Prologue

THAT EVENING was still, and the darkness embraced Mary’s labor as if it were the only special thing in the lonely night. A child was about to be born, the first in this household. No one had yet seen it, yet there was faith and hope that a baby would arrive to inherit the surname of the house of Wilson Otieno Olweny.

A few months later, Kenneth Otieno (back then, Odhiambo) was not only one of the newest babies in Wasweta but also the talk of the extended family. His aunt Nyakisa (Florence Otieno), who was fond of him, described him as a plump, chocolate-brown boy, pronouncing it in her Luo accent as “chokolet.” When his character began to show, another aunt, Mama Donn (Grace Akinyi), saw in him a respectful and focused boy who naturally attracted favor from those around him.

All these events unfolded quickly until the age of ten, when his life took a sharp turn, marking the beginning of a long journey marked by loss and grief, by seasons of lack, and by lonely moments of searching for the meaning of life.

Today, for almost half of his entire life, Kenneth Otieno walks a path without his parents. What a twist life can take. In time, he discovered that every person on this earth has a path that cannot be mapped out by parents alone but must ultimately be trodden in one’s own footsteps. Each person has a chance, regardless of obstacles, to create something that endures for as long as they live.

Kenneth loves to reflect on life and what truly matters. He asks questions and seeks answers. He is acquainted with the loneliness that comes with forging ideas unfamiliar to others, yet he acknowledges that there are no shortcuts. What may appear mysterious to others are often decisions and convictions that are sacred to him, giving meaning to his efforts.

The making of a visionary like Kenneth is deeply personal; there can be no perfect blueprint. What we write, hear, or listen to, inspires us in different ways. Kenneth’s story is one such account; a true journey of struggles that demanded time, wit, and wisdom to craft lifelong solutions.

If the world were perfect, there would be no adventures like Kenneth’s. Yet we live in a time when imperfection and its consequences disturb human comfort, leaving people with no choice but to learn from the best examples — even when the best lessons are often the hardest.

CHAPTER ONE:

How Big is Your Head?

WHEN YOU first meet Kenneth, what strikes you first is the generous smile, expressing a kind but content heart. The grip of his hand when he greets you reflects the confidence that he carries. His eyes speak of wit, intelligence, and friendliness. But before I sit down to talk to him, I realize God gave him quite a generously sized head and I’m tempted to ask: How big is your head, Ken?

Hold on, Ruth, hold on, I assure myself, a better time will come to be naughty.

So, I take my chair with deliberate calmness, as if nothing is bothering me, and I give him an innocent smile. He smiles back, unsuspecting. By the time I’m comfortable and we are engaging in business, it quickly becomes clear to me that when it comes to serious issues, he is the planner and the executor. You see a person who enjoys following up on what he loves to do and does it with passion.

So, meeting Kenneth and getting to know him for the first time, I would say he is deep water. He is someone you want to take time to understand, but also to discover. My guess is, that in him lies a treasure of a person who has woven life into a program of making things work, regardless of the situation.

While finding the story in his story, I gave him a name —The Visionary. Then I realized that he was actually shoeless for 80% of his childhood and youth, and that says, in its own way, that his feet had a closer engagement with the earth. I bet they had a mutual understanding. He knows the tricks of slimy mud before it lands you on the ground, and the heat of the ground when it feels like your feet are in a bread oven. He remembers the wounds from sly thorns and sharp stones, which you do not bother reporting because you are expected to be tough. Then the mockery of classmates who witnessed him having to clean his feet from mud in the dew before he entered class, only to soil them again after leaving the classroom, for he had no shoes to protect them.

But the best part you haven’t captured yet is this, he knows what every moment of humiliation meant, for he was busy crafting how he wanted to change that. Now you know where this is heading. We are unfolding the adventures of a shoeless visionary.

Listening to Kenneth’s story, you might think it sounds quite ordinary at first. You can almost assume that, just like everyone else, he was born to be what he was already in the womb, adapt to what he finds on earth and change to be a better or worse person. However, when you see him walking in confidence, calculating his steps, playing his father and husband role, smiling and jovially greeting you, you can never guess how life gifted him a story, and what he has turned it into, to work for him daily.

Kenneth Otieno’s daily life is made mostly of split-second decision-making, strategizing, problem solving, mentorship, and personal growth. When I asked him, “How many things do you handle on a normal day?” he gave me an answer I thought would end halfway, but it went on, and I was awed.

