I could never understand why these parents thought that my toys were safe for their children to be in contact with when I wasn’t.
Many of my aunts and uncles visited me while I was at home and showered me with love and affection.
‘Anne, you’re doing so well, you look so strong and healthy,’ they exclaimed.
It was hard returning to Joyland after having such a lovely time at home, but I soon settled back into the school routine. I loved being at home but I also loved school, where I felt equal with the others. School also made me aware that some children were less able than me. School and home became my two heavens.
Christmases at the school were very special. A strange-looking man called Father Christmas would give us all a gift with our name on it. I hadn’t known anything about these western traditions before I started at Joyland and felt worried at first because Father Christmas was dressed from head to toe in red. Plain red is associated with lightning in the area where my family’s village is, so I was afraid to approach him in case he struck me with lightning. When the staff reassured me, I was brave enough to sit on his knee.
As part of the Christmas celebrations every class had to perform a nativity play. I was always given the part of an angel, but one year I became bored at the thought of doing the same thing again and refused point blank.
‘No, I want to be Mary this year,’ I said rather petulantly.
‘No, you are very good at being an angel. You must be an angel,’ my teacher replied.
‘But I want to be Mary. Angels don’t wear callipers and crutches,’ I protested.
The teacher slapped me for my impertinence and I went flying across the room. I wasn’t hurt, but I reported it to one of the Salvation Army staff and the teacher was reprimanded. Violence from staff was extremely rare at Joyland.
I had lost a lot of co-ordination through the polio, but the physiotherapy I received at Joyland helped me to regain some skills. Because I had so much love and positive reinforcement from my family and from the staff at the school, I rarely regarded my disability as a curse, but rather as an inconvenience that I had to work around. Some of the children, though, seemed very miserable about their disability because it had led to their families rejecting them. I always came back to school after the holidays looking immaculate because I had been well looked after, but some of the children came back with scabies because they had been neglected at home. I realised how lucky I was to have a family who loved me.
My years at school were very happy, but by the time I was eight I was more aware that I fitted in at school and at home, but I didn’t fit in with the rest of the world. I felt as if the wider community were shouting in my face, ‘You are so different, Anne!’ because they stared at me wherever I went.
One school holiday when my mum came to pick me up and we got on the bus to go back to Nairobi, the bus conductor said to my mum, ‘You have to hold your crippled daughter on your knee and cover her legs so that nobody sees her.’
I burst into tears at his harsh words but, wanting to avoid a fuss, my mum did as she was told.
I was beginning to understand that the world could be very cruel. Whenever we went out in Nairobi during that school holiday I felt that people’s eyes were burning through my clothes to stare at my withered polio legs. I was convinced that they dismissed me as an inferior cripple. The stares made me self-conscious and withdrawn in the company of strangers and I longed to return to Joyland where the staff worked hard to instil confidence and a strong sense of self-belief into us. As soon as I walked back through the school gates I came alive again.
It was Saturday 30th June 1979, right in the middle of the rainy season. I was nine years old and had been at Joyland for four years. Saturday was the day we sat outside and styled each other’s hair after we had completed our chores. We wore our own clothes at weekends and were all in a happy mood.
The day started like any other. The more able girls weeded the flowerbeds, while the rest of us cleaned our dormitories. Then one of the teachers came in and said abruptly, ‘Oh, Anne Olympia, you need to go home.’
I started laughing and said. ‘I’m not a fool. It’s not closing day yet. I can’t go home until the end of term.’
‘Yes, you can. Get your things together. You have to go home because your mum wants you. Come with me to the office.’
I had no idea what the teacher was talking about, but we had been taught to obey our teachers, so I did as I was told.
When I got to the office I saw my big sister Alice there.
‘Hi, Alice,’ I said breezily. I wondered why she had come to my school. It was usually my mum who picked me up at the end of term and brought me back afterwards.
‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked. ‘The teacher says she wants me at home.’
I was beginning to feel uneasy. Something wasn’t right.
‘Oh, she asked me to collect you,’ said Alice, trying to sound casual but not quite managing it.
‘But where is Mum? And aren’t you supposed to be at school?’
‘Come, Anne, we need to return home,’ she said, without offering any further explanation. ‘There’s a taxi outside waiting to take us to the bus station.’
She had got a bus from Webuye to Kisumu town and from there had got a taxi to Joyland.
I hurriedly packed some things and anxiously followed Alice into the waiting taxi and then got the bus to my mum’s village. My cousins and uncles were gathered at the bus stop with a bicycle to transport me to the centre of the village. I couldn’t understand why we were there rather than in Nairobi and why there was such a large group of family members waiting for me.
As I was wheeled along the dusty track local women kept running up to me, wailing and crying, ‘Oh, Ruth, you have died and left this flower. Who is going to look after it now?’
What on earth were they talking about? Surely my lovely mum couldn’t be dead. The village women must have made a mistake.
I started screaming. ‘Where’s Mum? Where’s Mum?’ I cried.
Nobody answered. We arrived at the main part of the village and the terrible truth was confirmed: I could see that my mum was laid out on a bed outside her family’s home.
Nothing felt real. My mum had been a strong and healthy woman and she wasn’t old. Was I stuck in a horrible dream? I couldn’t take in what was going on.
One of my relatives carefully placed me next to my mum. I flung myself on top of her, willing her to start breathing again.
‘Mum, Mum, wake up! You promised to make me a jumper, where is it?’ I sobbed. I hoped that she would hear me and remember her promise and that would be enough to coax her back to life.
The shock was too much. I told myself that it was all a terrible mistake and that she’d wake up and give me a cuddle very soon. How could she leave me when I needed her so much?
‘I’m sorry, Anne,’ Alice said, with tears in her eyes. ‘We don’t know what happened to her, but she really has gone.’
At that time nobody had mobile phones and few Kenyans had landlines, so circulating good or bad tidings always took a long time. It had taken five days for the news of my mum’s death to reach my dad, who was working in Nairobi. One of his friends had travelled from the village to the district commissioner and asked him if he could get a message to my dad. The district commissioner had sent a telegram to the Department of Defence in