W
hen asked why she works so hard for orphans and children in poverty, the normally upbeat Rose Wasike pauses solemnly as tears fill her eyes. “My parents were very poor,” she says slowly. “I was
the third child out of 11 so growing up I saw the problem and the power of poverty. My parents used to struggle a
lot to put food on the table, and just even to take us to school.” She wipes her eyes and apologizes. Poverty makes her emotional. Wasike’s parents were determined to help her go to school, even though some of her siblings dropped out to work and earn money for the family. “My parents were struggling in order to pay my school fees,”
Wasike says. “My father was a peasant farmer, and every time he’d grow corn or beans he would save everything. Sometimes after selling all the products, all the money that was saved out of that product was all given to me.” The emphasis on education and the sacrifice her parents made
for her to go to school motivated her to excel. It also revealed poverty as a power that needed to be conquered. Wasike completed high school and college with a degree in
education. After graduation, she taught high school in Kenya. She wanted to provide not only for herself but for her parents as well. “During my time as a teacher, one thing I realized is I was in the
same cycle of admitting students who were also struggling with poverty,” she says. “They had to pay school fees to be in school, but some of them – a large majority of them – did not have the ability to do that.” As a teacher, Wasike was now part of the system sending
children home for not having school fees. It broke her heart and stirred up the same feelings of doubt and insecurity from when she was younger, leaving school and hoping her family would have the money to pay the fees. “It made me recall through my youthful life when I was also in the same situation where teachers were sending me home to go get
38 BUCKNER TODAY • Spring 2016
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