Purity Kagwiria - What's in a Name?

 

When I was seven years old, I needed to get baptized. All this time I knew I had one name, Kagwiria. But at the church, they said I needed two names. I went home and asked my grandmother, “What name I should be baptized by?” And she said, “Pick my name, be called Elizabeth like me.” I said, “Mm, that's too old, I'm still very young. [audience laughter] I need to find a cooler name for myself.” I went back to church, and the teacher's daughter gave me her name. She said, "After all, I was just baptized two months ago." So, her name to me sounded very fresh. Therefore, I was baptized as Purity Kagwiria. 

 

Four years later, maybe five years later, I needed to do my high school final exam. When I went to register, they said I needed a third name. [audience laughter] And this third name had to belong to a man, I needed to show that I belonged to someone. All this time, no one had ever brought up the issue of me having a father. I knew that my grandmother's father was my father, after all, we all called him Baba. But then, I knew that I couldn't pick his name. Again, this age thing was too old for me to pick his name. [audience laughter] 

 

So, I decided that I'd grown up hearing my mother talk about having a husband called Mutua. And I thought, what are the odds, I must be his daughter. So, I picked this last name, [audience laughter] went to school and said, “These are my three names.” I got registered. Four years later, I needed to apply for my national identity card. And for me to do that, I needed to bring an identity card belonging to my father to show that I belong to this man. And here was a crisis, because my mother had not talked to this man for so many years, [audience laughter] and my mother was also missing. I had not seen her for at least three. So, there was no way I was going to go to this man to tell him to give me his ID.

 

So, my grandmother said, "Oh, I have a long childhood friend you could go to-- I'm going to go to him, and he's going to give me his ID and you're going to register for your identification." That's what happened. This man adopted me. On the spot, I became his daughter [audience laughter] and registered for my ID. A couple of years later, I lost this identification card and needed to remember my father's name, so that I could put it on the certificate, on the application form. 

 

I could not remember. My grandmother also could not remember the name of this man, [audience laughter] and the man had since passed away. [audience laughter and holler] I sat on the pavement in Nairobi and said to myself, “What could this man's name be?” I guessed his name must be Stephen. So, I put Stephen Mutua as my father. By the mercies of God, that was his name, so I got my ID back. [audience laughter] 

 

When I decided to get married at 29, I again had to decide what name I was going to go by. And the registrar said that I needed to drop this Mutua name and pick my husband's name. At that point, I decided that I was going to stick with the two names that are on my birth certificate and the ones that I really chose for myself. This is Purity Kagwiria. Thank you.