Among the KCSE candidates celebrating performances is 35-year-old Mercy Chepkirui.
The widowed mother of two returned to school, against all odds 19 years after completing her KCPE exams in 2001.
Mercy Chepkirui hails from Sogoo village in Narok South. At the dawn of the 21st century, she fell into the trap of early marriages.
She was married off at the tender age of 15 years. She went on to have two children with her deceased husband.
“I was in a marriage for nine years before my husband died, leaving me with two children,” she narrated.
After the family’s breadwinner succumbed, Mercy Chepkirui had big shoes to fill. She stays in a single-room mud house with her children.
Uneducated and without support, she tirelessly sought menial jobs to make provisions for her family.
“Nilikuwa nafanya kazi ya kuchuna majani chai, ambapo kilo moja ilikuwa shilingi nne,” she remembered.
She did various menial jobs which include working as a housemaid, a security guard and a tea picker until she finally settled at working in a quarry.
Her quarry job is very demanding as each day she has to wake up at 6 am in the morning and help break boulders into small pieces for construction sites.
Despite her best intentions, still, the earnings were too meager to supplement various familial basic needs.
It then dawned on her that she needed to return to school and finish her secondary education.
It was a bold decision, considering how she would have to adjust her time and balance between work and school; not to mention the scornful attitude her peers elicited to the news.
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She collected her KCPE results slip and went knocking at the doors of NACACE Adult Secondary School seeking admission. Changes to her routine were inevitable.
She now had to wake up at 4 am in the morning to go work in the quarry for 3 hours, return home and freshen up, before making her way to school for day classes. It is a labor of love she carried for 4 years.
“Sometimes if I had exams, I would stay at home reading and teaching my children. Many told me that I should quit and educate my children instead, that at my age education would not be beneficial,” she narrates.
Her daughter Sharon Chepkemoi says that she is thrilled for her mother to have completed secondary school. She recalls her friends telling her that their parents wouldn’t have agreed to such a task.
Her hard work in school paid off. Ms. Chepkemoi scored an impressive C+ in KCSE, attaining the minimum university entry marks. She wants to pursue a degree in community development.
“I want to take a community development course at the university because I would like to work in the NGO Sector,” she said.
Currently, she is back to working in the quarry with her two children before they return to school. She has a balance of Sh. 40,000 that she needs to offset and get her certificate.
She also needs to earn enough to save for her children who will sit their KCSE exams the next year.
