service for her brother, who had recently died, and had collapsed at his graveside and died herself. In those days people were rarely rushed to hospital, nor did they have post-mortems, so the exact cause remained a mystery. As usual when people didn’t have a rational explanation they attributed it to witchcraft and said it was the result of a curse, although why my mum had been cursed nobody knew.

People said that her last words as she set off to pay her respects to her brother were that she hoped my youngest brother Geoffrey would be weaned by the time she returned. He was two and a half and she was struggling to get him off the breast. She hadn’t expected to be gone for long and hadn’t envisaged just how absolute the weaning process would be.

I couldn’t think straight. I had never thought that my mum might die. She had always been there for me and I had assumed that she always would be. I felt very lost and empty at the thought of continuing life without her and sobbed uncontrollably.

Alice tried her best to comfort me. ‘I promise I will look after you, Anne,’ she said, ‘just like our mum did.’

I was amazed at how strong she sounded.

A carpenter was enlisted to make a coffin to carry the body from my mum’s village to my dad’s village, half a day’s walk away. It was traditional for a wife to be buried in her husband’s village.

I was taken on a bicycle and spent the whole of the bumpy journey crying.

Finally we arrived in my dad’s village. I looked around at the place I had been born in but barely remembered. It was the first time I’d been back since we’d been forced out. I remembered the wild roses growing outside our front door. They were still there.

The village was full of people sitting and weeping. My mum had been a very popular figure and everybody was sharing their memories of her. There’s much to recommend the African system of mourning. People let their grief spill out freely and don’t hold back their emotions. This helps them to heal more quickly.

Nobody paid too much attention to me or asked whether I’d eaten or wanted to wash myself. I thought of how Mum had devoted herself to making sure I had everything I needed. The realisation washed over me in sickly waves that nothing would ever be the same again for me.

My dad was in such deep shock that he could barely comfort us. He looked as if he was in a trance. Although his head had absorbed the news, his heart had not. And he was left with eight children ranging from 16 to two and a half.

I clung onto Alice and during the whole of the mourning period I barely left her side. I took her at her word when she said she would be a replacement mum for me. Whenever she left the room I cried out, ‘Where are you going, Alice? Please don’t leave me.’ I was scared that if I let her out of my sight she would suddenly drop down dead too.

I didn’t fully understand the traditional death rituals of our village, but Alice tried to explain them as best she could. My mum’s body was placed under a tree facing in a particular direction to symbolise the fact that she had been a married woman. Then everyone gathered around to hear the telling of her life story.

The digging of the grave traditionally begins at midnight. I was exhausted by this time and drifted off to sleep in Alice’s arms. Mum’s grave was in the homestead, because that was where married women were buried. We didn’t have a system of cemeteries and people were generally buried close to where they lived.

At least one cow is slaughtered to mark someone’s passing. But first it has to spend the night dancing by the grave. It is hypnotised by people in the village who know how to do such things and then the singing and dancing starts. People sing to send the spirit of the dead person away so that they’re not annoyed with the living and come back and haunt them. When the dancing of humans and cow is complete, the cow is slaughtered and then cooked in a stew to be shared by all the mourners. Different parts of it are given to different families.

Funerals sometimes attract hangers-on because it is the duty of the mourners to provide food for those who come to mourn with them. A death means that poor people can not only come and pay their respects but also feed their children for a few days.

On the third day after the funeral we were taken to the river and had our heads shaved.

‘They say that your hair dies with your mother and you have to start anew with fresh hair,’ Alice explained to me. ‘Don’t look round,’ she urged as we made our way back home. ‘They say the spirit of the dead person is there.’

To me, the mourning period seemed to go on forever. Every day new people appeared and they were still coming a month later. They all wailed and threw themselves on my mum’s grave.

When the mourning period did finally end, I refused to go back to school. I continued to cling to Alice, who tried her best to hide her own grief and be a surrogate mum to me. I was scared that if I became separated from my family again it would only be a matter of time before another person I loved died. And I didn’t want to risk that.

We stayed with my mum’s sister in the village. Nobody said anything to my face, but some people muttered that it should have been me who died, not my mum. Others cried for me and worried who would look after a vulnerable girl like me and the younger children. It was a struggle for a family of eight to be without a mother.

I found it very hard being back in the village after the comfort and support of Joyland. I spent most of my time in the bedroom, seeing only close family members. My world had completely crumbled. Here I was back in the environment where people had been scornful of me, and the one person who had always protected me had gone and wasn’t going to come back. I felt as if I had died with her.

Pure physical survival was difficult because the village wasn’t geared up for people with disabilities. My sisters Jane and Alice brought me water from the river. They tried their best to make me feel better, but they were still young, they too were grieving and it wasn’t the same as having my mum around.

