Mama Hope Magic: Queen Phionah
The story of a woman who demanded the crown of education for herself and the women she loves, told to us by Phionah Musumba
Mama Hope Magic Story- Queen Phionah
I believe that every women and girl
no matter where they are in the world
are Queens
-Phionah Musumba
I.
Everything I do for my community, for girls and for women, is born of what I’ve lived and seen and experienced in my own life. It’s easier for me to do it because I’ve been through it, and most of the time I can anticipate the outcome. But, I think prevention is better than a cure — so it is my goal to avoid a bad outcome altogether.
II.
I fight child marriages because I was a child bride myself — I got married young. Besides that, I’m a high school dropout. I dropped out of school in my eleventh grade. It really hurt me at the time, because poverty was forcing me out of school, yet I had scored a B+ in my eleventh grade. My mom was so poor she didn’t even have a chicken in the house. When I sat my exams to go to high school, I scored the highest marks in what would now be Vihiga County in Kenya. Because I was from such a humble background, the grade was stolen by the head teacher and given to the students she thought could afford the school fees. My mom couldn’t even afford a village school — school fees were like 2,000 shillings for the whole year. I had been helping my uncle’s wife take care of her kids. I told him I really want to go to school but I don’t have any money. He was working at the newspaper and there was a contest for Kenyan shillings for school fees. So I applied, and soon I got a telegram that I had won 5,000 shillings to go to the school of my choice.
III.
My mom put me on the bus and I had to go to Nairobi alone because she didn’t have enough fare to take me. I was 14 years old. So I went to my aunt’s house where I received my award. It was enough for my school fees and my first uniform! But because she had so many other debts, she couldn’t afford shoes for me. I was the only one going to school barefoot. I couldn’t even afford a sweater. The other kids made fun of me. But what I had that the other kids didn’t have was brains. I was the best student in Form 1 and Form 2, but in Form 3 competition started becoming stiff. Form 3 is when I got a B+ and somebody came and told the scholarship donors that they were wasting money that could support another student, because I supposedly had relatives that could pay my fees. But even though I had those relatives, none of them were willing to pay my school fees. It was God for all of us, but each one for himself.
IV.
When I dropped out of school, I realized I only had three options. I could go work as a barmaid, but I didn’t relish the grabbing that the men do in such an environment. I could have gone to work as a house girl, but I’d heard so many horror stories about girls that worked in other people’s houses, and I didn’t want that either. Then the third option was that I could be somebody’s wife. When I realized that, I thought, I can have my own house, my own children and maybe even my own house girl! When I made that discovery, the trouble was that I didn’t have any man in mind. Around the same time, I met my first boyfriend who had just cleared high school to join the Nairobi University. When he told me that he wanted to marry me, that I could move in with him, of course I did that! Long story short, I’ve been here for 26 years.
V.
The first five years were tougher than tough. In the first five years we had two beautiful children, but it was so hard to take care of them. There was a time when I had to feed them stones. We lived near to a construction site and we could get some very soft building stones. So I gave them that and a mug of water which could simulate a full stomach for four days. Then they wouldn’t cry for food that I didn’t have to give them. There was a packet of tea leaves that was going for 1 shilling. If I had a shilling, I would buy that packet, divide it into four parts, soak it overnight in water, and give it to the girls to drink.
One day I went to visit my sister. I waited until her husband came home from work and I asked him to loan me 2,000 shillings so I could start a business to do something for my kids. I was such a bother to the family that a relative would see me coming and they would lock their doors and pretend they were not home. I told him I wanted to start a business, and finally he was agreeable and gave me the shillings, which I used to start an onion selling business at a market in town. This business only lasted two weeks, which made me realize I wasn’t cut out to be a business woman at the time. I lost the business, all the money I had, and the onions. I didn’t have anything. And I had to walk from town to home, a journey that took me almost 6 hours.
As I was walking, I saw different types of vehicles. A plane or two would fly above me, and I realized I was walking because I didn’t have an education. I resolved that I was going back to school. I only had to tell my husband. But when the idea of telling him came into my mind, I felt trepidation, because I didn’t know what his reaction would be, being an African man.
VI.
While I told my husband I wanted to return to school, I didn’t look at his face because I didn’t want to see anger or hatred in his eyes. So I looked at the ground and the minutes became too long to bare. when I finally looked at him, he was smiling with tears in his eyes. And he said, “In five years, this is the wisest thing you’ve ever said.” He helped me borrow the registration money from his cousin, and I sat for the exams as a private candidate. When the results came, I was so afraid to look at what I had scored, because I had only prepared using the notes my husband had taken in high school. I would prepare the kids to go to school, work until 5 or 6, take care of everyone, and maybe then get some time to read after 10 at night. When he asked me what I got, I said I don’t know, I haven’t looked. He snatched the envelope and he was so happy that I had received top marks — you’d think he’d sat the exams himself. When I realized I could pass the exams myself, I wanted more. I wanted to go to college.
VII.
