Mriam Wawira: 'I have no hands, but yes I can'

She was born in a poor family, was considered an outcast and no employer wanted to ‘risk’ giving her a job. But now Miriam Wawira has a fulfilling job, a husband who adores her and an able bodied son.

Listening to Miriam Wawira’s story, you cannot fail to notice the determination and focus that have enabled her overcome a myriad of challenges.

Born 27 years ago to peasant farmers in Kathunguri, Embu, she found herself unlike other children of her age. She was born without both hands, which made her the village outcast. No child wanted to play with her. They all believed she was bewitched, hence, a bad omen. Others believed her condition was contagious and that she might infect them.

However, the rejection did not deter her mother from ensuring young Miriam went to school.

“My mother enrolled me at Jomo Kenyatta Children’s Home, which is a home for disabled children. She was determined to bring me up like a normal child. I remember being forced to wash my clothes and do other house chores, which I did using my feet,” she recalls.

After joining the home at the age of six, she was enrolled at Embu Urban Primary School where she studied like any other pupil.

 Later, a sponsor volunteered to pay for her secondary education. After one term, she was transferred to Joy Town Special School in Thika, where she found other children who were physically challenged. She felt at home at Joy Town Special School, as she was given the freedom to be herself.

After high school, lady luck was on her side again and she got a sponsor who paid for her to study computer packages in Nakuru town. “I learnt computer by typing using my feet and I am glad I enrolled for this course,” she says. After two months, she had learnt all the packages and she set off for Nairobi to look for a job. “The first job that came my way through an aquintance was a domestic worker position in Nairobi’s South B. Because of my disability, my employer allowed me to only wash clothes and baby sit. I choose to start with a house help job because I did not want to be a beggar. I wanted to have some money for survival,” she says.

From her savings, Miriam later joined Nairobi Industrial Rehabilitation Centre where she studied electronics. While at the institute, she planned to commit suicide not only once, but several times because of stress.

 “Life was very hard. I did not have a place to stay while attending school and I had to beg for a place to sleep until I finished my course,” Miriam recalls.

She later joined Railway Training Institute in South B where she enrolled for a one year diploma course in sales and marketing. Part of her school fees was paid through the Constituency Development Fund and a bursary programme. The institute also waived some costs. After graduating in 2008, no institution would offer her a job.  “I attended several interviews but once they noticed my disability, they lost confidence in me. But this did not dampen my spirits. I kept trying,” says Miriam.

After job-hunting for several months without success, she met the love of her life and from there on, life has not been the same again. Miriam, who is a born again Christian met her husband, Mathew Samora, at her hour of need.

“I was walking at the Fuata Nyayo slums in South B, when I tripped and fell in the mud. As usual, I struggled to get up but couldn’t. I called on a man who was passing by to help me and he did. He did not know me and I just thanked him and moved on,” she says.However, they would meet again on the slums footpath and a friendship blossomed.

“I would talk to him about God and salvation and he soon started attending church with me,” she recalls.

“In 2009, he proposed to me and I was shocked that such a handsome man would fall in love with me,” she narrates.

 “I decided to pursue a different career after sales and marketing proved difficult. My husband paid my school fees and I graduated in 2010 with a diploma in Human Resource Management. I then joined him in Fuata Nyayo slums where we lived. We depended on manual jobs for survival,” she recalls.

In 2012, Wawira conceived her first born, Baby Baraka. However, the conception was a challenge as many of her friends asked her to abort for fears her child would also be deformed.

However, my husband encouraged me to keep the baby and in 2013, we got a bouncing baby boy. They say when it rains, it pours. The same year, Miriam landed a job at the Customer Care Department at Safaricom.

“I went for the interview and demonstrated to the panel how I would do my work. They were impressed with my agility. I was offered a job.

Her husband, who throughout the interview was by her side, is still jobless and does manual jobs to support his family. The love between the two is evident, as Samora tenderly wipes the wife’s face when he realised she is sweating.

Pity to undying love

When he first met Miriam, it was just a relationship of a stranger helping a physically challenged girl at Fuata Nyayo slum. Mathew Samora, 28, says his love for Miriam was at first more of pity for a disabled woman.

He says he never imagined that one day he would fall in love with her and end up marrying her. But everything is possible with God. 

“When my wife was schooling at Railway Training Institute, she had no friends, so I would go and keep her company and this blossomed to a love relationship. I was a drug addict then. I used to take bhang and Khat, but Miriam preached to me about God,” he recalls.

After few months of friendship, Samora stopped smoking bhang and joined her for a service at Kings Outreach Church where he got born again.

“My love for her grew stronger each day and in 2009, I proposed to her and she could not believe it,” recalls Samora who hails from Kisii.

To prove that he was serious about their relationship, Samora opted to sacrifice his college education by using his school fees to educate her. “I paid for my wife her Diploma in Human Resources. I gave her Sh120,000 which my mother had saved to educate me, and I do not regret it,” she says.

His move, however, brought a lot of tension between him and his family. The family could not understand how Samora, who is the last born, could fall in love with a physically challenged woman and even use his college fees to sponsor her education.

But five years down the lIne, the couple is still together.

His family has accepted his wife, especially his mother who calls every day to check on her whereabouts.