I was born and raised in the village of Tinganga, in Eastern Kenya with my parents & 8 siblings. Tinganga is 80 kilometers (160 miles) from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, and has a population of 15,000. I was raised on a 70 acre farm where my family grew corn, beans, sweet potatoes, pigeon peas, cassava roots & we had dairy cows, goats, sheep, donkeys & chickens. I am still on that farm today. I love the farm. It is part of me. I am so energized by it. I went through community training to be a midwife when I was 24 years old. I midwifed for 25 years and attended an uncountable number of births. I loved it, but it is a hard job. In 1980 our group of 20 women used to contribute small amounts of money and at the end of each moth we presented the contributions to one of the group members. Later we sat down and thought the money was not helping much, so we started to use the contributions to purchase chickens. We sold them back to enable ourselves to get more money for our children’s education, medication and also to buy food & materials to create our beautiful crafts in wood, jewely, baskets, and sculptures. What has motivated me is a great love for my community. I see the value of helping raise the people out of poverty.