Interview: From street beggar to pharmacy assistant

Silvaster Mumo

Your parents divorced when you were only two years old...

I was born in a family of five in Kitanga village, Mua hills. My parents had a nasty break-up when I was still a toddler, forcing us to relocate to Mbooni to live with my uncles. Things were a bit difficult for us because the living conditions were different. For instance, snakes used to crawl at night, something that we had not experienced before. We used to sleep on the floor and some of our close relatives would mock my mother telling her to come and pick her ‘small dogs’. When the situation got out of hand, mother could not stomach the humiliation and that’s when we moved out of Mbooni.