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When we first started in Amagoro, one of the students we sponsored was a girl named Abigail Opeko.  She was a bright candidate and a good student, showing real tenacity through some difficult situations.  Her mother had died, and her father showed no real enthusiasm for coming up with her school fees.  Not willing to stay at home, even when chased there for lack of payment, she would grab her father’s ball-peen hammer and head out behind their house to bang large rocks into gravel, which she would then sell to get money for her fees.  I was duly impressed.

We picked her up and transferred her to Kolanya Girls, the best female boarding school in the area.  She finished her Junior year well and seemed all set to graduate with the necessary credentials for university work.  But then in February of last year, Abigail went missing.  Walking out of a boarding school in Kenya, never to be seen again, is no simple task, but she somehow pulled it off with ease.  After sending various spies (i.e. local clergy) into the bush to gather what information could be found, we eventually learned she had run off with boy and ‘gotten married’.  That she was pregnant goes without saying.

I was crushed and a little embarrassed, if only for having to go to school and beg that her fees, which Elewana had paid in advance (our policy with all our students – which while risky, it gives us a LOT of clout with the local principals), be applied to other girls in danger of not graduating (again, because of fees).  Abigail’s trail went cold and, while we hoped we would find her to at least see how she was doing, such hopes diminished with each passing month.  Until about three weeks ago.

I was with the Bishop and Mama Catherine, his wife, for our annual visit to Kabarom Parish for our normal, if interminable, confirmation service.  As this happened to be Abigail’s home parish, I expressed my hope to Job and Catherine, both of whom knew her, that we might see her and the toddler at the service.  In the invariable milling around that occurs before the start of church, Job asked a local Mama about Abigail’s where-a-bouts and received an eye-roll worthy of Carol Burnett.  Though the ensuing conversation was in the local dialect (Kitesso), it was clear that the mama wanted us to forget Abigail and sponsor another girl from that parish.  Mama Bishop (Catherine) wasn’t impressed and, in no uncertain terms, explained that no student from that area would be sponsored by the Elewana Project until we met with Abigail.  Well, the women of the parish didn’t look happy, but by the way they began casting about for Abigail’s father, I suspect he wasn’t going to have a very peaceful afternoon either.

Now, who’s to say what happened next.  Kenyans have their own way of handling such things, and the only surety is that any story I’m going to hear will be substantially ‘modified’ and missing a few significant chapters.  So whether the parish mamas horse-whipped the father into tracking down and bringing home Abigail, or whether she, herself, realized that married life at 18 isn’t all its cracked up to be and came back home, the end result was that Abigail, her father, and her local priest all ended up in my living room with four apology letters to anyone they could think of and asking if there were any way she could go back to school.

I had a few questions though.  “Where’s the baby?”  There was no baby.   While it was true she had run off with a boy, pregnancy had never figured into the equation.  “So, if no baby, why did you run off with the boy?”  Apparently, he had visited Abigail at school and brought her some chapattis (kind of like tortillas).  After eating those chapattis, Abigail found that she could think of nothing else but this boy.  She arranged for a sick leave and then ran off with him, living with him in Kakamega for the next year.  About the time her father was tracking her down, she began to regret her decision and decided to return home to seek forgiveness and readmission to school, if possible.

Let me pause here.  It is significant to note that every Kenyan who is familiar with this story, from the Bishop, to Job, to the Principal at Kolanya Girls, to Abigail herself, is convinced those chapattis were bewitched.  I have no idea how one goes about bewitching chapattis, but apparently it is not that hard.  The fallout from such an uncontested verity is that 1) Abigail is forbidden to ever eat chapattis again, and 2) if I can find that witch-doctor and bring a few of these back to the US, I stand to make a fortune.

Well, it took some doing, but we were able to have Abigail re-admitted to her school, and just this morning we look her to re-join her schoolmates (though she’ll have to re-do her Junior Year).  In the meantime, Mama Bishop, who’s initial intervention made all of this possible, has adopted Abigail as a daughter and instructed her, whenever students are on break, to come stay with us in Amagoro, safe from vagrant virility and spiked flat-bread.

More soon.  Keith has already written his next blog piece, which will be out in a couple days, and this week we welcome Chuck Corra, a twenty year old from WV, who is staying with us for a few weeks.  More from him as well.   Write back and let me know how you’re doing…and stay away from any suspicious looking tortillas;-)

Mad Love, Zach