Stories from the Sirua Aulo Academy by 8th grade students.  All the stories have been slightly edited for clarity and punctuation.

THE SIRUA AULO ACADEMY by Edwi

I didn’t tuck my shirt,
I didn’t mess in the kitchen.
I didn’t mash teacher’s chalk
the one he always holds tenderly.

I didn’t annoy the director
by smearing muddy fingerprints
on prestine walls,
or turn the school water tank into
Thompson Falls.

There is an endless list of evil
things I didn’t do,
like sneaking out of school in full
school attire.

For sure-
Even as I write this with
A pure and innocent heart
I didn’t do my homeowrk
So I am doomed right from the start.

THE DAY WHEN I WAS A STREET CHILD by Esweram Anyango

It was the day I have been waiing for. I woke up from the land of slumber just at the crack of dawn.  The birds were singing melodiously, cows were mooing, goats were bleating and bulls were bellowing, just to cherish the new day.

I gave thanks to God then sprang out of my bed, leaving my blanket in a sympathetic heap.  Tip-toed to the frog’s kingdom where I took a blood-curdling shower that left me shivering like a malaria stricken patient.  The sun’s rays were colouring the eastern horizon orange. This singnalled the prosperity of the day.

I walked into our bungalow where I took a finger-licking breakfast.  After eating I clothed myself in my best attire.  My honest mirror told me I was impaccable and I walked magestically to school.

When I arrived everything was quiet, like a deserted cemetary.  A plethora of questions criss-crossed my mind, but when I entered the classroom the first question my teacher asked was, “Have you left your mother at home?”

That question made me stare at him.  I could not speak for what came into my mind was that my lovely and caring mother had gone to the land of no return.  I tried to tell the teacher that my mother was at the hospital, but before I could finish he told me my mother had passed away.

Without wasting time or asking any more questions I dashed like an arrow up the stairs to my room where I spent countless hours thinking of how my life will be without my lovely Mum.  It seemed like the world won’t want me. Where will I stay? Whom will give me food like my Mum? How will I go to school?  I thought in my heart that it was the end of my schooling.

The day when my Mum was taken to be put in the ground, people shed their tears, but before a minute, my drunk father stood up with anger.  He walked to the wall where he hung his rifle and took it off the wall.  “Get out of my compound before my anger reaches the boiling point and I blow holes in your heads,” he snapped.  The people ran out of the compound as if they were face to face with the devil himself.

“Aacuch,” the pastor sneezed as father walked closer and closer to the grave.  The pastor told him to cool down in the name of God.  With God’s strength he did calm down and the people came back to help my mother go to the land of no return.

After a few minutes in the jungle of needle-sharp thorns, my mother’s friends sat down and talked about who will take me and treat me like their own child.  One of my mother’s friends took me.  The first two weeks she treated me well, but after one month I was treated like a street child.  I was the house help.  Going to school ws over.  In the morning I was given work that I could not even finish until late at night.  So often I remembered the way my mother loved me.  That made me shed tears when I recalled her words of love.  No one here talked to me like my lovely Mum.

I remembered a story my mother told me before going to my poor bed made of grasses.  When the work became too much, I walked slowly away to be a street girl in Nairobi.  There I was eating left-overs which were thrown away.  I suffered through thick and thin, but since God does not forsake his people I was found and taken to a nearby children’s home.  That is where I was helped.

since that day I have learned that the road of success is not straight.  There is a road called failure, a loop called confusion, speed bumps, caution lights and flat tires.  But if you have a spare called Determination and an engine called Perseverence, insurance called Faith and a driver called Jesus, then you will make it to a place called Success.