The morning her mother was buried, Neema Achieng' was wearing a pair of borrowed shoes that pinched her toes with every step. The sun beat down mercilessly on the tin-roofed church where mourners gathered in scattered silence, their whispers cutting through the humid air like invisible blades.
Neema stood between her elder sister Grace and her little sister Lilian, fingers clenched in the folds of her skirt. Their father, Mr. Achieng', had not spoken more than a few words all morning. His grief hung on him like a soaked overcoat, heavy and silent.
Neema had never seen a coffin before—not in real life. And now, here it was: polished mahogany resting on a chipped stand at the front of the altar, holding the woman who had once combed her hair with coconut oil and sang lullabies even when she was too old for them. She felt numb. Not the kind of numb that made you cry. The kind that made you afraid you might never feel anything again.
That evening, their home—if it could still be called that—was full of people, but felt emptier than ever. Women wailed in the kitchen, cooking for guests who came to grieve and gossip in equal measure. Neema sat quietly on the edge of the bed she now shared with three of her sisters. The house had always been small, but without their mother's warmth, it now felt like a cave full of shadows.
Her father entered the room quietly. He was still wearing the funeral coat, though the sun had long since set. He looked at each of them—Grace, Neema, Lilian, Hope, and little Nuru—before finally saying, "I will do my best." That was all. And that was enough.
Years passed. The pain thinned like old cloth—never quite gone, just faded. Grace, the eldest, tried to play the mother role but was too hard and serious to be soft. Neema took on the little things: packing Nuru's bag for school, teaching Hope how to braid, staying up late with Lilian when she had nightmares.
She worked hard in primary school, fueled by her mother's last words whispered in her dreams: "Never settle."
But when the KCPE results came out, and Neema's name didn't appear on the list for the top national schools, reality sank its teeth in. She had the grades—but not the money.
Her father, already stretched thin working security at the county hospital, had quietly sold the family cow to enroll Grace in boarding school. He couldn't do it again.
"You'll go to Ndemu Mixed Day School," he told her gently one evening, the moonlight making his eyes seem older than ever. "It's not a big name, but school is school."
Neema didn't cry. She just nodded and later, in the darkness of their one-room house, traced her dreams with her finger in the air—sketching invisible gowns, heels, and hairstyles onto the night sky like it was a runway.
Ndemu Mixed Day was nothing like the schools she saw in her dreams. The walls were cracked, the teachers underpaid and overworked, and the students rowdy. But it was there that Neema began to understand survival.
She met girls who came to school hungry, boys who stole textbooks from the market, and teachers who had given up long before the students ever arrived. On her first day, her shoes broke. She tied them with sisal string and kept walking.
That was the day she saw him for the first time. Farhan Said was leaning against the back wall of the classroom, sketching on the last page of his physics book. He had wide eyes, the color of roasted coffee beans, and a calmness that stood out in the chaos of the room.
Neema didn't speak to him then. But for reasons she couldn't explain, she remembered the way his pencil moved across the page—smooth, precise, almost... graceful.
That night, as the oil lamp flickered beside her, Neema took out her own tattered notebook and drew a dress. It had wide shoulders and a flared hem. Bold. Beautiful. She wrote one word underneath it: IMMAD.
A dream. A promise. A future.
Somewhere far off, a whisper floated in her mind, gentle but firm, like her mother's voice:
"You're not done yet."