City Lawyer Peter Wanyama is known for his lavish lifestyle but behind his success is a story of abject poverty and despair.
In a post he shared online, Wanyama even say that at one point he contemplated suicide because of the situation they were in as a family.
“The girls in the village rejected my teenage approaches because of poverty; they also ridiculed me. I got into near depression and actually contemplated suicide,” he said.
However, with a rope in his hand ready to end it all, he remembered his mother and wondered where she would bury him if he dies.
“On the way to end it, I thought about what would happen to my mother if I died. I wondered where she would bury me. We were squatters and had no land,” he said.
He changed his mind and put all his focus back to books by tutoring himself even though he was not in still.
At that time, he told his mother that he was reading in order to one day become a DC.
“I would read from 8 pm to 1 am at night. Almost daily for 5 months. Alone. In that single room we shared,” he said.
Wanyama who had dropped out of school for lack of school was at home helping his mother brew chang’aa so that he could go back to school.
He remembers one time when AP officers from Naitiri AP Camp invaded their chang’aa den and arrest him and his mother.
Wanyama and his mother were locked up in the cells for a few hours and later released after paying a Sh 3,000 bribe.
He was hurt because the money used to bribe the police was what he wanted to use to go back to school.
Before dropping out of school, Wanyama narrates the challenges he faced when he joined form one at Chesamisi boys’ high school.
“I wore shoes for the first time- a black mocasin and I was thrilled with reading in a room brightened with electricity. Despite joining school late- I emerged the best student in Chemistry, Biology, Physics, and, Geography,” he said.
Despite him coming from a humble background, Wanyama performed very well in his studies.
In 1997, his mother travelled to Nairobi to look for a relative to help them and she was given Sh 17,000 which Wanyama used to enroll into form three in a new school.
“It was the happiest moment of my life. I inquired and heard that there was an interview at Kibabii High School for students who wanted to join Form 3. I took a bicycle and rode all the way to attend to the interview, which I passed. ……,” he said.
Photo credit : www.manyongewanyama.com/team/peter-wanyama