I started looking at the world through different eyes. I realised that it was very difficult to survive without maternal support.

There was some discussion amongst our relatives about who should take in the motherless girls and boys. Only my grandmother wanted me; all the others said I would be a heavy burden. My grandmother really loved me and had often helped my mum to look after me during school holidays. But my dad refused to share his children out. ‘The older ones will help the younger ones and I will do the rest,’ he said firmly.

I missed more than one school term, but eventually my family managed to persuade me to return. My dad told me repeatedly how important it was for me to continue with my studies.

‘You will do your mum proud if you go back,’ he coaxed. ‘Now your mum has died, I’ll try to be both a mum and a dad to you. You must return to school to please both of us.’

Not wanting to do anything that might upset my mum in case she was watching over me, I agreed. My dad took me back on the bus, a journey I had always made with my mum. I was tearful, but my dad urged me to be strong.

The school had regular visiting days when parents could come to see their children.

‘Mum always used to come for visiting days. Will you come instead, Dad?’

‘I promise you that I’ll come and visit you as often as I can, Anne, but sometimes when I’m doing training exercises it will be hard for me to visit,’ he said.

I had to be satisfied with that.

I settled back into the school routine, although I often longed to have my mum back near me.

At first my dad came to visit me often, bringing gifts of army food like corned beef, dried biscuits and sweets, which were big treats for me and the other children in my dormitory. When visiting days came around I would peer out of the gate, anxiously hoping that he would appear. But his visits became less and less frequent.

It was traditional for parents to bring gifts of bananas and bread and for children who received them to share them out with others in the dormitory. One visiting day my dad didn’t come but the girl in the bed next to me had received lots of bananas. How my mouth watered for one of them. In the end I couldn’t contain myself. I pretended to be sick so that I could stay in the dormitory and stole one of her bananas and some of her bread.

She cried when she saw that one of her juicy bananas was missing and I was accused of stealing it. I squashed the banana peel in my hand, but didn’t manage to conceal it very well—I wasn’t a very good liar or thief.

‘Anne, you must apologise to your friend for stealing from her and you must also apologise to God,’ I was told. ‘Your punishment will be to sit alone in the dormitory for half an hour.’

I knew I’d done something wrong. I felt so guilty and vowed never to do anything like that again.

Even though my dad had explained to me that he might not always be able to come and see me, I became increasingly distressed when he didn’t turn up. I started to doubt him and wondered if he no longer loved me because I was disabled. I wrote him a letter accusing him of not loving me enough.

‘I wish Mum had never died,’ I wrote. ‘This would never have happened when she was alive.’ I concluded by saying, ‘I didn’t write an application to be born.’

My dad wrote me a very long letter back, saying how much he loved me. He also sent a letter to the school, asking them to give me extra care. When he couldn’t come to visit me he left money at the school so that they could buy me the things that other parents brought for their children.

The teachers tried their best to be supportive towards me in the months after my mum died. My art teacher, Edward, was especially good. He was particularly well-loved by the pupils and we looked upon him as a father figure, a kind man and a fantastic musician too. He sometimes talked to me about my mum and how her spirit lived on and watched over me even though her body was no longer with us.

‘The Lord is watching over you,’ he said, ‘and so is your mum. You must do well in your studies to do her proud.’

Even though I didn’t see the point of some of the things Edward was saying, it made me feel better to know that he was looking out for me. Like my dad, he believed in me and was convinced that I could go on to achieve great things in life.

‘Your parents gave you the name Olympia because they believed you were going to achieve great things,’ he reminded me. ‘You mustn’t disappoint them.’

I didn’t want to disappoint Edward, but I was hopeless at drawing.

He studied my hands carefully and said, ‘Let’s try and find what those fingers can do. Everybody has a special talent.’

I longed to be able to draw like a pupil called Noah. He could look at someone’s face and translate it into a perfect image on a piece of paper. But however hard I tried, I couldn’t draw half as well as he could. I hoped that Edward was right and that some other talent would emerge.

Happily, it already had. I loved singing every night and my voice turned out to be strong and tuneful. I couldn’t decipher the words to the James Brown songs my dad had listened to, but I could understand all the words in the a capella tunes on biblical themes we were taught, and I loved singing them.

To my delight, the teachers often chose me to be the lead singer when we entered competitions and performed in different churches. They made sure I looked my best and put coconut oil on my hair to make it shine. Singing gave all of us at Joyland a huge amount of pleasure and always lifted our spirits. Anyone who walked around in the evenings would hear sweet music drifting from every dormitory.

