The Sponsor

Wairimu

Wairimu woke up at 6am with a sore face. Her cheeks swollen like a puff udder. She had under estimated the strength of her fathers fat hands. She rolled off her sheets and got out of bed.

Wairimu had just finished college with a law degree. She did not have a legal bone in her body but it was what her father had wanted so she gave it to him. She did not want to work in her fathers advertising agency either she wanted to be an activist spearheading women rights across the globe.

She went to the bathroom turned the faucet to cold and allowed the water to run on her face like needles of ice. She got back to her room feeling a bit fresh. She made her bed which was on the far corner of the room. On the other corner was a laundry basket and a wardrobe with well arranged clothes. On the window was a small desk stacked with books. There was Chinelo, Chinua Achebe and Binyavanga open on the desk.

Further to the edge of the desk were other books. Arranged so that you only saw their spine. There was How To Kill a Mocking Bird, War and Peace, Merchant of Venice, The Colour Purple and Little Women. She sat down on her desk and closed Chinelo and Binyavanga with a bookmark, removed the laptop underneath them and placed it on top of the stack of books and opened Chinua Achebe's, No Longer at Ease.

She lifted her head from the book when the clock struck 8. She knew her father had breakfast at 10am and she had no plans of rubbing shoulders with him.

She walked to the kitchen to prepare something to eat. Even with their big house they did not have permanent helps. They usually came on weekends, otherwise they were on their own. Their father felt that the house had too many women to need House helps.

She found Olivia in the kitchen.

"I'm craving sausages," she muttered.

She had been craving things of late, Wairimu noted.

'Is she pregnant?'—'With that stick up her ass, she couldn't be.'

She giggled to herself from the thought.

"What's funny?"

"Don't mind me, you know I'm crazy."

She went to the dinning table and quickly gobbled up her bread and glass of juice before her father could smell her. He had wanted her to report to work today but she had other plans. There was a demonstration that was to happen in the city dubbed, 'My dress my choice' she was very much going to be in the forefront of it.