This Is The Way It Goes, Sometimes

I’ve mentioned Pauline before.

Pauline is 19 years old. She is tall and her skin is lustrous and very dark, almost ebony. Two bottom teeth were pulled years ago to create the characteristic mid-line Maasai gap; I don’t know if she was circumcised. Pauline comes from a small Maasai village several hours southwest of here, near Maasai Mara, and she returns home only on school holidays and even then it is tough; the shillings needed for the matatu ride are very difficult to come by. Her father died many years ago—‘dead drunk,’ she told me, pickled and poisoned by changa’a—leaving her mother alone with many children to care for and no way to support them. And so, in 2002, Pauline found her way to the Siyiapei Children’s Home, where she has lived ever since.


Pauline says she wants to become a journalist. When Pauline smiles, she has a characteristic way of dropping her eyes and then her head, turning it to the side, as if the light from her smile, if directed straight at you, might blind you. Pauline wants to become a journalist and for the past two weeks, she has carried a little notebook—one of a package of 5 that Kristin bought at Target before leaving Seattle—jotting notes, sketching, recording the Bible verses read in church on Sundays and every evening during Fellowship Time in the Home’s dining hall.


To become a journalist, Pauline must continue with school. She finished Primary School in December; she is years older than those who start school when they should but she is nothing if not determined and she has worked hard to get to where she is. Three weeks ago, Pauline learned her marks on the qualifying exam were good enough to receive the KCPE (Kenya Certificate of Primary Education) and that she may progress on to Form 1 (first year of high school.) Her excitement these past weeks has been palpable. First, she thought she would go to a boarding school in Maai Mahui, some 80 km away, but abandoned that idea when she learned everyone there was Kikuyu. Now she has a place waiting for her at the Maasai Girls’ School in Narok town where, if things work out, she will board and study and learn and maybe—if she is very lucky and very fortunate and does not lose her determination along the way—she will get to Form 2 and Form 3 and Form 4 and then to college. To become a journalist.

If she is fortunate. And very, very lucky.

Pauline, of course, has no money. And a high school-level education costs money in Kenya. So do school supplies, and a Bible, and new shoes, and the two sets of uniforms she cannot attend school without. It’s not a lot, by our standards,(tuition and board for a year and all the supplies she needs comes to about $400.oo) but it is money millions here do not have. Least of all, Pauline.


Kristin used some of the money many of you donated to her projects to buy Pauline some of the things she needed. Two days ago, a plan was made whereby the elderly Maasai pastor here in Siyiapei would withdraw money from the Children's Home account to pay for the rest of Pauline’s supplies, her uniforms and first term school fees; Everlyn, the matron of Siyiapei Children’s Home (who has no money herself,) would slowly pay the pastor’s Children's Home account back. Yesterday, Pauline packed her new shoes, a couple of t-shirts and the two or three skirts she owns, her pens and pencils along with her little notebook, in a tin box. She carried all of her belongings across the highway to wait in the scorching dust for a taxi she would pay 50 ks (50 cents) to take her into town. Pauline would meet the pastor at the bank, then Everlyn, Kristin and the Home’s social worker would escort her to her new school.

But this is the way it goes, sometimes, in Africa:

The pastor did not go to town. Instead, he showed up at the foot of the rocky road where Pauline waited for the taxi. He took one look at Pauline and flapped a hand in the air as if she were no more than a pesky fly. He told her he would not pay for her to go on to Form 1. He told her she did not belong in the Siyiapei Children’s Home program and that, in fact, he had never recognized her presence in this community. He told her she should just go home. Where she belonged.

Pauline smiled a smile very different from the one that might normally blind you. She said nothing. She picked up her tin box and walked back across the highway to the Children’s Home. Stanley the social worker was incensed; he did not speak, either. Everlyn silently cried. Dust swept up by the wind spiraled in a great swirling cloud through the parched brush and then out onto the tarmac. Where it died.

Yes, this is the way it goes, sometimes, in Africa. More often than not, there is no explanation for why things happen here the way they do. Kristin and I discarded several explanations as implausible. Finally, we speculated thus: a young Maasai woman determined to acquire an education is a threat to an uneducated, elderly Maasai man who calls himself a Christian pastor. The ‘pastor’ has power; the young woman does not.

Well. At least, not yet.


Kristin, Oma and Opa will pay for Pauline’s uniforms; Stanley has asked the organization that employs him to buy the Bible Pauline needs and the remainder of her school supplies. The source of the school fee for term 1 has yet to be found. It will be a week, maybe more, before all this is straightened out. By then, term 1 of Form 1 will have been in session for more than a month. But Pauline is nothing if not determined. She wants to become a journalist.