Breaking the generational cycle

My late dad liked reminding his children who would listen that we largely managed to get through secondary education through the giving spirit in the society. He would remind us that had several members of the community but be willing to help him fundraise for our education then we wouldn't have been educated into our high school stages.

He liked the analogy that people would see kids as very many but a parent who takes their children to school reduces them to one. That even when you have ten children who are well educated, as a parent there would be literally no baggage you will feel as they come of age as they will all collectively feel like only one child. He liked adding that had we not gone to school, our home would be chaotic with siblings literally fighting physically and some beating him and our mothers up.

He would wrap up most of these tales by asking that we give back to the society that made us who we are by the acts of philanthropic giving whenever he needed support to take us to school. 

When I say 'us' I am referring to 17 of us. Yes, your eyes almost popped out but today the story is not about us unfortunately.

So, the last many years I have always tried to take up kids from poor families through their secondary education in as far as I can possibly do. The first one off the treadmill joined the University of Nairobi and is moving on with her degree albeit with financial challenges due to my current limited resourcing.

There is another amazing one that I briefly stepped into his life to support and finishing his Architecture Degree at the Technical University of Mombasa. I also slowed down my support due to the resources limitations.

Today I am sharing a success story. A story of a student who did not get the really amazing straight A's and A- that many of us are celebrating with their incredible children. Congratulations to them as it is not a mean feat to get those grades.

Mine is a success of another of my many students under my wings who got an amazing C grade. He reached out to share his disappointment with the outcome but appreciated the fact that he made it through secondary education through my support.

Now, let me share with you a little background of how I end up with these kids and many others that I do not necessarily support entirely but in small bits of a few coins and shopping or part payment of school fees.

These kids I pick are usually not very random. They are from families that tend to be at the very bottom of the barrel and families that have mostly had almost no one in their generations get proper education especially the basic high school education. They are families whose chain of poverty and misery can never be broken unless that one child is taken off the conveyor belt of the continuous inherited poverty and misery by a well-wisher and through education ideally into University or college. They are families that are associated with pit latrine digging or hard labour expertise and most times they resign to that as their fate for decades.

They are families whose homes are rarely having visitors or have the privilege of hosting family meetings because family meetings tend to go to homes that are different. Very different.

So this young man whose results I am sharing with pride is a son to a childhood friend of mine that we would play barefoot football. A ball that was made of plastic papers and wrapped tightly with a sisal rope as you can see in the picture. His dad as most of his family were menial hard labour workers in farms and homes including my own little farm here in the village.

I would notice that he would come to my farm with his entire family of really smart kids and I would protest having them with him around as I believed they should not be working in farms when schools were on. He would grudgingly accept to let them go but when schools closed and there was work in my farm, he would bring them and I would be unable to push back.

They were an amazing little happy family to watch as they worked. They would do their weeding or tilling as they chatted and laughed loudly and made fun of each other and the work they were doing. They were poor in money terms but very rich in other parameters that are never measured in development. They were rich is laughter, they were rich in love, they were rich in compassion. They were also rich in pawpaws that he would bring me to eat.

They were very okay with their status but something in me was telling me that the cycle had to be broken and so I would give him money to partly pay fees for his first born son to get to secondary school. Our local village secondary school.

My buddy would later die abruptly and I knew this little guy's life would literally stop and turn for the worst. That is why I stepped in and made him my boy and took over his education. 

Last week, he called to let me know he felt disappointed that he would not make it to university like I had wished for him when I took him up in Form 2. I did let him know that he did incredibly well for the school he was in. 

A school that really has poor infrastructure, low number of teaching staff, a barely equipped laboratory and a computer lab that you can see in these pictures as well. He was sitting his exams in that setting and competing with others in way better schools than ours and managed to get the C.

Not all C grades are due to the students not being smart, at times they are just fighting with fate and trying to break a generational struggle in their families. My young man did well and did the best and I hold him in awe on a pedestal.

Why am I sharing with you this story?

1. There are hundreds of students who have sat the Kenya National Examinations and getting to high school. They have no school fees and are going to literally not show up in their selected schools and never get secondary education to change the fate of their families and the course of their lives. They are right next door to you in your village. Pick them, hold their hands and show them the way including taking them to the nearest day secondary school. Break that generational cycle of misery. I have 3 others under my wings and despite the challenges, I am committed to seeing them through their secondary education. We have to change the way we visit our less fortunate neighbors from visiting them to ask for someone to dig out pit latrines, boreholes or tilling or farms to supporting them out of their challenges and break the generational cycles.

2. Get me a foundation or a donor to build and equip my local secondary school computer laboratory as well as science laboratories. I need that infrastructure to make our students better in the coming years. As the Chairman of the Board of Management of Ndira Secondary School; such a donor/ foundation will be heaven sent to me and I will be eternally elated on behalf of the students and teachers.

Show me that route and get me that support.