Nova Pioneer Tatu Girls Principal Dr Nyaboke Nduati poses for a picture during the interview at the school grounds on January 10, 2024. PHOTO | FRANCIS NDERITU | NMG
Dr Nyaboke Nduati - principal of Nova Pioneer Tatu Girls High School - has written a memoir. It’s a difficult book that goes to difficult places in her difficult childhood, defined by violence, neglect, isolation, and female genital mutilation (FGM).
Dr Nduati got her Ph.D. in Literacy Education from Syracuse University, New York, pretty early (at 32) and always wanted to be a writer.
“But I needed to heal before I could truly immerse myself in my writing,” she says.
“I needed time away from the emotional labour of writing.” She wanted to focus on happier things, like being in classrooms, rather than “being in my head and my character’s lives.”
So, she plunged into education and, for the last 17 years, worked in schools in Kenya and the US, both in instructional and administrative roles. At Nova Pioneer Tatu Girls, where she has been for the last seven years, she prepares the girls for the rapidly changing world of the 21st Century.
Why write a book? Why dredge up a terrible past?
I studied creative writing for my Master’s, so I could have written fiction, but over the years, I felt like something was blocking me from writing the other things I could write.
My story felt like a physical thing that was standing in my way in so many ways, preventing me from being able to write other things and being my authentic self.
My childhood impacted me greatly, and I can see remnants of it playing out in different aspects of my life, from my work to my relationships. In the book, I talk about relationships and growing up in a home with no open expressions of love - just people coexisting in the same spaces. I was constantly chasing something, an idea of what love should look like. I have since had to do a lot of work on myself.
There are some pretty personal things in the book. Do you feel naked, that people see you unclothed?
Not in a negative way. It is more like vulnerability, opening myself up so people see what’s happening inside. And what’s going on inside is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s also what’s going on inside other people.
However, I think society has conditioned us to believe that our emotions are bad and that we should hide or pretend we don’t have them. I see these emotions as a mirror into our soul, and if somebody wants to say that they don’t feel these things, then they’re saying that they don’t have a soul.
This book is written mainly from the eyes of a child. Many things that happened to us in our childhood were outside our control. I didn’t choose domestic violence or FGM. Nonetheless, they had an impact, but I don’t see it as my fault at all in the end.
What work have you had to do on yourself to arrive at this point of awareness?
I've only ever gone for professional therapy once, but over the years, I've done a lot of self-therapy through my writing.
From as far back as I can remember, I have always been writing stories to process my emotions. I used to write stories and try to pass them off as fiction. And because I've interacted with these experiences over many years, I no longer feel pain when I talk about my story. It's become like... somebody else's things.
Nova Pioneer Tatu Girls Principal Dr Nyaboke Nduati poses for a picture during the interview at the school grounds on January 10, 2024. PHOTO | FRANCIS NDERITU | NMG
Yeah. I feel removed from it in some ways. So, I can tell it in a way that's emotionally removed from that experience.
What has been the impact of your childhood as a mother, wife, and educator?
I overcompensate as a mother. I am overly affectionate. I tell them I love them every day, all the time. I’m always giving them hugs. And it comes naturally, which is surprising because I never had that. I never saw that growing up.
I also have a lot of fear of death because my parents passed away when I was very young. I fear a repeat. What happens to my children then? I would never want them to go through what I went through. So, I’m fearful. I have nightmares of me dying.
How do you die in your nightmares?
(Pause) I don’t know if you should write these things down. They are so dark. [Chuckles] But you know, sometimes it’s an accident. Other times, I feel my soul leaving my body while I sleep, and I reach out to it, asking it to stop. It’s so scary and vivid.
Anyway, the other impact of my childhood as a wife is that I wanted to be with a specific kind of man from the word go. My dad was very violent and generally a terrifying person. I write in my book about always having that fear that my dad would kill me given the right circumstances.
So you see, this fear of death has been present for a long time because, as a child, I was always afraid of being killed at home by someone for some reason.
You felt unsafe at home?
Yes. My earliest memory is of my dad beating up my mom to near death and then calling us to come and look at her for the last time. She was covered in blood. From that moment, I internalised this belief that my dad was capable of killing me. I was always afraid.
After my parents passed away and I was living with my brothers, I always felt unsafe with them, and most of this involved the property that my dad had left behind. My brothers were keeping bad company then, walking around with knives in their pockets.
So, when I grew up, I wanted a man who was the complete opposite of everything I had ever known about men and marriage. It only took us five months to get engaged when I met my husband. But even then, I harboured that fear, at least through the first year of our marriage, that maybe he hadn’t shown me his true colours yet. I was looking for any sign of violence, ready to get out immediately. It never came.
My husband is the sweetest soul that you can ever hope for. He’s just a very good person. He is exactly what I needed after that chaotic childhood. He is calm and easy. He has taught me to be still and to trust that some decent human beings are left in the world. I love having someone dependable and emotionally healthy who can understand and pacify my chaos. He is very stable. I could never have asked for someone better.
What smells strongly remind you of your childhood?
(Pause) Cigarettes. My dad was a chain smoker. He would smoke packets and packets of cigarettes from morning to evening. I loved that smell because, you know, much as I say that I feared my dad, I also loved him deeply. I was constantly seeking his approval, which was easy for me to get because I was a good child. I was very quiet and smart.
The smell of cigarettes was lovely and warm because it smelled like home. Even though my dad didn't live with us for the first eight years of my life, he would come home over Christmas, and...while he was around, the house was just filled with cigarette smoke. And I loved it because it meant that my dad was home.
And when my dad was home, my mom couldn't beat me. My mom would beat us every day, often without a valid reason. She was dealing with her frustrations: a dissatisfied housewife, married to a man like my dad, raising children mostly alone.
So the smell of cigarette smoke was the smell of safety, of abundance because my dad had money, and when he came, he would bring us clothes, snacks, and shoes. So, cigarette smoke is a very complicated smell for me.
Do you ever see yourself in some of the girls that are under your care at Nova Pioneer?
Yes, a lot of times. Being the head of the school, I get to know a lot of stories about my students, especially when they get to a point where they are in distress. Children with serious family issues.
I usually intervene and talk to them, some reach out independently. I see myself in some of them because I also went through a period of depression in high school, so I get what that means.
Sometimes, I share my story with them to help them see that there's hope and that this situation is not permanent. Of course, I insist they see a trained professional because the support I offer them is supplemental.
Does it make you a more capable school head, your childhood experience?
It's beneficial because it makes me compassionate. When I see my students struggling, I can see beyond the current struggle and understand where it is coming from and how to support them to get past it and do well in academics and beyond that.
What don't you want to repeat this year?
(Pause) Wow. (Pause) There are some patterns I’ve had over the years, from my childhood, that still manifest even now. I’m still trying not to make myself fit into boxes, not to think that “this is the background that I had, and so this is what I deserve”.
In my position, I interact with a lot of people of privilege, and sometimes, when I hear them telling their stories, there is that temptation to make myself smaller because of what I lacked growing up. That is something that I do not want to repeat. I want to stand tall and own my space. I want to own higher spaces because I know I deserve them.
If you had no fear, what would you do?
I would be like Oprah Winfrey. I would start a talk show, do podcasts and have these conversations with different people. I want to hear other people's stories, and conversations that make a difference.
