When Sasha Kenya got married, she thought it was the culmination of her dreams – she had succeeded in providing for the family she came from and was now starting her own with the man of her dreams. Little did she know that the marriage would turn into the stuff of nightmares, would be over within a year of joining her in the US and the man she had known since childhood would turn out to be someone she never really knew.
Sasha is a gospel artiste, having recently released the songs Mfalme wa Amani and One Miracle with Justina Syokau. She is also a Christian Science nurse in the US and an entrepreneur, making and selling baby cream to individuals and small businesses. She went to the states in 2009.
“I went to the then Kenya School of Professional Studies in Parklands. I did Information Technology and I was going to join a local university and do a major in Web Design but during that period I got the idea to apply for school and apply for work in the US. I was fortunate to be accepted by both,” she says.
The Christian Science church, which she belongs to, has a large network of institutions such as hospitals and schools and they hire around the world, so she was fortunate to find work as a nurse in a Christian Science hospital and also to study in one of their institutions, Principia College in St Louis, Missouri. She planned to do both, but she found that the working schedule could not accommodate both.
She grew up in Kibera and her family could not support her and her aim in coming to the US had been so that she could support her family, so she chose the job after praying about it.
In addition, she got training on the job, got up to level 4 which takes four years, graduated in Boston, got another position, became a mentor and became assistant director of nursing in one of the facilities in Minnesota, became a coordinator and a supervisor.
Sasha had been dating a man she had been going to church with since they were children in Sunday School. She knew him to be a kind and loving person. When she got her green card to the US, she came and they got married in 2012 got married to him.
“When I went back to the US, I filed for his green card, so that he could join me, and I asked people to help me pray that it would be successful,” she says. “I supported him. To file his papers, I had to pay lawyers, when he got his visa he said he did not have money to pay for his air ticket. He asked me to help him, even if it meant borrowing money from somewhere, he would pay it back (he never did) when he got a job here. So I borrowed the money and bought him a ticket.”
He finally went to the US in 2015, but when he got there, she realised something was wrong because he had changed.
“He did not want to support me. It’s like he had gotten whatever he wanted,” she says. “He was very hot-tempered. He would get angry and punch objects and the walls. I supported him financially until he got a job. When he got a job he lived only two months with me. In the third month he went to Las Vegas for a whole week with another woman. When he returned from Las Vegas he moved, then a year later, he filed for divorce.”
At some point, a woman her husband was seeing in Kenya called her because she was angry that he was dating another woman.
“It was during this time that I fully turned to God and decided to leave everything to him,” she says.
Her and her ex-husband don’t talk anymore, but today, she is a happy and content single mother of a two-year-old child, having fulfilled many of her dreams like supporting her family, building them a home as well as being a homeowner herself. She is a Youtuber and also working on her blossoming music career.
She has come to the public’s attention because of her collaboration with Justina Syokau on two songs – Mfalme wa Amani and One Miracle. Surprisingly, as much as she had always planned on doing music, she didn’t know when she came to Kenya for the holidays in November that she would be going back to the US with two well-received songs and two music videos.
Sasha met Syokau online, where the two exchanged their personal stories and developed a friendship. “I was along Mombasa Road when she texted me and I said, ‘Oh you’re in Panari! I’m almost passing there, so I can stop by,” she says. “So I stopped by there and we chatted for a little bit,” says Sasha. “I expressed my desire to sing and she was very open, loving and kind and she agreed to do a collabo with me. So that is how the collabo came about.”
She is now at peace, she says.
“I am very peaceful and that is why I sang that song, Mfalme wa Amani. Because even after all the ups and downs I have gone through, there is still this peace that God has brought into my life that I really thank him for.”
