The Kipkoech Tanui: A Short Story

When I was younger I had always questioned myself as to what my purpose was. Born into a highly christian family my morals and goals were always set on a certain standard. But my story didn’t start with me, it started with my parents. Nelly Chirchir Jepkemboi and Ezra Kipkoech Tanui were merely babies when they first met. My father barely eighteen had just gone through our cultural ritual of stripping his father's last name and taking his own- Koech. Likewise my mother only being fifteen just started year one of highschool hours away from home in an all girls boarding school. Their story started one faithful day as my mother went on a school trip along with their brother school, my dad’s school, and that’s when they met. That is also how my
My mother always joked that she had “put a lock on that” but in reality I believe they were destined. No matter how many times they were ripped apart or shunned they always found a way back to each other. To them it didn’t matter what other people said or how many times they were beaten because their baby girl was healthy and alive, to them that was a blessing of it’s own. Their story of course didn’t end there; a year and sevenths months later I was born on June 25th, 1999. A much or less healthy baby girl born at exactly four pounds, in other words the sickly child of the family. My grandparents had always adore me, especially my grandmother, she was essentially my second mom. I hadn’t been a bright child partially due to my lack of obence and attendance; my school life was revolved around being bullied and fighting. Dispite being the smallest in my class I always did manage to protect myself; learning early on that no one was going to save me expect for
Eveyrthing was so new to me; the teachers didn’t beat students, there was a tv every where and there was white people. My first few months were amazing, I woke up early to watch Lelo and Stitch and went to bed with a full tummy. Of course my postive outlook of America quickly changed when I learned I had to attend school; the bane of my existence. All of my experiences of school were so painful that I had somehow convinced myself that I wasn’t good enough to learn. Unlike my courages outgoing sister I couldn’t bring myself to walk into the bus, which of course was an entirely new concept for me considering I walked about 5 miles to school every morning in Kenya, on the first day of