She unlocks the office before most of the school has fully woken up, switches on the light, and begins straightening the desk where the day will gather itself. There is a register to check, papers to sort, a notice to prepare for the principal, and a small stack of forms waiting for signatures. Outside, students are beginning to arrive in uniform, their shoes still carrying morning dust. Inside, Femi Rodha works with the quiet efficiency of someone who knows that a school runs on ordinary acts done well. She answers the phone, opens the ledger, and writes down what must be remembered.
The Before
Femi was six years old when she came to Jesus Helpers in 2007, during the post-election violence that unsettled so many lives across Kenya. Her arrival was shaped by that moment, but the story does not need to linger in the force of it. She was a child, and the adults around her made a decision to bring her somewhere safe enough for school, meals, and sleep to continue. What matters most is that she came at an age when a child is still learning how to trust a room, a routine, and the people who say good morning each day.
The Years At JH
Femi moved through Jesus Helpers in the years that followed, beginning with nursery school and continuing through primary school, high school, and university. She lived with the other girls under the care of the home, where days were shaped by the simple architecture of repetition, washing up, classes, chores, study time, worship, bed. For a child, that kind of order can become a second language. It teaches the body how to keep time.
At school, she was the kind of student who noticed details, or so the story likely goes, because detail is what an office job requires later in life. There was probably a teacher who saw that she kept her books neatly, or who gave her the chance to help arrange class materials, or who trusted her with a task that depended on care. JH will know which moments mattered. This section should be filled with them, because the long years between nursery and university are where her character was formed, not in a single dramatic turn but in steady, repeated attention.
The home also gave her a Christian frame for daily life. Sunday worship, prayer, and the language of James 1:27 were part of the atmosphere, not as slogan but as habit. For some children, those years would have felt like waiting. For Femi, they appear instead to have become preparation.
The Now
Today Femi works as a secretary at a high school, where her desk is a point of order in the middle of a busy place. She handles records, messages, schedules, and the practical movements that allow teachers to teach and students to learn. It is work that depends on discretion and composure. The job suits the long training of her earlier years, where consistency mattered and every day had to be accounted for.
If you ask her what Jesus Helpers means to her now, she might say something like this: “JH gave me the chance to grow up with direction, and that changed everything.” It is easy to imagine her saying it without much drama. She does not need to make the point larger than it is. The fact that she now keeps a school office in order is already its own argument, a life spent helping other people’s children move through the day.
Closing Reflection
By the time the bell rings and the corridors fill, the office is no longer quiet. Papers are signed, names are checked, schedules are fixed, and the morning has become the school day. Femi sits at the center of that movement, composed and alert. Years ago, she arrived as a child in a country that was tearing itself apart. Today she is the one keeping things in place.