I was born and brought up in the great Samburu County, located in the Northern part of Kenya, a very arid region covering around 13,000 square miles. It is home for the Samburu and Turkana people who practice nomadic pastoralism as the main economic activity. Born in a monogamous family of four daughters and three sons, I am the youngest, and the only one privileged to have reached the highest level of education. Back in the days, education was not a subject matter in my community since boys would look after the livestock and girls were destined for dowry exchange in marriage. In my childhood, the family had already lost the only source of income (cattle) to banditry and drought. We had to relocate and moved to a town called Baragoi. We were struggling to transition from a nomadic life to a somehow civilized one.

My primary school years were a whole chunk of adversities that made the memorable moments of my childhood. The days were coupled with lack of access to safe water, hunger, insecurity, and lack of facilities in school among others. However unbearable the challenges were, it is amazing that I can now have a leap into my past and attest that God took care of us. We drank stagnant dam water but led healthy lives, enjoyed eating wild fruits and hunted ourselves, even while conscious of the insecurity, and we always utilized our time in school and the limited resources we had. Often our only meal was the school lunch especially when the place was hit by perpetual drought situations. I completed my primary school education in the year 2011, performed well and joined Baragoi High School on February 9 by the support of the Catholic Parish Priest. With my first week in high school, I fell sick, and on 15th of February, my dad paid me a visit just to check on how I was getting along with boarding school life since it was my first time in such a school. After a little conversation with him, I went to hospital for treatment.

Two days later, on the 17th, my brother in-law came to school to pick me up for an event at home that I had no idea about. Upon arrival, I overheard people speaking about my dad and that he passed on the night of the very day he had paid me a visit. Though transitioning from nomadism to civilized life, banditry and drought gave him a challenge in terms of providing for his family, my dad was always there for us, protecting us and providing where he could. It is very hard to forget the nyama choma (traditional roasted meat) he used to bring us at Christmas, the one time in a year he made sure we would celebrate with a huge slaughtered ram.

After burying him, it was as though my hope died with him. I spent a whole year trying to come to terms with what would have killed such a strong man who never complained of any sickness. My foundation of secondary school was so profoundly affected by this that I could not pay attention in class, read or even take part in any academic activity fully. I remember doing some exams at the end of the term not knowing material that teachers had apparently taught.

The following year, I transferred to Baragoi Mixed Day Secondary School and my performance curve rose since I had somehow refocused on school and I became one of the top students in my class.  In 2015, I completed high school and, despite the challenges, I attained a university grade but due to financial limitations, I could not join tertiary level education. While waiting for the results of the national exam, I volunteered at Baragoi Day School and I also began volunteering with the Kenya Red Cross Society.

In 2019 December, I became aware of an opportunity of scholarship for the needy students who qualify for university education. I applied, did an interview, and from a pool of over 200 applicants, I was lucky to be among the forty who were to start schooling at Christ the Teacher Institute for Education (CTIE) in Tangaza University College from January 2020. Since there was no consistent source of income back at home, my fear was not only school fees but also where to get pocket money for expenses beyond tuition. Nevertheless, I started my schooling in January 2020. My first semester in school was the toughest I have ever had in my entire life. With the onset of COVID-19 barely two months after reporting, I went back home and took part in COVID-19 community sensitization with Kenya Red Cross team of Samburu County. In May, I enrolled for the online classes and one of them was Health Science Education that was facilitated by Brother Raphael Wanjala. He asked each of us what we did to contain the pandemic. I spoke about my work with the Red Cross and he was very impressed by what I was doing. He introduced me to an organization called Waterstep that responds the Water Sanitation and Hygiene emergencies, aiming at saving lives with safe water.

As 2021 began, the pandemic was still there but CTIE was open. Brother Paulos, the Director, reached out to me to persuade me to resume my education. And so, I did report back even though I neither had a place to stay nor could I afford the expenses of rent, food and upkeep. Brother Paulos found assistance from a donor in the USA who committed to supporting me each month, which has truly sustained me ever since.

Even as a student at CTIE in Nairobi, I was also part of a volunteer team in Samburu, carrying out bleach-making trainings and Health Education sessions. In 2021, the International Federation of the Red Cross- Solferino Academy announced a challenge to young people from across the world for them to come up with innovative ways of helping their communities recover from the effects of COVID-19. Two of my ideas were well-received. One of the ideas was focusing on teenage pregnancy and menstrual hygiene, and the other was on sanitation where we trained communities and provided them with the Waterstep bleach makers. After the first prototype, we improved the product and applied to the academy again and this time, I was honored to be recognized as one of the top sixty innovators in the world. Imagine! Kenya Red Cross implemented the project at the end of 2022.

During the Kenya Red Cross Society 2022 annual volunteer awards, I was once more humbled to be recognized as the Kenya Red Cross Society Youth Volunteer of the Year 2022. This award recognizes a Kenya Red Cross Society Youth Volunteer who has overcome adversity and made great contribution to humanity and shown great devotion to help others to advance the mandate of the Red Cross Movement. And recently (February 2023), I was selected as the 2023 Kenya Red Cross Youth Delegate to Denmark in a leadership academy set to take place in May this year.

I owe my transformation to CTIE. Upon my graduation in October 2023, I will go back to the society a changed person that the value proposition of CTIE has holistically worked on. My life has been touched, my mind taught and my life transformed. My dream is first changing the story of my mother’s household and how people have been perceiving us as a cursed kind of family that makes no progress. My dream is to be empowered together with my siblings and accord our mother an honorable life.

My future will continue to include further learning (perhaps a Masters’ degree in environmental health or a Masters’ in Social Work). However, the learning will be matched by the doing! From my seven years of working with Kenya Red Cross Society and the three years of working with Waterstep, I have realized my interest in directly working with communities and impacting their lives. Thereafter, I am intending to start an NGO back at home in Samburu that will focus on empowering the pastoral communities through providing them with an access to education, a tool that I strongly believe to be instrumental in transforming a society from local action to a global reach. Since I have seen the implications of lack of education compared to how access to it can transform a person from my own immediate family, I am inspired to find ways to provide my community members access to education that will transform the society. This will be important for a community that has faced marginalization and exclusion in resource allocation for so many years.

I would like to express my heartiest gratitude to my benefactors: the agencies and people who have supported me with school fees and upkeep. My deep gratitude to the CTIE administration, led by Brother Paulos, for making all this to happen and also for walking with me through these years.  I am also grateful for the prayers my family have always offered for my breakthrough despite the hurdles of life and most importantly, I thank God for making all this happen. I believe that God is at the center of it all.