“Someone went behind my back and clapped repeatedly on my ears. Nothing. That’s when the grim truth dawned on them. I had lost my hearing,” she recalls a vagary of the weather that would change her life for good.
When she left with her friends to fetch firewood, in one afternoon in 1963, Scholasticah Majuma did not know that she would return home with a permanent hearing disability.
Heavy, dark, clouds had started hanging on the old rugged hills of Bondo. Thunder was rumbling in the distance and a bolt of lightning streaked across the sky.
Majuma, the 7, and her friends would frantically hurry up as they collected and tied together the last pieces of firewood before dashing home.
“The only thing I remember was thunder and lighting. After that, everything got dark. I lost my hearing and memory,” recalls Majuma in an exclusive interview with Standard Digital.
READ MORE
Relief for patients as Nyamira nurses call off strike
Pain for patients as Nyamira nurses down tools
PS calls for tree planting to mitigate drought, floods
Health workers threaten to strike over salary delays, medical cover
By reading our lips she gets to know what we are saying but her speech is blurred.
Back to the day she lost her ability to hear:
When she arrived home, with her clothes drenched by the heavy downpour and tears of confusion, everybody knew something was amiss.
“It took three weeks to know what had happened to me,” she adds. Tearily.
Today, we meet her at the Nyalenda Healthcare Centre. This has been her work station for decades now, serving as a nurse. Her work speaks volumes.
From a distance, you wouldn’t notice anything other than a health worker modestly serving the sick. But, behind the mask, is a vast field covered with pain, anguish, and experience.
It was a deeply entrenched belief, among the Luo community that her situation might have been caused by a curse.
From medical checkups to visits to shrines and churches, her relatives explored all options to reverse her situation but all these came to nought.
That is when Majuma and her family learned that the tentacles of the ordeal were not going to loosen the grip. They had to learn to live with it.
She enrolled in Nyangoma Primary School for the Deaf in 1970.
After posting exemplary results, she would get an opportunity to hone her skills in nursing at the Mumias Catholic Mission hospital for four years.
Back then, the institution offered service training, which included tailoring, carpentry, and nursing among others. She chose nursing, with a dream of becoming a physician.
However, the end of school for her was just the beginning of another hard, toilsome phase because of her disability.
Just like today, the job hunt wasn’t easy. The slim opportunities when the country was just in the formative years after independence were fought for by tooth and nail.
She job-hunted for years, hopping from nursing homes to hospitals. From volunteer work to a job with a meagre salary her candle of hope flickering with each passing day.
It was not until the year 1975 when she met a person she fondly refers to as her godfather --- the legendary Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.
“In my voluntary service and the period I spent sharpening my skills as a health worker, I got several referrals. Among them, someone introduced me to the family of the late vice president,” she recalls.
In her life-turning event, she was contracted to take care of the first, second in command in Kenya, the father to the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga, who was ailing with diabetes.
It is here that several opportunities started unfurling for her. The benefits of being under the roof of the Jaramogis would pay with her first job.
Her first salary was Sh300 per month. Back then, she says, that was a tidy sum.
One of the visible rewards she received by being a servant of Jaramogi washer house at Kenya Re Estate, Kisumu.
When we arrive at her home, a young man mowing the grass stops and rushes to open the gate for us.
She chuckles when I ask whether this is her residence. “I’m not rich,” she giggles. “This is one of the gifts Jaramogi gave me for taking care of him back in the village,” she says, a broad smile all over her face.
The grey-haired old granny still looks energetic as she takes through the meandering story of her life, it is evident she is not one who gives up easily.
The pictures on the wall tell of a journey of sweat and blood. She dons a blue t-shirt emblazoned “Grace” and a rosary. Her mask on.
She struggles to whisper words, rounding her lips to form them, occasionally stopping me with a “please slow down” for her to understand my question.
Her steps from one job to another led her to a breakthrough.
On October 6, 1986, she landed her current job at Nyalenda Healthcare Centre.
She has since dedicated her life to serving the sick, but with a keen interest in those with hearing problems, and other forms of disability.
The situation that many thought would put her down only served to energise her, fighting through thick and thin to write the inspiring story.
“Never despair. Everyone has a chance in this world, and the disabled too, have a chance,” she concludes.
The mother of one plans to use her retirement period, just like her grandparents did to her, to take care of her three grandchildren, who are all in the university, courtesy of her efforts.