“My day is a mix of personal care, commuting or travelling, working, studying, farming, reading, and thinking about my livelihood.”

Oh yeah — thinking. I like this bit a lot! I grin inside.

“I usually wake up early in the morning. How my day will look the following day is visualized at night and firmed up at dawn. On most days, I go to work around 7:30 a.m. and leave in the evening past 5 p.m.”

He continues without pause.

“I like carrying at least one book in my backpack to read at intervals during the day. If this is not possible, I reference my digital resources during the day. What I learn from these sources help me at work or in my engagement in various platforms as part of sharing with the larger community.”

“I do tele-monitoring of my farming activities when I am not at home. Most weekends, I travel home to assess the progress of my various initiatives and to just be in my home and meet my people.”

Then, before he finishes by saying how he concludes his day, my greatest worry is how he packs all this in one head —but I do not tell him yet that I feel it’s big. I just do not want to spoil this rapport yet.

However, because my hands are itching to write about this, I hit the nail with a big stone because I do not have a hammer.

“How big is your head?”

He laughs, and I feel the next thing he is going to do is touch it to confirm it. But he glances at me as if to say, “You are not waiting for an answer to that question.”

We both laugh, and we know where this will lead.

Of course, Kenneth does not believe he has a big head. What he equates it with is what he has accumulated in terms of experience and learning. For instance, he remembers feedback from members of his staff one day when there was a paper going round and people were writing notes to appreciate each other. On the notes he received, there were phrases like: Mentor – powerhouse; a great leader, keep mentoring; best manager.

Certainly, he did not get these qualities overnight, but they are skills he cultivates daily. Apart from the daily routine of checking mail and in-trays, he spends time on his personal well-being and on the people who support his initiatives. What makes him balance this lifestyle is his capacity to pick up issues from multiple perspectives and handle them one by one, all this at his own pace. He also likes prioritizing and delegating roles. What he cares about equally is his social life and other people’s well-being.

Kenneth has never wanted this book to be about self-glory, but about understanding himself and for others to learn from his life. He has so many questions as to why he did certain things and how they can be lessons for others, especially the younger generation.

Definitely, Kenneth’s story is not only what he is right now, but also a journey,  actually one of the longest I have ever heard of. If you have had a smooth childhood where you found butter on the table and the tea aroma kissing the sunrise across the dining table, while the house manager is begging you to hurry up because you will be late for school, you might never imagine the extreme opposite of what Ken lived.

I ask him where it all began, and he takes me back in time.

We are in Wasweta village where Ken grew up. He is 12 years old. He is snoring regardless of the mosquito bites, which by now have signed a contract with him to only bite a fraction enough for both of them to survive. His head, carrying all the burdens in the village, is resting on a pillow made of clothes he has outgrown but does not wish to let go of. The papyrus reed mat now borders between him and the cold, potholed floor. It has never gotten the luxury of a bedsheet, which you now have neatly adorned on your mattress. Its touch feels like years lost in toil and turmoil, with beddings weary of sweat and dirt from soil-stained feet. His palms, corrugated with years of labor, are holding onto his withered blanket like the only treasure worth a cold night’s comfort.

The memories of his night are flooded by cold passing through a door that has a hole by default. And when it rains, all his family members camp in one corner of the house, which offers refuge for a few minutes before insects crawl in to claim the warmth they do not know how to make. On a better morning, when the rain goes visiting the neighboring village, his blanket will know no order, only exile to a corner when his father’s voice calls him from sleep, at an hour so early even the rooster’s favorite hen is just whispering her reply.

So, when I want to know the size of our main character’s head, I imagine the weight of the stories it has carried, the memories that traded his playing time for lack and endurance, and how he has reached his 47 years unbounded. This Jawasweta (son of Wasweta) is probably a walking workshop with a lifelong design on how to craft order from chaos and life from challenges. Yes, challenges, because that is what he has been handling since he realized his parents were earning coins of pity and could not catch up with his ambition of studying and becoming somebody in society.

I try to imagine this little boy, who has nothing to his name except some old and torn exercise books where his pride is imprinted. The red ticks of good performance are faintly displayed. He carries them to school daily while shoeless. I feel the pain of being bullied by classmates for not having the right uniform during joint school events. True, it was that morning when a girl he later almost dated told him he was letting them down because of his humble way of dressing for school.

While I wonder why he would date such a person, he diverts his thoughts to a physical encounter.

“I beat her.”

I am ‘awake’ now.

“Why did you beat her?”

