Much has changed since Chalice staff first met Hilary.
At the time, he was a four-year-old scamp who liked playing hide-and-seek with his sister, Jeniffer. They lived with their mother, Josphine, in a one-room mud house.
Now twenty, and pursuing college, Hilary is contemplative about his childhood.
“I am a kid raised by a single mother. My dad passed on while I was six months old,” he says. “Our lives had challenges since Mother had to work harder, twice, and act like a father at the same time a mother.”
Josphine supported her children with casual work. To this day, it’s not easy to find consistent employment in rural Mombasa County, on the coast of Kenya. When Hilary and Jeniffer were still little, Josphine faced employment discrimination seemingly everywhere she turned.
“Time passed and when we were sinking in poverty,” Hilary says of his childhood. But their faith, though tested, was never extinguished.
“Whatever God can’t do does not exist,” Hilary says. “God brought a light in our life. He brought a key — a precious golden key to unlock the doors for education in my life. The door that brought hope in my life. The key that I would forever be thankful to God.”
“The golden key of my life is Chalice. Chalice, you are the key that I will forever pray for God to be with you; to guide you in whatever you do.”
By sixteen, Hilary wanted to be the Minister of Education. By seventeen, he decided he would rather be a historian and teacher.
“I will always make use of the education you provided for me,” he says. “May God be the light of your life. May your kind heart live forever.”
See all the drawings at: chalice.ca/through-my-eyes