In My Dreams I Dance

Even though my dad had explained to me that he might not always be able to come and see me, I became increasingly distressed when he didn’t turn up. I started to doubt him and wondered if he no longer loved me because I was disabled. I wrote him a letter accusing him of not loving me enough.

‘I wish Mum had never died,’ I wrote. ‘This would never have happened when she was alive.’ I concluded by saying, ‘I didn’t write an application to be born.’

My dad wrote me a very long letter back, saying how much he loved me. He also sent a letter to the school, asking them to give me extra care. When he couldn’t come to visit me he left money at the school so that they could buy me the things that other parents brought for their children.

The teachers tried their best to be supportive towards me in the months after my mum died. My art teacher, Edward, was especially good. He was particularly well-loved by the pupils and we looked upon him as a father figure, a kind man and a fantastic musician too. He sometimes talked to me about my mum and how her spirit lived on and watched over me even though her body was no longer with us.

‘The Lord is watching over you,’ he said, ‘and so is your mum. You must do well in your studies to do her proud.’

Even though I didn’t see the point of some of the things Edward was saying, it made me feel better to know that he was looking out for me. Like my dad, he believed in me and was convinced that I could go on to achieve great things in life.

‘Your parents gave you the name Olympia because they believed you were going to achieve great things,’ he reminded me. ‘You mustn’t disappoint them.’

I didn’t want to disappoint Edward, but I was hopeless at drawing.

He studied my hands carefully and said, ‘Let’s try and find what those fingers can do. Everybody has a special talent.’

I longed to be able to draw like a pupil called Noah. He could look at someone’s face and translate it into a perfect image on a piece of paper. But however hard I tried, I couldn’t draw half as well as he could. I hoped that Edward was right and that some other talent would emerge.

Happily, it already had. I loved singing every night and my voice turned out to be strong and tuneful. I couldn’t decipher the words to the James Brown songs my dad had listened to, but I could understand all the words in the a capella tunes on biblical themes we were taught, and I loved singing them.

To my delight, the teachers often chose me to be the lead singer when we entered competitions and performed in different churches. They made sure I looked my best and put coconut oil on my hair to make it shine. Singing gave all of us at Joyland a huge amount of pleasure and always lifted our spirits. Anyone who walked around in the evenings would hear sweet music drifting from every dormitory.

The school decided that because my mum was dead and my dad was often absent it would be better if I was adopted. They contacted a German family who agreed to take me. Little was explained to me and I was too young to fully understand what was going on. But I burst into tears when I overheard one of the house mothers talking to one of the Salvation Army officers about sending me away.

‘Does that mean I’ll never see my brothers and sisters again?’ I asked, sobbing.

They looked startled that they’d been overheard. ‘No, no, Anne,’ said the house mother. ‘Please don’t worry, nothing has been decided yet. But if you do move you’ll have a better life—and so many toys.’

I wasn’t worried about the toys, but the thought of suddenly being transplanted into a family of strangers in a strange land and never seeing my own family again filled me with dread.

At that time my family and school were the only worlds I knew and I didn’t want to venture into any others. I became scared to go to sleep in case I woke up in a different place and couldn’t find my way back home. I was convinced that I could be snatched under the cover of darkness, and felt a rising sense of panic every time I watched the sun setting. I had received regular gifts from my German sponsors, high-quality books and toys that weren’t available in Kenya, and had always looked forward to receiving them, but now I was scared to accept them in case it made it easier for me to be taken away from Joyland.

My dad hadn’t visited for a few months and once again I became convinced that he no longer wanted me. I lay down on my bed and sobbed. Things were going from bad to worse. First my mum had died, then my dad hadn’t come to visit and now I was being given away. I began to feel permanently frightened.

I started to sit under a big, shady tree where I had a good view of the front gate. I kept my eyes fixed on that gate in the hope that my dad would appear to take me away. But he never did.

