TITLE: A Pillar of Hope
AUTHOR: Millicent Akoth Oloo
PUBLISHER: Longhorn
REVIEWER: Mbugua Ngunjiri
From a very young age, life dealt Millicent Akoth a very hard blow. Her mother died when she was only eight months old, leaving her and her siblings under the care of their father.
At the age of four, while living under the care of an uncle and his wife, the man would routinely drag her into a sugarcane farm and rape her. The complications of the beastly act is that she cannot bear children of her own.
She passed her primary education but could not proceed to secondary school due to lack of fees. In spite of these heavy odds, Millie was determined to make it in life.
Her father was the one spark that kept her going. He loved and doted on her. He saw something in her and was positive that she would lift the family from the pits of despair and destitution. The father also taught his children survival skills like fishing and hunting.
When she could not continue with her education past primary education, the only option available for her was to move to Nairobi and try to make ends meet.
Her first stop was working as house-help. The man of the house had other ideas in mind. When Millie refused to give in to the man’s amorous demands, he threw her out of the house.
Not one to give up easily, Millie even tried her hand at hotel business in the slums of Korogocho.
Her big break came when she befriended a German couple in Mombasa and they offered to pay her air ticket to Germany.
It is in Germany that the second and decidedly dramatic, yet most successful part of her life unfolded.
I met Millie a few days to Christmas, last year. She had been in the country for holiday and to see her relatives. The visit also coincided with the release of her book, A Pillar of Hope.
In the book, she tells the story of her life, growing up in Nyadhi, Siaya County, the twists and turns of her existence in Kenya before moving to Germany and how life treated her when she moved to abroad.
Today, she works as an administrator at an American military hospital in Germany. Courtesy of her job, she has met and interacted with lots of influential people, including American sportspersons, actors, envoys and even senior politicians like former US president, Barack Obama. She has also travelled the world.
Through this book, Millie says that she wants to reach out to people, especially girls who have undergone traumatic experiences like she did early on in life. “I want to assure them that no matter the difficulties in life, there is hope for a better and brighter future,” she explains.
She is not stopping at that; she has ambitions of turning ‘A Pillar of Hope’ into a movie or a TV series. Though I doubted her on this one, I did not tell her. I had read lots of autobiographical works and many do not amount to much, let alone being turned into movies. She wants Lupita Nyong’o to star in the movie/series.
Her early life in Germany, before she settled down, and acquired a working permit and regularised her stay, is the stuff movies are made of. It also speaks of the ordeal immigrants, particularly of African descent, have to go through in order to lead a decent life.
We’ve heard of stories where Africans in the West have to get into sham marriages in order to acquire papers. Well, that happened to our Millie too. You would have to read the book to enjoy the juicy parts of her interesting life in Germany.
She does not hold back. She does not shy away from saying things that happened to her, including ones that ordinary people would feel shameful talking about.
The book is available at Nuria, Bookstop Yaya Centre and Amazon.