SARAH ACHIENG

The little girl raised in the Village of Uyoma, now found her way in Nairobi City. After the death of my mum, my auntie took me to high school where I was able to continue with my studies after the completion of my primary level. My auntie was a business woman who handled her own business therefore making ends meet for me and all my cousins. Unfortunately, life presented another tragedy on our end, our auntie passed away after two years of taking good care of me and my cousins. After her death, we were now left at the mercies of our uncle (His husband) who had already retired and was staying home.

Life was not easy afterwards because she also had her children who were in the same age as mine and we were all still in school. We really struggled going to school and this forced me to jump from one school to the other due to financial constraints. Going through all this struggles, I was able to finish high school and figure life out. We all understand that in African set up, it’s normal for a child to clear high school and not proceed to joining colleague or university. At this point, I didn’t know what I wanted to do career wise but I wanted to be part of support system of the family. I really felt that it was time for me to start doing something so that am able to help out around the house. I was lucky enough to get a job in the neighborhood for selling chips (also known as fries), and I did this for a couple of months then had quit to join sales and marketing in different companies. This were just contract job after which I could come back and do nothing at home.

With the little money I got I used part of it to support the family and decided to join ISBI to do business management. Things did not turn up well due to lack of the school fees therefore I decided to drop out of school and figure life out once again. One of my cousin Gilbert (who is Late) used to encouraged me severally to join him at the gym where he used to go and train with Coach Priest instead of doing nothing at home. I never had any interest in going to the gym especially doing boxing because I personally had passion in volleyball and football because that is what I used to do in primary school. I tried to dodge him most of the time but he was very persistent. One day, he caught me by surprise and he told me to just escort him to the gym with the excuse of - he’s just going to pick something and come back immediately- and I decided to accompany him, little did I know that this was a strategy to take me to the gym.

And that is how I came to meet with Coach Priest.

That day when I arrived at the gym, I found two other ladies who were doing professional boxing, to be frank I loved what I saw but the interest was still not there. Coach Priest offered me to join the other two ladies for the training, that’s how I found myself at the gym. The training was interesting but intense at the beginning which is something I didn’t like; I did a couple of months training then took a break because my body was aching everywhere and I couldn’t take it anymore. I decided to go back home and in the process another job opportunity came and I stopped going to the gym completely. I remember Coach priest could pay a visit at home and most of the time I could hide myself because I never wanted to go back to the gym.

As much as the gym was tough, I could still squeeze time to go for an evening jogging around my neighborhood. One evening when I was coming back from jogging, a random man slapped me from behind and left me helpless. I didn’t know why he slapped me and that got me quite upset. A lot of question were running through my mind at that moment, who is this man? what did I do to deserve this? how comes I didn’t see it coming? why me? it was at the back of this slap that took me back to the gym. I wanted to go and learn the skills so as to get revenge on any other person who might want to take advantage of me hence being in a position to defend myself in case of such situations. This was the birth of my journey in boxing with BOXGIRLS KENYA. Boxgirls Kenya is a community based organization that uses boxing as a tool in tackling issues affecting girls and young women in marginalized communities in Nairobi and Western part of Kenya as we prioritize girl’s rights and foster a collaborative team environment. Through the organization, I got an opportunity to be trained as a Boxing Coach in 2008-2011 and my role was to train girls and young women in boxing and facilitate life skills session in schools and community outreach. In 2011-2016 my role changed to Sport coordinator. I was in charge of recruiting, managing coaches/trainers as well as organizing and overseeing Sports Program Activities. In 2016-2024 I transitioned into the role of Sport Administrator in charge of Planning, designing, budgeting, training and marketing all sport and Education activities program. I have also coached some of the girls who are currently in the National team as Amateur Boxers and Referee and judges just to mention Stacy Ayoma who has gotten a chance to participate in some of the International Boxing Competition others are coming up in that way.