Nacho Mirya

Meet Nacho Mirya, a grade 2 nine year old girl from Uganda who joined Hands of Love school in January 2015. Her mum Scovia fled to Kenya from Uganda to escape an abusive marriage in 2013.

Nacho was initially left with her dad in Uganda. Scovia initially settled in Busia – a town on Kenya -Uganda border – were she had found work as a live-in  domestic servant. In 2014 she moved to Nairobi with the family she was working for. The same year her ex-husband kicked Nacho out of their former home in Uganda when he remarried. This meant that Scovia had to leave her job so that she could live with her daughter.

Scovia narrates that it was very difficult living with her daughter in a foreign city. They moved from one slum to another so that she could go to where odd jobs were available. In  August 2015 they settled in Kariobangi. Shortly after arriving in Kariobangi Scovia was encouraged to enroll Nacho at Hands of Love by a neighbor whose child was schooling with us. She had gotten a job at a carpenter’s shop – helping sand-down and paint furniture – and didn’t have a place to leave her daughter as she went to work.

She has been working at the same job for four years now making $2 a day. Last year (2017) she remarried and the family now has a two weeks old baby. The money that she and and the husband makes is not enough for housing and food. This means that Nacho sleeps without eating many nights and depends on the food she gets at school. Without Hands of Love this girl would probably be out of school and hungry.