“I felt like I was not at par with my peers for some time because of the lack aspect. It is true that I never had good shoes, so to speak. What I had were things we call sandak (plastic shoes) and akala (sandals made of used car tyres),” Kenneth explains, his tone giving a hint of humiliation.

“The girl who made this remark was my classmate. She told me to my face that I was letting them down because as the school head boy, I did not have a proper uniform, and I also wore akala. It really touched me. It hurt me,” he pauses to reflect again.

“It hurt because for her, she was lucky both her parents were employed and could afford for her things I only dreamed of as a child. She had a very good uniform and nice shoes. For me, while I was the head boy in the school, I did not have a proper uniform. The shirt was second-hand, with pockets which did not match the school uniform. The pair of shorts did not have the color accepted in school. So according to her, I was letting them down, kind of embarrassing them, and I wasn’t painting the good picture I needed to paint when we went out to meet students from neighboring schools. I felt bad.”

“It affected my self-esteem. I felt like I had no hope. From then on, I knew there was a better life, but I had to work for it. If I needed something, I had to go for it. That was it.”

“Apparently, it never occurred to me that I would steal to get what I wanted, or that I could drop out of school to get it. No. I wanted to go to school at whatever cost. I was focused on that despite the circumstances. I was aware of my situation. I knew I had limited options though.”

“I think later on, that’s why reading books helped me put certain things into perspective. If you read, for instance, Think Big by Ben Carson, and see the way his mother encouraged them about education and motivated them to study regardless of shortcomings, you understand why I have always loved seeing someone write that education is the only thing you need to change your life.”

As he finishes his reflection, I begin to understand what education meant to him back then. Is that not what they taught us when we first learned to draw letters on the sand? Back then, school meant no pen or pencil — just hands and sticks tracing numbers and letters while learning additions and other basics. Kenneth understood this as well, even though humiliation sometimes weighed on him.

I’m beginning to suspect that Gen X consists of heroes like Kenneth who endured poverty but loved education more. What makes this Ken and other Kens unique is the daring spirit to make the unworkable work. They stare at hurdles and tell them, “I’m coming for you.” The next day they carry weapons and try each one until they find the right one to bring the obstacles down, then they move to the next. Before they can count to ten, resilience is running in their blood, a resilience that does not stop at No.

So, I am discovering Kenneth with passion because even though we live in a time when technology provides almost everything — even emotional support — we still need thinkers with big heads. Heads that can accommodate failure and still have room to turn it into success. Heads that can carry insults and still find the art of plotting them into must-read stories.

Minds like Kenneth acknowledge that there are bigger problems to solve. He could have opted to suffer silently, lose patience, or drown in depression and save his problems for the grave — a place with neither a heart nor sympathy. Upon receiving him, it would watch him rot, because his time to change the world would have gone. Grave! What a lazy place to be!

So…

Big heads? Yes.

For big problems? Yes.

For bigger solutions? Perfect.

Kenneth’s path as a visionary is perhaps one of the hardest to navigate. It sounds bumpy and steep. I guess he did not predict it with a perfect plan. It appeared when there was a need, and the path to that need was full of rocks others have tried and failed to move. Then comes one brave Kenneth who says, “Let’s try this other way,” and another, and another, until a bigger way is paved for others to walk into success. He was neither accustomed to comfort nor convenience. But would we say convenience is success?

Tell me, how is life supposed to be without obstacles, inconveniences, or visionaries?

Once again, I am interviewing Kenneth Otieno, but also studying his life. I am amazed that even though he is not perfect and his strategies are not perfect, he is in charge of what he thinks, what he reads, what he does, and also advocates for a better life, not only for his children, but for his next of kin and the most vulnerable on earth: widows, orphans, and youths.

He works where his heart is. Every second of his life, when he sits in the office to forge solutions, propose strategies, and plan for tomorrow, he knows he is serving where he is called to change lives positively.

He annoys me, though, every time he tells me, “Ruth, the day this book is printed and I hold it in my hands, even when God calls me home, I will say yes.”

I argue with him, “This book is just the beginning. You are not going home yet.”

I tell you, Ken has values you would want your children to have before adolescence hits them. I beat him at his own game when I tell him that one day, there should be thousands of youths and adults mentored by him, impacting change like it’s magic.

Before I spoil the cake, I am challenging you to rediscover the secrets of this visionary. What shakes him so badly that he fights for change? Where does he find cover when everything works against him? How does he stand up again when he has nothing to grip?