The school decided that because my mum was dead and my dad was often absent it would be better if I was adopted. They contacted a German family who agreed to take me. Little was explained to me and I was too young to fully understand what was going on. But I burst into tears when I overheard one of the house mothers talking to one of the Salvation Army officers about sending me away.

‘Does that mean I’ll never see my brothers and sisters again?’ I asked, sobbing.

They looked startled that they’d been overheard. ‘No, no, Anne,’ said the house mother. ‘Please don’t worry, nothing has been decided yet. But if you do move you’ll have a better life—and so many toys.’

I wasn’t worried about the toys, but the thought of suddenly being transplanted into a family of strangers in a strange land and never seeing my own family again filled me with dread.

At that time my family and school were the only worlds I knew and I didn’t want to venture into any others. I became scared to go to sleep in case I woke up in a different place and couldn’t find my way back home. I was convinced that I could be snatched under the cover of darkness, and felt a rising sense of panic every time I watched the sun setting. I had received regular gifts from my German sponsors, high-quality books and toys that weren’t available in Kenya, and had always looked forward to receiving them, but now I was scared to accept them in case it made it easier for me to be taken away from Joyland.

My dad hadn’t visited for a few months and once again I became convinced that he no longer wanted me. I lay down on my bed and sobbed. Things were going from bad to worse. First my mum had died, then my dad hadn’t come to visit and now I was being given away. I began to feel permanently frightened.

I started to sit under a big, shady tree where I had a good view of the front gate. I kept my eyes fixed on that gate in the hope that my dad would appear to take me away. But he never did.

After a few months, just when I’d given up hope of ever seeing my dad again, one of the teachers hurried up to me and said, ‘Oh, Anne, your dad has arrived.’

Joy surged through me. I hugged and hugged my dad. He swung me round and round and seemed just as pleased to see me as I was to see him.

‘Oh, Dad,’ I said, ‘I thought you were never going to come back, I was sure you didn’t love me anymore. I beg you, don’t leave me here any longer. Please take me with you. I want to go home right now. They’re trying to send me away, but I don’t want to go. If they make me leave, I’ll never see any of you ever again.’

My words tumbled out so fast they barely made any sense, and tears rolled down my cheeks, but my dad wiped them away with his handkerchief.

‘What kind of foolish talk is that, Anne?’ he said, stroking my hair. ‘I’m your father and I’ll always be your father. I’ll never abandon you. Please stop worrying.’

Hearing that made me feel very happy. But I was still concerned.

‘I must go home with you now, because things can change,’ I said.

‘Nothing is going to change, I promise you,’ Dad said reassuringly. ‘You’re at Joyland not because we don’t love you or care about you but because this is the best place for you to get a good education and learn how to be independent. I don’t come more often because I can’t get too much time off from the army, that’s all.’

We went to the dormitory and my dad spent a long time playing games with me. Having him all to myself was an exquisite luxury.

‘Don’t worry about anything, Anne,’ he said. ‘I’m going to speak to the Salvation Army people about your future. I’ll make sure that you’re not sent away. None of us wants to lose you.’

Once again he left money with the staff to buy me the things that other parents brought their children because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to visit me often.

‘Just because I can’t be here with you as often as some of the other parents doesn’t mean that I love you any the less,’ he promised me. ‘If I don’t work hard I won’t be able to afford to send all of you children to school, and you know that making sure that all of you get a good education is the most important thing in the world to me.’

I nodded.

‘I do understand, Dad.’

But understanding didn’t make it any easier for me to cope with his long absences.

A few weeks after my dad’s visit to Joyland a pupil called Tom died. We saw him being carried out of the dormitory in his bed with the covers over his face. Many of the children hadn’t come across death before and all of us suddenly became scared of simple things like going to the toilet alone.

We mourned Tom. He had been a very quiet seven-year-old boy. Like me, he had walked on callipers and crutches. I never knew exactly what was wrong with him and we never discovered why he had died.

‘Don’t cry,’ said one of the house mothers soothingly. ‘Tom is at peace now. He’s in heaven and has become one of the stars. You can see him if you gaze at the sky at night.’

Nobody had mentioned anything about stars to me when my mum died. I found it comforting to think that she had become a star too. That night I looked up at the inky black sky, focused on the brightest star and hoped that it was her.

Chapter Five The Coup

I developed a reputation as a real tomboy. Despite the constraints of my paralysed legs, my callipers and my crutches, I loved to climb and to take risks. There were a few bunk beds at Joyland for the more able-bodied children and even though it was way beyond the capacity of a girl with my disability, I sometimes tried to haul myself onto the top bunk using my upper body strength. Sometimes I got stuck, but it didn’t stop me from persevering.

