24/08/2026
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*FROM A VILLAGE GIRL TO A WOMAN OF SUBSTANCE*
I was born a village girl.
Not in a hospital, but in a small mud house beyond Litein, where morning began with smoke from three stones and the sound of cows. My first toys were not dolls, but smooth stones from the river. My first classroom was my mother's back.
My days started before the sun. I fetched water, milked the cow, then walked five kilometers to school with a torn bag and dusty feet. Some people said, "Why educate her? She will be married soon."
But my mother, who never went to school herself, whispered to me every night, "Read, my daughter. Read so you can go forward."
The road was not straight.
I lacked school fees and had to stay home for a whole year, herding goats while my age mates went to secondary school. People whispered that I was finished. I failed in some subjects. I worked in the tea farms in Bomet on weekends just to buy a textbook.
But a village girl's heart does not finish easily.
I went back to school. I became the first girl in my entire family to complete secondary school. The first to join college. When the bus to Kericho left, my father walked beside it until it disappeared in the dust, tears in his eyes.
Life tested me again in the city. I carried my baby on my back to class. I sold mandazi in the ev6vvtening to pay for rent. I was laughed at, doubted, and tired.
I did not become a woman of substance because money came.
I became a woman of substance because I refused to break.
Today, when I walk into my village, little girls run to me. They say, "Teach us."
And I tell them:
A woman of substance is not measured by the car she drives or the gold she wears.
She is measured by four things:
1She knows her value, even when no one claps for her.
2. She works with her own hands and is not ashamed of hard work.
3. She speaks with wisdom, not with noise.
4. She lifts other women as she rises.
5t
I was once that girl with dusty feet from the river.
I am now that woman whose vo
