The woman who rejected a job offer from Nairobi County Governor Mike Sonko has gone through thick and thin to become the CEO of the Kenya Medical Association.
There is nothing about Dr Stellah Bosire-Otieno that hints at the traumatic childhood she endured.
She is a picture of happiness, success and contentment, her firm handshake exuding confidence. Hers is an extraordinary, inspiring story of resilience and courage in the face of abject poverty, sexual abuse and drug addiction.
Stellah was born in Gatwekera, Kibera, 29 years ago, and is the second-born in a family of five children. Her father, who did not care about them, physically and verbally abused her late mother, Alice Nyambura.
“Half the time, my father was not there, so my mother raised us by herself,” says Stellah.
Her mother also had a “mysterious” illness that saw her go in and out of local clinics. She would also sometimes behave in ways that disturbed Stellah and her siblings.
For example, she would use their house as a toilet, and would lose her temper if any of them moved the plastic containers she used to do her deed in. Her mother would also often have conversations with imaginary people.
It wasn’t until Stellah joined medical school, many years later, that she realised that her mother’s strange behaviour was actually depression and schizophrenia.
“She would lapse in and out of depression, and this made us vulnerable to to all manner of abuse, since she was not able to protect us or provide for us during her relapses.
When I was in Class Four for instance, a male relative sexually abused me. He told me that he would hurt my mum if I told anyone what he was doing to me. I could not bear the thought of him hurting her, so I kept quiet,” she says.
“When I was in Class Five, I dropped out of school since mum could not afford school fees, and together with my siblings, roamed the streets begging for food…that is how we survived.”
They would also collect discarded plastic bottles and sell them. It was after such a mission one day that Stellah was gang raped. She still remembers the face of one of them. After that incident, she says, she lost her childhood innocence for good.
It was about this time that she started smoking bhang, perhaps to cope with her disillusionment.
“In the ghetto, you could get your fix for as little as five shillings,” she says.
Her father, who had not been playing an active role in their lives at the time, showed up and took them back to school after being taunted by neighbours and friends about letting his children live in the streets.
“The school I had studied in from Class One to five, Kibera Primary School, refused to take me back. I was on drugs and they knew it. I was also very volatile, would fight a lot and was verbally abusive,” she explains.
“I did the exams in a secluded room, a policeman on guard – I was not allowed to mingle with the rest. Our gang leader had bought me a mathematical set, but the pencil was blunt, and I had no sharpener, so I had to keep biting the edges of the pencil and rubbing it on the floor to sharpen it,” she laughs at a memory she now finds amusing.
Stellah scored 516 out of a possible 700 marks, her highest score in maths.