At only 15 years, young but weighed down by family poverty, Winfred Vaati, now a final year university student, eloped with a man to Taita Taveta County, after he promised to educate her.
She had stayed at home for two years after sitting her Kenya Certificate of Primary Examination at Kanyungu primary school in Kibwezi in 2011. She topped in her class by scoring 329 marks out of 500. She was admitted to St Mary’s Girls’ Kinyambu but her mother was unable to pay fees.
Vaati’s world came crushing down. Then a man who worked in the village promised to marry her and take her back to school. She jumped onto the offer without a second thought. “I thought it was a good idea to secure my future, especially after he promised to educate me,” she says. How wrong she was.
Tens of kilometres away from her home, Vaati was trapped in three years of an abusive marriage, during which time she gave birth to two children. There were no prospects of her ever going back to school, she says, and it looked like she had jumped from the frying pan into the fire.
With pent up anger and disappointment, she concluded that she had had enough. She wanted to break free and retrace her steps. One day in 2016, she gathered her children and her belongings and returned to her mother’s home in Makueni County.
However, unlike the naïve underage girl she was, she could clearly see through to her future. She had just turned 18. Even in those dark moments, her heart was smoldering under the burning desire to rejoin classroom.
“I could feel it inside me, I strongly needed education, and when I looked at my young kids, I realised the only way out was to get an education. I needed to reclaim my future,” Vaati told The Standard.
However, rejoining school was not easy. It took a mix of grit and determination. Today, she stands at the gate of Meru University as a symbol of perseverance and the power of a second chance.
But how did she get here? Back at her village, Vaati left her children with her mother and set out in search of any work that would earn her money for her children’s upkeep. She would also save for her school. Any menial job that came her way was good enough and with every penny earned, she felt a little closer to her reclaiming her education dreams.
By January 2017, she had saved enough and walked to nearby Kisayani Mixed Day Secondary School and requested to join Form One.
She was readily accepted. The first day she walked to class, she felt surreal, a surge of excitement and pride seeping through her. “This is where I belonged, in school. My focus was to work hard and excel and prove our neighbours who were talking ill behind my back wrong,” she says.
She would juggle between school, parenting and work, with much of her school holidays consumed by menial jobs to raise school fees.
One day, while in Form Two, lady luck smiled at her. Rose Museo, the current Makueni County Women Rep and who would become her benefactor, chanced on her. She had gone to the farms to interact with her constituents.
Vaati, whose name means the lucky one in Kamba dialect, recalls the astonishment on Museo’s face after seeing her toiling in the farm, drenched in sweat among adults.
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The legislator summoned the farm owner and inquired why he had employed a child. Sensing trouble and fearing that the stranger would discontinue her source of living and school fees, Vaati walked over to the MP explained herself.
“I didn’t know who she was. I actually thought she was from the children’s department,” she recalls.
“I poured my heart out to her, explained everything, all my life,” she goes on. Museo was moved by her story. This chance encounter became Vaati’s saving grace.
“She told me who she was, and promised to help me with my education. I was elated and cried with joy,” says Vaati, now 26 years old.
Since, then the Woman Rep through the National Government Affirmative Action Fund (NGAAF), paid her yearly school fees until she sat her KCSE and attained a B plain of 65 points.
When Vaati was called to join university, the legislator, through her Second Chance programme, was there for her.
In September 2021, she joined Meru University where she is now a final year student pursuing a Bachelor of Education Science (Physics and Computer Studies).
Museo says: “I want to go out there and empower other girls, give them a second chance the way i was given.”
Together with a few friends, she has started Joshem Foundation that focuses on education, health and empowerment of girls. She is the development director.
According to the legislator, the Second Chance initiative which she started in 2016 is about getting girls who have dropped out of school due to poverty and early marriages, and sending them back to school.
“Experience has shown us that such girls perform very well. The programme is about empowering them to realise their full potential,” Museo says. So far, the programme has benefited over 50 children, some of who have graduated from tertiary institutions while others are still in school.
