She was there waiting for me the first morning after I arrived: Asha Njira Behuye. Stunning in her beauty. Arresting in the sadness she exuded. She’d come to talk to me, to see if I could advocate for her with our sponsorship committee. “Here goes,” I thought. This will be the first of many such times, when students think talking to me is the magic key that will get them admitted into the sponsorship program (which it’s not).  Her eyes drew me in. I knew her story needed hearing.

But before I share Asha’s story, let me give you a little background. Her story fits into the larger story of how Covid changed life on planet earth - how it affected life in rural Kenya. Almost overnight – schools closed. We know the story. It was a worldwide story. But what this meant in Kenya is that already strained transportation became impossibly burdened. Prices soared. Our staff in Kenya couldn’t answer their phones fast enough. Kenya Keys students, being educated all over Kenya, panicked. Can money be sent for transport? What will become of our studies? Will we get infected, while crammed into tiny public vans?

At the headquarters in Taru, measures were already being taken by Kenya Keys to provide masks, sanitizer, and safety education to the local community and the returning students. Chaos ruled, as it did here in my world. Fear. So many unknowns. The message: Get home and stay home!  Students, fresh from the excitement of college life and a broader world, were sent home, many to the mud huts they had come from.  Imagine. Home -- without electricity. The whole family suddenly returned. Darkness. No transport of food.

We thought life shut down for us, but there we were, streaming on all devices in the comfort of our nice homes. In touch every minute, through all kinds of different means. But in rural Kenya. Imagine. Once the equatorial sun makes its swift exit at 6:30pm, you are in a tiny, dark home for the night. Why?

Soon after the initial outbreak, Kenya imposed a strict curfew – everyone had to be in their homes by 6:30. The big cities of Nairobi and Mombasa fell silent. The rural areas….well, I can’t really imagine what it must have been like.  The curfew lasted for over nine months. Students were home for nine months. Education became a distant dream. No internet or TV for these students. No books. What happens to a human spirit, a bright inquiring mind under such circumstances??

All through 2020 I’d been torn thinking about this. I heard the complaining all around me, as our lives also came to a screeching halt and we were confined to home. United, for once, in our global challenge. Confinement and fear united us, on both sides of the Kenya Keys world. The stress and strain of this new landscape affected every corner of our lives. But all I could think of was our Kenyan students; the reality of their confinement, and how it compared to ours.

But I must get back Asha’s piece of the Covid crisis. What didn’t hit the global headlines much was what was happening to girls and women. History tells us that when there is upheaval or crisis - girls and women suffer the most. It is an age -old equation. A leads to B. In my past, I’d taken calls on a domestic violence crisis line. We’d been told to expect record number of calls on Superbowl Sunday, as men dealt with the angst of a football game! Extrapolate from there, if you will.

In 2020 and beyond, there has been a giant rise in domestic violence. In developing countries, there’s also been an explosion of forced marriages and teen pregnancies. Economic breakdown. Anger. Fear. Confinement. Young girls are sometimes the only “family resource”, as selling her into a marriage can bring a bride price. You get the picture.  A rise of over one million teenage pregnancies in 2020; an untold tragedy. Childbirth is the highest killer of young girls in the developing world. The highest killer! So not only are they saddled with a child, when they are still children, but many of them die. Attempted abortions kill too.

Kenya Keys had seen this crisis hit home. In 2018 and 2019 none of the 158 girls in our sponsorship program had gotten pregnant. None. In 2020, we had seven. This is where Asha comes in.

She’d come into our program in 2015, a bright and eager student. By 2020, still sponsored by the same generous woman, she was attending the Coast Institute of Technology, where she was studying to get a diploma in Secretarial Studies, her dream come true. When school started up after Covid, Asha never returned. She also hadn’t returned calls from the office. Others reported that she had gotten pregnant and had stayed with the man. Our staff was overwhelmed trying to deal with the return-to-school mandate, the office again over-run with pleas for help. Needs for transport money. Soap. Re-usuable sanitary napkins – things we don’t think of as essentials to return to school.  In free moments, staff members were on their phones, tracking down students, hearing story after story of gut-wrenching challenges (that’s another whole blog!).

But Asha. Asha who was in front of me. She had remained with the man who had gotten her pregnant. Her eyes begged me not to ask questions. She wanted to take her baby and escape what was clearly a bad situation. She wanted to go back to school. It was her only hope. She was one of the lucky ones: her mother would care for her son.  Could she please be accepted back into the program?

These moments are gut-wrenching for me. I don’t want to be seen as the Great Oz that can determine the future of a student. Yet how can I not want to advocate for them, after the pleas I hear? These pleas never cease to fill me with an inept humility that renders me speechless.  “Asha,” I said. “I’m sorry you have been through so much. You have done the right thing to come back to Kenya Keys. All sponsorship decisions are made by the Kenyan sponsorship committee. They care about you and will consider your case. And I will speak to your sponsor and see if she will stick with you. I can see that you have been through a lot.”

I was sure her sponsor, a good woman, would stick with her. I’d had to approach sponsors many times before with such situations and never, ever have I had a sponsor reject their student. Our sponsors tend to be a compassionate lot; why else would they have cared about a student across the world to begin with?

I’m now home, about to contact Asha’s sponsor. I’ve looked in our database to follow Asha’s history. There are her photos, smiling and eager. Growing up.  I can barely match these photos to the broken, beautiful woman that sat before me in Kenya. I can only hope that things will align and she can get back in school, her determination having paid off. Her face once again alive; her mind open. Her son raised by a strong woman who refused to be a Covid catastrophe.