Meeting my pen pal, Mercy, has been one of the greatest awakenings of my life; actually, my life has transformed in several beautiful ways. Somebody inquired not long ago, “Kim, what has been the most profound lesson you’ve learned from your encounter with Mercy?”

     I didn’t hesitate; this question was simple for me to answer.... What happens 10,000 miles away affects us here. Now. Today. Forever. If one girl is not educated, this shapes who we are. If one girl is oppressed in Kenya or Afghanistan or Iraq…it directly connects to us. If one girl is raped, this violent act ripples and spreads and gushes like a wave HERE in America, as well.

      I had thought what transpires over there made no difference here, to me, my life…but now I feel the pain of a million girls and women deep inside my being. I know first hand through Mercy’s letters what oppression is, the HIV virus, male domination, and that ignorance is a murderer. In this recent letter from Mercy, my heart wept for the voiceless women all over the world, the exploited, the powerless, the meaningless and marginalized, and the fluttering bird inside desperately trying to fly.

    But how can one fly with broken wings? 

     You may be asking yourself what Mercy and other uneducated women have to do with you. The answer is EVERYTHING.

     In the book “Three Cups of Tea,” author Greg Mortenson says this ““Once you educate the boys, they tend to leave the villages and go search for work in cities. But the girls stay home, become leaders in the community and pass on what they've learned. If you really want to change a culture, to empower women, improve basic hygiene and health care, and fight high rates of infant mortality, the answer is to educate girls.”

     The letter below is very personal and confessional. I asked Mercy if I could place it in my blog for all women to read…so they know…so they can understand…so they can pray…so they can comprehend how miles cannot keep us apart or disconnected…so they can be awakened…so they can thank God for their wings. _________________________________________________________

Hallo Kim, In traditional African society, rape is not rare. Women are considered sex objects, and almost half the women in the setting have been raped, and it is not by people they do not know. My uncle is my father’s brother, and he knows that I know that he raped my sister, he knows that I saw him raping my mother, and he also knows that there is nothing that I can do about it. I know of many people who have been raped at one time, my friends, my sisters, my mother and all. It is not only me who bears this burden, many women in my rural areas do, but it is only me who communicates to you. You’d be surprised if you heard other overwhelming stories, of a girl 12 years old who was forced into marriage by her father. She died a few days later. That is how the girl child in the rural setting lives…they are considered objects.

There are several scary stories that happen around…you only have to be here for you to experience and believe them. Most of the cases go unreported. Thing is, where do you as a woman go to report such things? All the chiefs who represent the village are males, and they may have also done the same thing at one point in time. They are the ones who are rich in the village, so they end up marrying 13 year old girl (Which to me is very wrong, it is another form of defilement)

Kim, one day when you come here, I will show you around our hospitals, and then you will see the glaring effects of rape here. That is why we are the leading in the rate of spread of HIV, and Kisumu (The fight against HIV/AIDS in Kisumu Kenya) is the leading, in all the 114 districts in Kenya. I have a journal where I write all that happens, one day I will give it to you to read it. Most of the girls here do not know that rape is wrong, because they have not been educated. They mistake rape for something else. A girl was raped on her way to the market by a man we all knew, and she said that she was flattered that the man found her attractive.

My mother knew that my sister had been raped. But she said nothing. I have never known if my father also knew, but if he does, I have never heard him comment about it. Even my sister does not talk about it. There is just something that keeps us from talking about it, I don’t know what it is. I can talk to my sisters about so many things, but I have never found myself being able to talk to her about the rape. In fact, since I was outside on that day, I feel my sister thinks that I am not aware that she was raped. That night, I heard her cry, but I did not have the courage to talk and ask her what she was feeling. I wanted to make her comfortable somehow, by keeping quiet, so that she thinks that nobody saw what happened after all. My uncle kept on saying that if my mother cannot learn to respect him (I don’t know what my mother had done) he will have to show her that he is the one in charge of everything in that home.

I heard everything, but I did nothing. I did it for my sister. I was young, and I reasoned that if I called out for people, my sister would get very ashamed. People would be talking about it all over and she would have nowhere to put her head. So I kept quiet, so that she thinks that nobody has seen what has happened to us. My other sister also kept quiet, although they were sleeping next to each other. I am the only one who got out. So, I don’t know if she heard what happened and she never said anything, or if she slept through it. I have never really asked her. I treat it like it never happened. I still blame myself for having gone out. I should have stayed, then maybe he would have settled on me instead. I let my sister down.

Afterwards, I got very depressed. More depressed than my sister. Then later, I attempted suicide. I felt that nobody cared. I grew very bitter towards my father, towards my mother, and I stopped believing that God exists. In fact, I had lost hope in almost everything, all I could ever think of was death. I kept to myself, and there is a time I never talked to my mother. In fact, I rebelled towards her, and packed my stuff when I was fifteen years old. I went to live with my grandma who I thought loved me better. And then, I started going against my grandma, and she couldn’t take it any more, she told me to go back to my mother. I was facing so much pressure, I couldn’t take it anymore.

I wanted rest, but I was too shallow minded, I thought that rest could only come through death. I never told anybody what I was feeling, and I got to the wrong side of school. I am not perfect after all.

In USIU, most lecturers think that I am extraordinary because I have never had a problem of discipline in school, but I did so many times in High school. I went to school late; I wasn’t doing my assignments, and that kind of thing. But somehow I pulled through it. And by the time I was in form three, I had become so serious; I had nothing else to do. I became tired of rebelling…can you imagine getting tired of rebelling?

It reaches a time when you become tired of all the things you are doing, and you start looking for alternatives. And I did not settle for drugs as most people do,,,perhaps I could have had I been able to afford the drugs, but I thank God I did not.

I settled for books, and it became my drug,,,you know, an obsession. I read everything everywhere. I formed my own world where I never let anybody in. I did nothing but read. And it reached a point where I would read from morning to evening, and fall asleep with a book in front of me. I had always loved writing, and reading, so I used it to get out my depressed state.

I shut up completely. I never talked back to my mother or teachers or anybody else. Somehow, I changed through books. I read about all topics, including abuse. And I fell in love with womanhood. I wanted to look for a reason why women suffer this much…I am still looking for that reason. And my teenage slipped by me.

I never did this stuff that teenagers do. I was too occupied with my stuff. I never even noticed that I was missing something. Now, if I meet some of my classmates from high school, they ask me if I still read a lot. School is fine(USIU) we are doing our end term exams next week from Monday. I will finish my exams by Thursday, then hoping that the weather will be fine, I will go home. It is raining here, and when it rains, the roads become slippery and most buses cannot afford to take the risk, and if they do, they charge outrageously. I am hoping it will have stopped raining by next week. Have to go.

Mercy

Mercy Adhiambo  for more information about our Mercy!