In a month’s time, I will be celebrating thirteen years since I founded Lifesong Kenya, an organization that provides a safe space for boys who are built differently. As we go along, you will get to learn what I mean when I refer to this special category of boys as being built differently. Thirteen years haave flown by, like a flash, kind of like a quick snap of the fingers. Boy, hasn’t a lot happened in these thirteen years?
I look back at the life-changing decisions that I made thriteen years ago, and can’t help but smile. Thirteen years ago, Richard Onchuru, a lawyer friend of men, hailed a taxi that shuttled us from the heart of Nairobi City to the chaotic Nairobi Remand Prison where my life was going to turn upside down. Working as an untrained TV Producer at KBC TV, my off day from work fell on Fridays, when I was free to spend my time the way I saw fit. On this particular Friday, Richard and I met 100 boys who were built differently.
After a brief meeting with the late Madam Wanini Kireri, her assistant ushered us to Block B where 100 young offenders were housed. The cell was crammed with metal bunk beds, bed-bug ridden mattresses and patched blankets. The boys stood on one side while Richard, myself and a prison warden stood on the opposite side. White baby bed bugs roamed freely on the blankets, craving for fresh blood. Without thinking, I sat on one of the beds. “God, when I leave this prison,” I prayed, “please let me not leave with these bed bugs blood-thirsty bed bugs! Please!”
Seeing a Reflection of Myself as Built Differently
I immediately saw a reflection of myself in each of the 100 boys, which transported me back to when I was thirteen years old when I discovered I was built differently. Having lost my dad just before I turned thirteen years old, the death of my father left a gaping wound, a hole in my heart and soul. Each time I saw an adult man, I saw the father I had lost when I was barely a man. And seeing these 100 young offenders reminded me of my own father wound that I needed an adult man to heal. This realization was so ovewhelming I collapsed on the bed bug ridden bed that was closest to me.
One of the boy was called Felix who was seventeen years old at the time. He blankly stared at me with cold eyes that had lost their sparkle. Young Felix looked at me with eyes that had already given up on the world. He was wrongfully incarcerated, stripped of his dignity before he even understood what being built differently meant. I told myself I would help him. I didn’t know that decision was going to swallow the boy I once was—the one who dreamed of writing novels, scripting films, and one day owning a shrimping boat in the sparkling blue waters in South Carolina.
Though built differently, that boy inside of me had plans. He wanted to tell stories that moved people, to create worlds with words and images, to live a life of creative purpose. But when you stand in a cell with a child who has been forgotten by everyone, your own dreams start to feel like luxuries that you cannot afford. So I shelved them and told myself I would come back for the boy in five years.
In five years time, I will pick up my dreams.
Getting Lost in Helping Boys Who Are Built Differently
The mission of rescuing one boy grew into ten boys. And before I knew it, the mission evolved into providing a safe house for boys exiting juvenile prison. In 2021, we rented a three-bedroom house that became a sanctuary for wounded souls carrying stigma and trauma heavier than their own bodies. All of a sudden, I became a counselor, a fundraiser, a crisis manager, a father figure, a fixer and other things that boys who are built differently need in a father. The challenges didn’t just grow; they mutated. Each boy arrived with layers of unresolved anger and pain that unraveled slowly, messily, sometimes violently. The system around us was broken, and fighting it consumed everything I had.
I stopped reading fiction and stopped writing. Images of my shrimp boat kept vanishing into the horizon and a thousand sunsets that got swallowed with darkness. I told myself this was a noble sacrifice, that personal ambition was selfish when children were suffering. What I didn’t admit was that I was disappearing, disintegrating and evaporating like the Limuru mist on a hot sunny day. The boy who wanted to write was still in there, whispering, but I learned to ignore him. I had to. Listening meant feeling the grief of what I was giving up.
Then life threw me a lifeline. I got an opportunity to travel—six times—out of Kenya to Spain, thanks to receiving Co-Active Leadership scholarship award. In between, I had an opportunity to visit Witten, Sardinia and Milano. Each of these trips shifted something inside of me. It wasn’t a dramatic shift—but a slow tide turning. Being far away from home, traveling in countries whose langauges I didn’t understand or speak, I started taking care of myself. Small things at first: walking alone, noticing things, seeing a man kiss another man, a woman flick her hair inside the Metro and saying no when every instinct screamed to say yes. I began to see that my exhaustion wasn’t a badge of honor; it was a warning. The boys I served didn’t need a hollowed-out man running on fumes. They needed someone whole.
Finding the Boy I Had Left Behind
This meant finding the boy I had left behind in my quest to rescue boys who have been built differently. In caring for myself, I rediscovered the boy I had tried to leave behind. He hadn’t left—he was waiting, patiently with loads of creativity, imagination and the ability to see beyond the immediate crisis to the story underneath. The boy who wanted to write film scripts understood that every boy who is staying at our Halfway House is living a story that deserves to be told, not just fixed. The boy who wanted a shrimping boat understands that taking a pause and solitude isn’t abandoning the mission—it is a space where where restoration actually happens.
I haven’t bought the boat yet. But I have started writing again. I am dreaming again. And I’m learning that the boy I wanted to leave behind and the man I am becoming—much as they are built differently—they don’t have to be at war with each other. The work of healing others and the work of healing myself are the same work.
That’s what it means to be built differently. Not to sacrifice yourself until you vanish in thin air, but to build a life where your wounds and your wonders can coexist together. It is where helping boys to find their way back doesn’t require you to lose your own joy, peace and treasure.
The boy I wanted to leave behind? He was the one I needed all along.
