Tales of a former street kid’s desperate fight for survival

For some people, it never rains misfortune but it pours. When you meet James Okello, at first you don’t realise the kinds of troubles he has gone through in life because he’ll tell you with a happy smile on his face that God has purpose for everyone, despite their troubled pasts. He narrates to Joseph Oindo his difficult life journey… I consider myself a misfortune child whom God has lifted from some dark past. When I was born in 1975, I became an orphan only six years later. My father was the first to die in a road accident when I was five while my mother followed a year later, succumbing to cancer of the liver, living me at the mercy of a stepmother. I was the only child from my mother’s side born in a small village in western Kenya. As is often the norm at funerals back in my country, people make promises that they soon forget to accomplish. A number of relatives and family friends promised to help me go through education and life but that was not to be. Trouble started setting in after the burial of my mother. Even at that young age, I could realise that my stepmother didn’t mean well for me. I could be given difficult tasks to perform while her children just relaxed or played. Sometimes, I was physically and emotionally abused. She used to preserve some of her choicest abuses to my late mother, even going to an extent of telling me that she was a prostitute. I also remember that when I was in primary school, she favoured her children. They could be bought educational resources like books while she refused to give similar treatment to me. When I was nine years old, I ran away from home because I couldn’t endure the suffering anymore. I went to live with my maternal grandmother though she was also suffering from acute poverty. But it was a case of better live in a house where you live in peace than where there is stinging vindictiveness. Unfortunately, tragedy struck and my grandmother was called by God only two years later. So I had to face the sad prospect of returning home. However, I didn’t feel welcome there and at the age of 12 I had to find a way out. I just decided one day to walk away from home and go to Kisumu Town, where my uncle lived. But the intimidating problem was that I didn’t even know where he lived with his family! For some three months or so, I survived in the streets as a street boy. This was another difficult episode in my life. It was a struggle for survival. You never knew what you were going to eat when the day came. We used to sleep in the cold, depending on the charity of good Samaritans through begging. My uncle one day discovered me foraging the streets and took me to his house in one of the slums in town. I resumed my studies and even though living in the slums had its fair share of challenges, at least I had roof over my head. But another dramatic twist of misfortune struck when I was 16. My uncle was retrenched from his work and this meant that he had to relocate home with his family. Since two of his children were in secondary school and he had no work to rely on now, it meant that I had to drop out of school in Form Two. I refused to travel with them home, choosing instead to look for casual work on construction sites since I didn’t want to be a bother to him anymore. I also did stints in small hotels as a waiter. Actually, I could grab any job that came my way just for survival. But even with these difficulties, my love for books never waned. I could read anything I came across, including picking discarded newspapers from the streets. I also had some friends I used to borrow from books, novels, magazines – anything that could be read. I did odd jobs for five years. Then one day, a friend advised me that I could do my Form Four exams as a private candidate. I registered soon after the advice and wonder of wonders; I managed to get grades that enabled me to join university! I survived on government bursary while in university and could also find jobs in between the semesters to supplement this. Then four years ago, a friend from my college days invited me to Kigali. In Kigali, I started as a waiter in one of the bars in Remera as I looked for an opening, earning a paltry Rwf50,000. Then I started getting teaching jobs in various schools and used my savings to open a salon in Kabuga. The salon is doing quite well now after a jerky start and I’m also a secondary school teacher in Kabuga. I thank God for seeing me through the difficulties and I’m a living testimony that like biblical Job, God can test you through suffering but when you keep the faith, then He will eventually open the door of fortune.