Growing Up
I grew up in rural Shurugwi. Ndawora and Rusungunguko were home, and Cha3, which most people call Chachacha, was the closest thing we had to a town. It was not close in the way city people mean close. It was still a long walk under a sun that did not care how tired you already were.
The nights there were truly dark. Not city dark, where there is always some light leaking from somewhere. Real dark. The kind that makes your own thoughts sound loud in your head. Mornings came before the sun had properly woken up. You would feel dust in your lungs and dew on your feet, and chores would already be waiting on your back before school was even a thought in your mind. We had no WiFi. We had no electricity in the way people in town take for granted. We had no computers. We had survival, and we had the small jokes people tell so that pain does not win completely.
Rural life has a rhythm that everyone in the village knows. You learn it young, or you get left behind. Before classes, before games, before dreams, there was farming. Hoeing, planting, weeding, carrying water, fixing fences, feeding chickens, stacking firewood. Your hands were always busy and your body was always tired. And when the fields were done, there were the cattle.
Herding cattle was not romantic. I need to say that clearly because people sometimes picture green hills and peaceful afternoons. For me it was long hours in the sun or cold wind. It was walking paths that ate your shoes. It was shouting at stubborn beasts that did not care about your plans. It was sitting alone on a rock while the herd grazed and the day slowly died around you. The worst part was watching time pass while you knew other children were somewhere else living a different kind of childhood.
On Christmas and Easter, when other children were in new clothes, visiting relatives, eating good food, and laughing in yards full of music, I was often on the road with the herd. Christ's holidays, they call them. For me they were still cattle days. I watched happiness pass like cars on a road I was not allowed to walk on. I smiled when I had to. I suffered in silence when I did not. I still remember the smell of dust and cow dung while music drifted from houses I would never enter. That memory sits in my chest even now.
That silence became a habit. Pain in our area was private. You did not cry where people could see. You swallowed it, prayed if you prayed, and kept moving. I thought being strong meant never bothering anyone with your hurt. Looking back, I think that belief cost me years of loneliness. I learned to carry grief like firewood. Heavy, ordinary, and never spoken about.
Older boys bullied me because I was small, quiet, and different. They pushed me. They mocked my voice. They took my things. They made jokes that felt like knives. I did not fight back much because I did not know how, and I did not want trouble at home where there was already enough struggle. So I learned to disappear inside myself. Walk alone. Think alone. Hurt alone. At night I would replay their words until I believed them. That is what bullying does. It does not end when they stop. It moves into your head and lives there rent free.
My grandmother was very kind. She helped people. She fed people. She prayed. But she also would not take nonsense. She had a soft heart and a strong mouth when she had to. She taught me that love is not weakness, even when the world tries to teach you the opposite. She was one of the few people who made me feel seen without making me perform happiness I did not have.
I was never social. Even as a kid I liked being alone, doing my own things quietly, without bothering anyone. I did not know how to ask for help. I still struggle with that even now. Sometimes I would rather suffer in silence than disturb someone. Many times I saw my quietness like a curse, like something wrong with me. Teachers called me shy. Relatives called me strange. I started to believe I was broken in a way that could not be fixed.
But later I learned something important. God can use what you think is a weakness. God can turn things for good. My quietness became the space where I could think, focus, and build. It became part of who I am, even though it started as something that made me feel invisible.
My grandmother raised me while my parents worked far away. That distance was normal in our world, but it still hurt. You grow up knowing people love you, but also knowing they are not there when you want them most. You hear about them on the phone. You wait for money messages. You learn not to expect too much because expecting hurts more when nothing comes.
One day her old phone died. That phone was our bridge. News, money messages, and the little comfort of hearing a familiar voice. She walked for miles to the Cha3 repairman, under a sun that felt like it was sitting on your shoulders. The man looked at it, shrugged, and named a price that might as well have been a mountain. She came back slow, quiet, defeated, like the road had stolen her voice.
I watched her sit down and just stare. No complaining. No shouting. Just that heavy silence when a person is tired of fighting. It broke something in me. I was too young to fix money problems, but I felt responsible anyway. That is what poverty does to children. It makes you feel like the family's pain is your fault because you cannot solve it.
I promised myself I would learn how things work so I could fix them. Not to look smart. Not to impress anyone. Just so my people would not have to beg a broken world for mercy. That promise came from sadness, not ambition. I did not dream of being rich. I dreamed of my grandmother never having to walk home with empty hands again.