My name is Baraka, which means “blessing” in Kiswahili, and a blessing is what happened to me 3 years ago.
I was born in a small rural village on the coast of Lake Victoria where my family and I were living in poverty. My five siblings and I were always hungry and thirsty, we did not have enough food and the nearest water well was 15 kilometers far. We have never started school, none of us, and that is also why, one night, I decided to flee and to move to Kisumu: I was 14 years old.
I spent one year surviving somehow, living on the streets and begging for food, but then one day I saw a light: I was begging for some food and money in the nearby of a football pitch and luckily some coaches noticed me, very emaciated and sick. They cured and fed me and we started talking.
The We Football coaches enrolled me in a community school and I started going to school in the mornings and during the afternoons I started playing football with them.
Since then I have decided that I will commit myself in order to become a very good sport educator and I would do all my best in order to let every single child in Kisumu know which his/her rights are.
