I still remember the day it all crumbled—the way the office, once a place of ambition and energy, turned into a battlefield of whispered gossip and hidden knives.
The air had been thick with tension for weeks. My supervisor, who once praised my dedication, now barely acknowledged my greetings. Decisions were made behind closed doors. Rumours churned like dark clouds gathering before a storm.
I should have seen it coming.
The letter of termination was thin and cold in my hands, nothing but a sheet of paper ending years of service. "Internal restructuring," they said. "Budgetary constraints." Empty words that couldn't cover the truth—I was expendable.
I walked home that afternoon carrying more than just the weight of my box of belongings. I carried shame, anger, and a sickening fear that gnawed at the edges of my heart.
How would I feed my children now?
How would I face them?
The first few weeks were a blur of frantic efforts.
I polished my CV, printed copies, knocked on doors, pleaded for interviews. But work was scarce, and even when it wasn't, no one wanted a woman with my complicated reputation—a woman whose eyes carried too much fatigue, whose clothes betrayed a slipping grasp on stability.
The money evaporated faster than I could hold it.
The first thing to go was the car. Then the nice clothes. Then the little luxuries—the cable TV, the takeaways, the birthday parties with balloons.
I sold jewellery I once flaunted. I pawned electronics we barely used. Each transaction felt like peeling a layer off my skin, exposing nerves too raw to touch.
Still, it wasn't enough.
When rent notices piled up and the school bills arrived, heavy as anvils, I had no choice but to transfer the children to the local public school. That is, I pulled the children from their private school and enrolled them at the local public school.
"Mum, it's too crowded," my eldest complained. "And the teachers don't explain things like before."
"I know," I said softly. "But we'll adjust."
They didn't understand.
And truthfully, neither did I.
I tried to explain it gently, to spin it as an "adventure," a "fresh start."
But children, no matter how young, can smell fear.
Zawadi stared at me, her eyes hollow.
Amani clutched my skirt and asked if we were poor now.
I lied. I told them everything was fine.
But that night, I curled up on the mattress, feeling like the biggest fraud in the world.
Public school was a shock for them.
The buildings were crumbling, the teachers overwhelmed. The uniforms itched. The textbooks were torn. Classrooms overflowed with restless bodies, and bullying was rampant.
Subira, my eldest, tried to be brave.
She smiled through her humiliation, though I saw her flinch when her friends from the old school passed her by without a glance.
Zawadi grew bitter.
She started coming home later and later, her eyes hard, her voice sharp.
And Amani… sweet, sensitive Amani…
He stopped asking me to help with his homework altogether. He would just sit silently at the kitchen table, scratching answers he barely understood into his notebook.
I hated myself more with each passing day.
I wasn't just losing things—I was losing them.
My children. Their trust. Their laughter. Their dreams.
Food became another battlefield.
No more meat every week. No more soft drinks. Breakfasts shrank to dry bread or porridge, lunches to leftovers, dinners to prayers and half-full stomachs.
The complaints started small.
"Mama, we had rice three days in a row."
"Why can't we have juice like before?"
"Do we have to wear these old shoes again?"
Each question was a dagger I had no shield against.
At first, I answered patiently. Then curtly.
Eventually, I stopped answering at all.
The pride that had once driven me to chase beauty, admiration, and independence—
Now mocked me as I rummaged through discount bins and counted coins at the checkout counter, praying no one would recognise me.
At night, when the children finally slept, I sat alone at the kitchen table, staring at the cracked walls, the dim light bulb flickering overhead.
This was the freedom I had chosen.
This was the life I had built with my own two hands.
And there, in the heavy silence, Poverty wrapped its cold arms around me and refused to let go.
Then, one stormy Monday, I received an e-mail from HR.
"Due to restructuring, your position has been rendered redundant. Your services will no longer be required effective immediately."
I stared at the screen in disbelief. I read the sentence five times.
Just like that, it was over.
When I got home that evening, the children ran to hug me. Their small hands reminded me of Yona—gentle, giving.
"Mum, can we have fried chicken today?" my son asked cheerfully.
I forced a smile. "Not today, baby. Maybe next time."
In the kitchen, I found the fridge nearly empty. I boiled ugali and sautéed sukuma with barely a teaspoon of oil. I added water to the juice to stretch it. The children noticed.
"Mum," my daughter whispered, "why is everything tasting different now?"
I didn't answer.
I went to bed hungry that night.
And cried until my pillow was soaked.
Weeks passed. I applied for jobs—dozens. None called back. I sold my remaining jewellery, cut off the Wi-Fi, cancelled my beauty appointments. I took a job as a receptionist at a dental clinic. The pay was small. But it was something. I just worked there for six months and the contract was over. Suffering started again.
The days blurred into one another. Mornings were the worst.
Dragging myself out of bed felt like hauling a corpse.
There were no alarm clocks anymore, only the cries of the neighbours' babies, the shouts of market vendors setting up their stalls.
I'd make a pot of weak tea and toast the last scraps of bread, handing pieces to the children as they rushed out the door in wrinkled uniforms, their backpacks heavy with books and invisible burdens.
I barely kissed them goodbye.
The energy I once poured into perfecting my appearance now drained into survival—stretching coins, bargaining at markets, searching for casual jobs that always paid less than promised.
Sometimes, I cleaned houses.
Sometimes, I helped sell fruit at a dusty roadside stall.
Sometimes, I just sat by the window, feeling the minutes drag, listening to the creak of the empty house.
The walls seemed to press closer every day.
The children changed, slowly but unmistakably.
Subira, once so bright and eager, moved through the house like a ghost.
Zawadi became sharp-tongued, questioning my every word with a sneer that was half-pain, half-pride.
And Amani—the baby I once rocked to sleep on my chest—started wetting the bed again.
I wanted to scream, to shake them, to demand they understand how hard I was trying.
But I couldn't.
Because deep down, I knew.
I hadn't just failed them financially.
I had abandoned them emotionally long before the bank account emptied.
They were surviving me now, not living with me.
One night, after a long day of chasing rumours of job openings that never materialised, I came home to find Zawadi missing.
Panic ripped through me like fire.
I ran through the streets, shouting her name, banging on neighbours' doors.
When she finally stumbled in around midnight, reeking of cheap cigarettes and anger, she didn't even apologise.
She looked at me—eyes full of disdain—and said, "You don't care where we are anyway."
Then she slammed the door to her shared bedroom, rattling the fragile frame.
I sank to the floor in the hallway and wept, my body heaving with silent sobs, the kind that leave scars on the inside.
The next morning, I woke up to an eviction notice taped to the front door.
Three months behind on rent.
No more extensions.
I sat on the stoop, the crumpled paper in my hands, watching as my neighbours bustled past me, carrying bags of food, laughing, arguing, living.
I was invisible to them now.
Just another woman who had fallen from grace.
Another failure lost in the churn of poverty.
And so began the selling of dreams.
First went the nice sofa set.
Then the television.
Then the beds—replaced with thin mattresses on the floor.
Piece by piece, memory by memory, I dismantled the life I had once built with Yona—the life I had been too proud to appreciate, too reckless to protect.
The children said little.
Their silence screamed louder than any tantrum ever could.
At night, I lay awake staring at the cracked ceiling, trying to stitch together the torn fabric of our lives with nothing but guilt and exhausted prayers.
God felt far away.
Hope felt like a language I no longer understood.
And in those long, dark hours, Poverty didn't just embrace me—
It swallowed me whole.