After a few months, just when I’d given up hope of ever seeing my dad again, one of the teachers hurried up to me and said, ‘Oh, Anne, your dad has arrived.’

Joy surged through me. I hugged and hugged my dad. He swung me round and round and seemed just as pleased to see me as I was to see him.

‘Oh, Dad,’ I said, ‘I thought you were never going to come back, I was sure you didn’t love me anymore. I beg you, don’t leave me here any longer. Please take me with you. I want to go home right now. They’re trying to send me away, but I don’t want to go. If they make me leave, I’ll never see any of you ever again.’

My words tumbled out so fast they barely made any sense, and tears rolled down my cheeks, but my dad wiped them away with his handkerchief.

‘What kind of foolish talk is that, Anne?’ he said, stroking my hair. ‘I’m your father and I’ll always be your father. I’ll never abandon you. Please stop worrying.’

Hearing that made me feel very happy. But I was still concerned.

‘I must go home with you now, because things can change,’ I said.

‘Nothing is going to change, I promise you,’ Dad said reassuringly. ‘You’re at Joyland not because we don’t love you or care about you but because this is the best place for you to get a good education and learn how to be independent. I don’t come more often because I can’t get too much time off from the army, that’s all.’

We went to the dormitory and my dad spent a long time playing games with me. Having him all to myself was an exquisite luxury.

‘Don’t worry about anything, Anne,’ he said. ‘I’m going to speak to the Salvation Army people about your future. I’ll make sure that you’re not sent away. None of us wants to lose you.’

Once again he left money with the staff to buy me the things that other parents brought their children because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to visit me often.

‘Just because I can’t be here with you as often as some of the other parents doesn’t mean that I love you any the less,’ he promised me. ‘If I don’t work hard I won’t be able to afford to send all of you children to school, and you know that making sure that all of you get a good education is the most important thing in the world to me.’

I nodded.

‘I do understand, Dad.’

But understanding didn’t make it any easier for me to cope with his long absences.

A few weeks after my dad’s visit to Joyland a pupil called Tom died. We saw him being carried out of the dormitory in his bed with the covers over his face. Many of the children hadn’t come across death before and all of us suddenly became scared of simple things like going to the toilet alone.

We mourned Tom. He had been a very quiet seven-year-old boy. Like me, he had walked on callipers and crutches. I never knew exactly what was wrong with him and we never discovered why he had died.

‘Don’t cry,’ said one of the house mothers soothingly. ‘Tom is at peace now. He’s in heaven and has become one of the stars. You can see him if you gaze at the sky at night.’

Nobody had mentioned anything about stars to me when my mum died. I found it comforting to think that she had become a star too. That night I looked up at the inky black sky, focused on the brightest star and hoped that it was her.

Chapter Five The Coup

I developed a reputation as a real tomboy. Despite the constraints of my paralysed legs, my callipers and my crutches, I loved to climb and to take risks. There were a few bunk beds at Joyland for the more able-bodied children and even though it was way beyond the capacity of a girl with my disability, I sometimes tried to haul myself onto the top bunk using my upper body strength. Sometimes I got stuck, but it didn’t stop me from persevering.

We were expected to wash our hands thoroughly before we went to the dining hall. One day for a joke I decided that I was going to wash my legs too. I went to the sink and removed my callipers. My friend lifted one of my legs up to wash it. I was holding the tap with wet hands and I slipped and fell. Instantly I screamed in agony. I had never felt such severe pain in my life. My leg was trapped under the sink.

There were some builders outside. They rushed over and tried to pull my leg out. My whole body was on fire with pain.

‘Please don’t let me die!’ I cried.

The school nurse put me in a wheelchair and took me in a taxi to Kisumu General Hospital, about half an hour away. The first thing they did was to give me some painkillers, followed by an X-ray, which revealed that my right hip was broken. They put me in plaster, bringing back memories of the time when I was encased in plaster after my polio was first diagnosed. My leg was suspended in mid-air in traction with weights attached to it.

