Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss, And Hope In An African Slum

In this chapter we learn more about Kennedy’s childhood. Father Alberto pays for Kennedy to attend school and provides him with supplies. After overcoming his initial fear of being eaten by white people and not understanding what math was, Kennedy settles into school and does extremely well. When Father Alberto is transferred back to Italy, Kennedy knows the headmistress won’t make good on her promise to let him stay.

He starts going to church every Sunday as a way to see his mother and siblings each week. When a new priest arrives, Father John, he befriends Kennedy, also giving him money for school and food. However, unlike the benevolent Father Alberto, the new priest sexually abuses Kennedy each week. Confusing and scared, Kennedy feels trapped by his need to provide food for his family. Eventually, Kennedy stops believing in God and leaves the church for Rastafarianism.

He starts smoking bange and follows a path he knows is not good, “My only crime was drawing life’s short straw” (106). Kennedy volunteers at a charity home, meeting a white man named Alex who introduces him to the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. He finds renewed hope in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of MLK, Jr. Alex also introduces him to Linda, a woman living in Ohio, who writes to Kennedy throughout his life and provides sage advice around AIDS prevention to Kennedy. She also pays for him to attend boarding school. Although he won’t meet Linda in person until he travels to America with Jessica, she remains an important mother figure in Kennedy’s life. He enrolls in the boarding school, but the school ends up being a place of hunger and violence, not unlike Kibera. After getting sick from the food—because “they put paraffin wax in the food to make the students feel full. It made us horribly sick” (110)—the students burn down the school. They are beaten and imprisoned for three days. Kennedy returns to Kibera a hero. 

Jessica spends two weeks in a rural Muslim village on the coast. She enjoys the slow pace of life and space in the village, but slowly realizes that the poverty is the same as it is in the city, it just looks different. She wants to call Kennedy and tell him about the “jiggers”—“sand fleas that get into the skin around your toes and then lay eggs inside” (115)—she has in her foot and her experiences there, but she refrains.

When she comes home, she must stay in Nairobi with Mama Rose while she waits for her feet to heal. Kennedy comes to visit her, remarkably uncomfortable with the middle-class home she is staying at. They go for a walk and Kennedy mentions that she never called, but Jessica is confused: “He says this with so little emotion I can’t tell if he is angry or is just stating a fact” (117). Kennedy leaves for his mother’s village to go install a toilet.

Jessica’s friend Gabi comes to Nairobi and organizes a dinner at a restaurant with Kennedy. Kennedy pays for the expensive meal, saying “African men provide” (119). Kennedy and Jessica drink beer at a reggae club. After a fun night, Kennedy tries to kiss Jessica in the cab ride home, but she stops it. Kennedy seems upset: “He says something to the driver in Luo and the car stops. He opens the door, gets out, and slams it behind him, disappearing without another word into the night” (112).

She returns to Kennedy’s house the next day with trepidation. She arrives to power being installed in his home, because she had previously stated she needs to charge her computer battery. Jessica feels like “an intruder” in his life, making him change the way he is living and becoming a burden to his busy life taking care of his family and community.

She spends hours every afternoon hiding behind the curtain on the bed while Kennedy advises the people who come seeking his advice. Kennedy never seems to tire of speaking with his neighbors and helping them find solutions. He helps one man named Onesmus find an orphanage for his infant daughter because he cannot afford to feed her. 

Kennedy narrates more detail around his childhood and relationship with his family. Kennedy’s mother reveals to him that Babi isn’t his biological father, a fact he never knew. Kennedy is relieved at the news and now understands why Babi always targeted him with abuse and was upset when he ate food. He doesn’t want to know who his real father is and dreams of one day becoming the kind of father he never had.

Kennedy tries to provide for his family any way that he can. He gets a factory job making a small wage, waking at four o'clock in the morning to walk hours to work. He is unhappy with the working conditions, the wages, and the poor treatment. He is surrounded by friends being murdered or committing suicide. His sister Jackie is raped and becomes pregnant by a neighbor. The only way to convict her rapist and send him to prison is to bribe the police, which nobody has money for. Jackie runs away to the village to avoid being married to her rapist.

The factory shuts down, and Kennedy finds new work building houses. When the foreman starts stealing the workers’ pay, he organizes a strike. It was unsuccessful because the workers were too desperate for pay to remain on strike: “I was willing to sacrifice for the greater good, but they were not, they could not. I felt more hopeless than ever” (138). Government corruption and worker mistreatment angers Kennedy, but instead of turning to violence like many men in his community, he escapes into literature and learning, relying on figures like civil rights leader MLK, Jr. and South African anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela for hope.