On the final day before graduation, I was heading to pick up my cap and gown. As I was leaving, my son told me he wanted me to buy him some fries and sausages. He was just two and a half years old, and he hadn’t been feeling too good. We couldn’t afford to take him to a real hospital, so I left him with my house girl. Even though we didn’t have money for the food, I agreed, and he ate so much. The next morning when I was preparing for my graduation, with my cap and my gown on, he said, “Mommy, sing for me.” He didn’t want the house girl to hold him, he just wanted me. So I took him. Then when I told him to let Auntie put his clothes on, he said no. He didn’t want me to go anywhere. I told him I had to go for graduation, that it was very important. I gave him to the house girl, but he said, “Even if you put clothes on, they will take them off of me.” I didn’t understand what was going on. He asked me to sing for him again, and then asked me to pray. As I prayed, he died.
Watching my son die in my arms, having to feed my daughters stones — I went through all of this and the pain was so much to bare. I was still young, still in my 20s, but it was the worst pain that any woman could go through. So that is part of why I do what I do. Doing all I can with my life to make sure that more women are able to educate their children and afford shelter for their families — that is reward enough for me and it keeps me going. I pray to God, but if it were up to me, no woman would go through what I went through to be where I am now. It is this motivation that first inspired me to create Malkia Foundation to support women and girls to be self reliant. Malkia means Queen in Swahili. I believe every woman and girl, no matter where they are in the world, is a Queen.
VIII.
My dream of Malkia Foundation further developed in 1999 after meeting two girls who had been sent home from school because they couldn’t pay their examination fees. At the time, we were living in a slum in Nairobi — in Dandora. I became friends with these girls. I gave them 100 shillings. I came to learn that they had so many more problems. One had an absentee father who was a drunkard and would always torment the mother. The other one only had a mother, who was unemployed. When we became friends, they told me all about their problems — I was even the first one to know when they started their menses.
Helping them through all those things made me ask questions about the girls in my village who didn’t have the resources of the girls in Nairobi. I talked to my mom and told her I would send supplies to some of her neighborhood kids. The first thing I sent was a box of school supplies. It ran out in two months, so I sent another box, and it ran out in a week. I asked if she sold them but she said, no, they were telling their friends and others to come use the supplies. In just a little time, the demand for more became so high, and they also wanted to get sanitary pads. So I told my mom we’d send more supplies, and we did.
Our collective started by asking about the troubles the women were going through in the village — with their children, their dreams, and the obstacles that kept them from realizing those dreams. We found out most of them had one thing in common: the girls wanted an education, but the parents didn’t have the means for them to go to school. So we started paying their school fees. We went to the schools and talked to the teachers and identified the neediest, brightest children, whose getting an education would really uplift their family, and I started paying school fees for them. The time came when I had so many girls in school, but I didn’t have a job — I was only doing odd jobs. I survived this by talking to the Head Teachers and convincing them not to send the girls home while I looked for the money. There came a time when I had to get loans from the Kenya Women Finance Trust in order to get the school fees to pay for these kids.
After doing that for several years, the movement became so big. In 2014, we grew too big to be a CBO and registered Malkia Foundation as an NGO in Kenya. The rest is history.
Now I am happy to say that we work to assist many women and girls, but the best thing of all is that my girls who used to eat stones are now very intelligent young women. The first one is taking a medical course at the Nairobi Hospital, and the other one graduates in June with a Bachelors in Journalism from Jomo Kenyatta University. That makes me so happy because I know I’ve raised them so well and they’ll be useful people in society. I’m very sure that they’ll be able to help others who truly need it. When we got our first funding organized through Mama Hope, we decided to stop paying school fees and just empower women — the girls’ mothers — so they could run their own businesses and pay school fees for their own children.
IX.
One day my little girl Lynn came home crying. When I inquired, it turned out that a teacher at her school had told her that she couldn’t work out a math problem on the board and a boy could do it better. I was mad. Of course I felt so bad. Being told that girls weren’t good enough for math would have brought her self confidence down so low. Another girl came in and asked why my daughter was crying. She explained, “That’s normal, our teachers are always telling us that boys are better in science and mathematics than girls. So why should you be crying?” That made me even more angry, and I went to see the teacher and said she should be encouraging girls to grow up to succeed. This made me search for a STEM school for girls. After some investigations, I realized discrimination in the classroom was the norm here, so now it is also my wish that we could build a Malkia STEM school where girls can dream, and just be whatever they want. If they want to do math the whole day, they can.
Nowadays if I travel, I don’t bring Lynn a doll. She says, “Bring me some bricks”. So I bring her toy bricks and she builds something. And the same goes for the other little girls in the community. That gives me hope that they will embrace STEM and grow up to study whatever they want. Because I hope to see the youth become gainfully occupied. If they could undergo vocational training in some of the marketable courses around, they would be able to start their own businesses. But first, the girls must grow up with STEM. Even the older women should learn how to use their phones without having to look for someone else to do that for them, This way, they can use the technology for themselves, and thereby be able to transact independently.
X.
Since beginning the Malkia Foundation, I have seen women in my village start their own businesses and educate their own girls. There have been lower dropout rates because they’ve been paying the school fees. Even most of the boys now are able to enjoy school as opposed to just loitering around and turning into criminals. It really warms my heart when I see somebody who society has looked at as a nobody — become somebody. Even if it’s just in the eyes of her children because she can give them an education. That gives me so much joy.
I have a passion to see the next generation of women simply being independent. I hope enough women will be educated so that they don’t see their children going through experiences you wouldn’t wish on anybody. So that they can meet their basic needs: shelter, clothing, food, and an education for their children. That would be a perfect life for me, and I would die happy if that were to be realized in my lifetime.
