Short story Episode I: Hope for Tomorrow
etter tomorrow. Episode 1: A Prayer for Tomorrow The cry that announced Nduta ’s arrival into the world was just one more sound in a small, mud-walled home already brimming with the lives of seven other children. She was the last, the final comma in a long family sentence written in the ink of poverty in their small village near Ruiru . The red soil of Kiambu County gave them sustenance, but never enough to get ahead. At sixteen, Nduta was a girl caught between two worlds. In one, she was a Form Two student , her mind filled with the complexities of algebra and the shared whispers of her classmates. In the other, a secret was growing within her, a silent, terrifying truth that soon swelled her belly and forced her to trade her school uniform for the loose-fitting dresses of her mother. Her education, the fragile bridge to a different life, had crumbled. When the labour pains began, sharp and relentless, there were no frantic preparations for a trip to the hospital. There was simply n...