Although the doctors admitted me, they weren’t sure what to do with me. They didn’t know whether my hip was twisted from polio or from the fall. So they referred me to a more sophisticated hospital, Russia Hospital, and I was put on an adult orthopaedic ward there.

I was furious with myself for being stupid enough to try and put my leg in the sink. Although it hadn’t been easy getting around on callipers and crutches, at least I had been mobile. Now I was completely stuck.

At first I loathed being in hospital. The food was bad and I was sometimes left sitting on a bedpan for a long time. But I cheered up twice a week when my friends came to visit me. We played games together and they brought me sweets and filled me in on all the Joyland news. When I became mobile enough to drag myself around, I found the children’s wards and started playing with the other children. The teachers at Joyland also sent work to the hospital for me to do so that I didn’t fall too far behind with my studies.

The school felt very responsible for what had happened, even though it wasn’t their fault. The staff visited me regularly, pampered me and brought me special drinks and sweets.

My friends were good too. Sarah was once given an orange for her supper as a special treat. Instead of eating it all herself, she saved half of it for me, a gesture which really touched me.

She was a mischievous girl who had once stolen a cigarette from the workmen and encouraged me to try it. I had almost choked to death when I tried to inhale. The staff were furious and said the fire on a cigarette was like the fire that burned in hell. ‘If you smoke, you’re heading to hell,’ they told me. I was terrified and never touched a cigarette again.

In hospital I lay back and made the most of all the treats and attention that came my way. The staff treated me very well, at least partly because I was connected to white people. It was four months before I was finally discharged and my hip has never fully healed. To this day it is more twisted than my left and makes a clicking sound.

I had enjoyed being the centre of attention in hospital but I had missed school life and my friends and was delighted that my life was getting back to normal.

A few months after I returned to school the teachers told me I had been selected to be head girl for the year. We were all expecting another girl to be chosen, who was very loud and confident, and when I found out they had chosen me instead I laughed. I had never considered myself head girl material.

‘Why do you think they chose me?’ I asked Mama Salome.

‘Well, you have matured a lot, Anne,’ she said, ‘because of the various problems you’ve had, losing your mother and breaking your hip. We all think you’ll do a good job. You don’t get involved in arguments, you look out for others and want to make sure they’re happy. You’re good at playing the peacemaker.’

Once it had sunk in that they were being serious about wanting me for head girl, I was overjoyed. I felt very proud.

Becoming head girl made me look at myself differently. For the first time I started focusing on what I could do rather than what I couldn’t. Before I had considered myself lacking in so many ways. For a start, I was one of the thinnest in the school and I was worried that some of the students wouldn’t respect me because I was so skinny. In Africa people have more status if they’re fatter because it’s considered a sign of greater wealth. Thinness is associated with poverty. But being thin didn’t seem to cause me any problems in my new role.

My parents had instilled it in me that everyone should be treated the same because we were all equal. I tried to apply these rules and the pupils did seem to respect me.

My main role was to act as peacekeeper and make sure there was no bullying going on. I made sure that all the children were included. I also encouraged the older children to look after the younger ones.

If there was any misconduct from the students I was expected to tell a house mother. Sometimes one of them would come and say, ‘Is there a problem?’ I tried to get the balance right between protecting pupils from the wrath of the teachers and acting responsibly and reporting behaviour that was of real concern. I didn’t like ‘grassing up’ children who had misbehaved and only spoke to the teachers if something very serious occurred.

Back in Nairobi my dad had married a woman called Florence. He asked us to call her ‘Mum’, which none of us was happy about at first because she wasn’t our mum. But because she was so kind and nice and looked after all of us so well, we soon grew to love her, although she could never be a replacement for my beloved mum. My dad had moved into a bigger apartment, which was much more comfortable, and my step-mum made a nice home for the family there. I always looked forward to going home and seeing everybody.

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