Why I created an educational foundation instead of building a business.

You see, my father and mother divorced before I started elementary school. My mother moved back to her parents home somewhere in rural Nyamira county.

Here life was tough. I started class one a year after we moved to my grandparents home. Luckily during this time, there was not school fees but there was the building fund, school activity fee and school uniform. Building fund was levied per family.

Therefore having uncles and aunties in school at the same time ensured the building fund was taken care of.

However the school uniform and school activity fee part was an individual affair! I labored in the fields in the morning before I could go to school. We did the same thing at lunch hour and in the evening after school.

Life was miserable but we soldered on. By the time I was joining class 3, the uniform my mom had bought for class one was worn out, my behinds were literally out! I was sent home for school uniform which costed roughly $3 then. I remember my mother having a conversation with my grandmother and I remember being told there was no money for uniform.

I was sent to work in the cornfield and the tea plantation. Here I contemplated suicide. I tried to sneak back to school the next day, but I was sent away. On my way back to my grandparents, I remembered that I was to go work in the fields without pay and with no uniform, I decided to run away from my grandparents home to the nearby Nyamira town and settle for street boy living instead. I exactly did that! This did not seem to bother anyone except for my mother.

She looked for me and when she found me, she informed me that someone from her church had offered her some money to get me uniform to go back to school! She took me to a tailor who promised to stitch the school uniform same day so that the next day I could go back to school. I did return to class 3 for only one term but I still managed to be the valedictorian (position 1). I continued with school with hard labor at my grandparents peasant farm where I did manual ploughing, plucking tea leaves, pyrethrum flowers, tendering after cattle and selling milk and farm produces to the nearby Nyamira town before school and after school.

There was nothing like weekend or rest day at my grandparents!

A break though happened when my mom got a temporary teaching job at Nakuru hills special school. She wasted no opportunity to take me and my sister with her.

I was delivered off the heavy manual work before school and after school. However, the plague of poverty hanged on! My mother was making KSh. 800 a month  in 1985 which was equivalent to $8 usd.

With this amount, she needed to pay rent, school building fund and activity fees, buy us uniform, shoes and food to keep us through 30 days of a month. We lived in a  two rooms apartment. One room served as a sitting room during day time and my bedroom at night.

The other room  served as a kitchen and bedroom to my mother and sister! Life was tough. But here it was better since I needed not labor in the fields each morning.

With the meager income, a few luxuries such as breakfast and lunch had to be dropped. I went to school barefoot. School mates and classmates laughed at me and of course my sister!  We took it in with a determination to work hard. At class 7, one of the teachers brought me a used pair of shoes and told me he was impressed how I worked hard and he wanted to ensure I was a bit comfortable not to step on hard concrete and ballast. I adored this pair of shoes. 

Over the weekends and holidays, My mom, sister and I will work in the fields for teachers and raise some money to supplement on my mom meager earning. In 1999, My mom was given land by one of her teacher friends to till in exchange we worked in her other farm as well.

This ensured we had a supply of corn which is the staple food for many Kenyans. I would say this gesture ensured we never slept hungry again! Thanks this lady who found a way to bless us. She taught me the art of giving .

Class/grade 8 happened. I did the national testing exam known as Kenya certificate for Primary education(KCPE). I was the second in my school and this afforded me a space at a National school.

However, this dream was cut short. My mom could not raise money required as school fees to take me to the National school that I was to go.

Instead mom persuaded me to go to a local school where school fees was somewhat affordable. I ended up at Menengai High school, where school fees was $8 a term but remember mom used to earn $8 a month!

Here I somewhat blended in since most kids were from poor background with a few super rich kids! My single school uniform served both as my Sunday best! I washed it every day in the evening and ironed it in the morning using charcoal pressing iron.

Many of my school/classmates thought I was from somewhat a well to do background—I camouflaged well. 

I was sent home for school fees from time to time, until one time the school principal realized even if he sent me home nothing changed and he let me study without paying full school fees.

My mother will religiously deposit some  amount and this continued until I completed fourth form (grade 12) with school fees arrears. I passed my Kenya Certificate for Secondary Education and gained a spot as a government sponsored student.

See without others supporting my dream, I would not be here today. I have to give back and pay forward. This is the drive to what I am doing today. 

To be continued…