Mary Wairimu – PA-MOJA Scholarship Recipient

Mary Wairimu – Grade 5 – January, 2018

Age: 16
Grade 10 (Form 2 in 2023)
School: Daraja Girls’ Secondary School
PA-MOJA Scholarship started: Preschool

Mary’s relationship with PA-MOJA started in 2008 when members of the PA-MOJA team met her grandmother, also named Mary, and her six grandchildren at their home in Mai Mahiu, Rift Valley. Mary is the youngest in a family of four boys and two girls. The family are Kikuyu, one of the 42 tribes found in Kenya.

When the PA-JOJA team met the family, they were living in extreme poverty and the children had not been enrolled in school. The eldest boy, David, was then ten years old and was responsible for many of the chores that kept the family alive. The children were severely malnourished, and they all crowded together in one small bed in the two room shack. They had no electricity or running water so David and his younger siblings regularly had to walk 5 kilometres each way to the community water well.

The children don’t remember their mother well because she came and left sporadically when he was very young. She returned to their home whenever she was pregnant, but would leave soon after giving birth. This continued until she gave birth to the youngest, Mary, after which she left and never returned. Only the three eldest brothers, David, Joseph, and Samuel, remember their mother. The other three were too young to comprehend what was happening and were raised to believe their grandmother, Mary, was their mother.

The six children were left under the care of Grandma Mary who had to till other people’s land to earn enough income to buy just enough cabbage and beans to survive. The area they lived in had suffered years of drought so they couldn’t grow food. The few dollars Grandma Mary earned left no money to pay their school fees so the kids were often sent home from school, leaving major gaps in their learning.

In 2011, PA-MOJA helped Grandma Mary and her six grandchildren move to the town of Nanyuki. They moved into a rental house in the community of Baraka where they experienced electricity and running water for the first time in their lives. Grandma Mary’s niece Phyliss, her husband, Justice, and their 3 children joined them soon after.

PA-MOJA arranged for all six children to attend Mount Kenya Baptist School, where they would receive the attention they needed to catch up on their studies. Mount Kenya was the only school in the community that would accept the children because they were so far behind both socially and academically. Mary, at only 4 years old, was too young to live at a boarding school, and twelve years old, David was too old. However, the school’s house mother, Helen Mbugua, agreed to spend extra hours with the children, teaching them how to fit into their new structured lives that included regular meals, academic classes, extracurricular activities, and a wide range of rules that go along with living in a boarding facility that caters to children from wealthier backgrounds. PA-MOJA hired extra tutors to help the students catch up; however, in Kenya, students cannot skip grades so twelve year old David began as a Grade 2 student.

Little Mary thrived at Mount Kenya Baptist School and was one of the top students in her class.

Mary did well in the grade 8 exams (KCPE) and was accepted to attend Daraja Girls’ Secondary School, which is an innovative school that has girls from all over the country. They believe in helping girls to reach their fullest potential while also helping them live with girls from other tribes and cultures.

On behalf of his siblings, David is grateful for PA-MOJA’s intervention. When asked where he thinks he and his siblings would be if PA-MOJA hadn’t come to assist them, he replied bluntly but honestly: “I am sure we would have ended up as street kids. Some of my siblings would have already been dead and considering HIV in Mai Mahiu (the town where they lived) is the highest in Kenya, my sisters would have contracted the disease through rape or else they would have started working as commercial sex workers to earn a living. As for my grandmother, I’m sure she would be dead by now because of the stress.”

David has a message for his PA-MOJA donors on behalf of Mary and his siblings: “I would like to thank PA-MOJA and all the donors for this scholarship. From our story it is evident neither my siblings nor I would have gone to school without this support. I can’t imagine what our lives would have been like. I pray to God to continue blessing you and your families for the support you have extended to us. You have played a huge role in moulding me and my siblings and we will be forever grateful.”