We were expected to wash our hands thoroughly before we went to the dining hall. One day for a joke I decided that I was going to wash my legs too. I went to the sink and removed my callipers. My friend lifted one of my legs up to wash it. I was holding the tap with wet hands and I slipped and fell. Instantly I screamed in agony. I had never felt such severe pain in my life. My leg was trapped under the sink.

There were some builders outside. They rushed over and tried to pull my leg out. My whole body was on fire with pain.

‘Please don’t let me die!’ I cried.

The school nurse put me in a wheelchair and took me in a taxi to Kisumu General Hospital, about half an hour away. The first thing they did was to give me some painkillers, followed by an X-ray, which revealed that my right hip was broken. They put me in plaster, bringing back memories of the time when I was encased in plaster after my polio was first diagnosed. My leg was suspended in mid-air in traction with weights attached to it.

Although the doctors admitted me, they weren’t sure what to do with me. They didn’t know whether my hip was twisted from polio or from the fall. So they referred me to a more sophisticated hospital, Russia Hospital, and I was put on an adult orthopaedic ward there.

I was furious with myself for being stupid enough to try and put my leg in the sink. Although it hadn’t been easy getting around on callipers and crutches, at least I had been mobile. Now I was completely stuck.

At first I loathed being in hospital. The food was bad and I was sometimes left sitting on a bedpan for a long time. But I cheered up twice a week when my friends came to visit me. We played games together and they brought me sweets and filled me in on all the Joyland news. When I became mobile enough to drag myself around, I found the children’s wards and started playing with the other children. The teachers at Joyland also sent work to the hospital for me to do so that I didn’t fall too far behind with my studies.

The school felt very responsible for what had happened, even though it wasn’t their fault. The staff visited me regularly, pampered me and brought me special drinks and sweets.

My friends were good too. Sarah was once given an orange for her supper as a special treat. Instead of eating it all herself, she saved half of it for me, a gesture which really touched me.

She was a mischievous girl who had once stolen a cigarette from the workmen and encouraged me to try it. I had almost choked to death when I tried to inhale. The staff were furious and said the fire on a cigarette was like the fire that burned in hell. ‘If you smoke, you’re heading to hell,’ they told me. I was terrified and never touched a cigarette again.

In hospital I lay back and made the most of all the treats and attention that came my way. The staff treated me very well, at least partly because I was connected to white people. It was four months before I was finally discharged and my hip has never fully healed. To this day it is more twisted than my left and makes a clicking sound.

I had enjoyed being the centre of attention in hospital but I had missed school life and my friends and was delighted that my life was getting back to normal.

A few months after I returned to school the teachers told me I had been selected to be head girl for the year. We were all expecting another girl to be chosen, who was very loud and confident, and when I found out they had chosen me instead I laughed. I had never considered myself head girl material.

‘Why do you think they chose me?’ I asked Mama Salome.

‘Well, you have matured a lot, Anne,’ she said, ‘because of the various problems you’ve had, losing your mother and breaking your hip. We all think you’ll do a good job. You don’t get involved in arguments, you look out for others and want to make sure they’re happy. You’re good at playing the peacemaker.’

Once it had sunk in that they were being serious about wanting me for head girl, I was overjoyed. I felt very proud.

Becoming head girl made me look at myself differently. For the first time I started focusing on what I could do rather than what I couldn’t. Before I had considered myself lacking in so many ways. For a start, I was one of the thinnest in the school and I was worried that some of the students wouldn’t respect me because I was so skinny. In Africa people have more status if they’re fatter because it’s considered a sign of greater wealth. Thinness is associated with poverty. But being thin didn’t seem to cause me any problems in my new role.

My parents had instilled it in me that everyone should be treated the same because we were all equal. I tried to apply these rules and the pupils did seem to respect me.

My main role was to act as peacekeeper and make sure there was no bullying going on. I made sure that all the children were included. I also encouraged the older children to look after the younger ones.

If there was any misconduct from the students I was expected to tell a house mother. Sometimes one of them would come and say, ‘Is there a problem?’ I tried to get the balance right between protecting pupils from the wrath of the teachers and acting responsibly and reporting behaviour that was of real concern. I didn’t like ‘grassing up’ children who had misbehaved and only spoke to the teachers if something very serious occurred.

Back in Nairobi my dad had married a woman called Florence. He asked us to call her ‘Mum’, which none of us was happy about at first because she wasn’t our mum. But because she was so kind and nice and looked after all of us so well, we soon grew to love her, although she could never be a replacement for my beloved mum. My dad had moved into a bigger apartment, which was much more comfortable, and my step-mum made a nice home for the family there. I always looked forward to going home and seeing everybody.

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