One cold dreary drizzly morning in a village somewhere in Africa, a woman cried out in pain as her husband pensively paced back and forth outside their rickety mud house, her cries were only drowned out by the periodic thunder clapping through the plains as if in competition. The land was silent, the animals were silent. Save for the shrieks that rent the air for hours that morning, cutting through the morning air with chilling finality. Eventually, as the rain began to patter off and the thunder had finally lost its will and the mist playfully hugged the unwilling fields, another cry rent the air. A new cry. Tiny yet present. The Kijivu home had new life.

 

 

The mother had gone through punishing labor. It had been long and painful. From an early age, the girl realized that being the 8th child in a family of 12, she would always have to do more, do better to be considered an equal. Her family was poor and could only provide intermittently. Going to school was on rotation basis, if you went to school this year, you sat the next one out. This meant that the children at the Kijivu home had a lot of time on their hands. While her siblings used this time to get in trouble, she used this time to explore. She was curious. So much that her inquisitiveness drove her mother crazy. She dreamed of things her mother knew she would never have. She was constantly trying to learn different ways of doing even the most basic of chores. She read everything. She talked to anyone who cared to listen. She had found plants that would rid clothes of stains when soaked overnight at age 8 and by the time she was a teen, she had built her mother a below ground slow cooking pot for boiling beans that didn’t require firewood.  Her mother was both proud and worried. Proud that the little girl had a mind way ahead of her years. Proud that her daughter always had a solution to every day challenges. But worried at how the world would disappoint her. It had a way of always bursting your bubble. The world. Disappointing.

 

 

It did not. When an idea did not work out, she found another. Failed at that and still looked for another until she succeeded. She was determined. Soon, the plains knew her name. She was a problem solver and an innovator and she did it all in stride. She would be at Namusembe village today helping develop a water harvesting system and the next day at Mukanda. Putting together a dance event or dancing and laughing. She danced a lot. She was good at it too. In spite of an on and off school schedule, she was done with her studies by 20, best in her class of course. Her mother was ecstatic! The plains threw a dance in her honor. She had made them proud. She wanted to go out and impact the world. Leave the village. “Going to shake things up” is what she said to her mother.

 

 

As she walked away from her home that morning, an oddly shaped suitcase in hand. Her mother could only watch, a tear running down her cheek. Thinking, “There goes Ivy Kijivu, Watch out world.”