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Graduation ChapelKennedy Gitau

Psalms 27.10

Everybody has a story. Its either you express or you suppress.

Often times it has been hard for me to share my story. Part of thereason is because I have always had this feeling that once I share it,people will stop treating me like just the rest. However today, I willshare part of it.

I was born in a low-income society, where half of the population ispoor by international standards. In such a society, parents tend tohold education on high esteem; education is seen as the only sureway out of the stark poverty. Children are told, sometimes forced bythe cane, to go school so that they can secure good jobs andtherefore act as rescuers of their relatives from the hold of poverty.This is the thought line that defined my view of education.

I am not sure whether he died, or he fled, but the story told to mewas that my father had perished when I was six. This left usstranded for he had been the sole breadwinner. My mother movedfrom place to place doing odd jobs, to get much she could to raiseus. And hence due to this financial and familial instability I never gotattend the first five years of regular schooling. However, the desireto go to school was burning within me. Often times, on the playing

field, my children colleagues would talk of how they had beenpromoted to the next grade. I would join in by saying that I too hadbeen promotedlittle did they know that I had been at homewandering around when everybody else was in school.

Before she died, my mother had heard of a church institution thatwas granting loans to people who wished to start up smallsubsistence businesses. She went there, but found out that theperiod of granting loans had elapsed. However, the institution hadstarted sponsoring children to go through elementary school. Shesigned me up and thats how I got to enter elementary school.

I joined school in grade five. I didnt know how to write and couldread a little, so I had to work harder than everybody else to learnhow to write, while at the same trying to catch up on the years I hadlost at home. But soon or later I managed to catch up and actuallyemerged top in my class, a position I held till I graduated from theelementary school.

My mother died towards the end of my elementary education. Fewmonths later my oldest sister witnessed a murder scene and was

taken in custody as one of the suspects. We were left with under thecare of the second oldest sister who was sixteen at the time. With

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this, we were further destabilized and hopes to join high schoolfollowed disappeared went up in smokes. However, God is faithful. Igraduated top of my school and was accepted by one of the bestschools in Nairobi. We did not have a single cent to take care ofourselves, leave alone paying for school. Therefore, I had to go from

office to office soliciting for well-wishers who could pay for myentrance fee. I got one and managed to enter high school.

Things did not prove easy during my high school years. First, Ialways had to plead with the principal not to kick me out of schooldue to unpaid arrears. Secondly, I had to walk everyday a distanceof about twenty kilometers one-way to school and another twentyback. Furthermore, a meal at home was not a guarantee.In themidst of these, education to me was defined by how much it couldget me a job, rather than by how it could change my inner being.And hence when I heard by the ACT-es course, I was a littlereluctant because it didnt seem to promise this end. Nonetheless Iapplied and hoped that since Japan is a wealthy country, at least Icould work and support my family, while studying.

Steve Jobs once said, You can only connect the dots, while lookingback. Looking back, I have learned that life is tough, but I amtougher. I have also learned that ignoring the facts and not talkingabout the life I have lead that does not change the facts about mylife. I have learned I cannot chose what life is gonna do to me, but Ican choose what to do about it.

Getting a scholarship to study here has in a way given me peace ofmind; I do not have to worry about how I would pay my fees, hence Ihave had ample time to concentrate on education and other thingsimportant to me. Secondly, studying here has been useful, because Igo to school and work at the same time, an opportunity you neverget in the low-income societies. Thirdly, and most importantly, ACT-es course does not promise an outright job in a big corporation likeSony; however, going through it and engaging in variousphilosophies, ACT-es has really made me rethink what education is.Actes-course has taught me that the greatest reward is not what I

get, but who I become.

So today I am a little sad. I am sad because I am leaving somethingthat because has become part of me. But on the same note, I amglad. I am glad, because looking back I see a path of how my lifehas improved; looking back I also see the footprints of Godsfaithfulness. I will be the first person in my immediate family to havegone through elementary, high school, and university education.Graduating from TCU and leaving the ACT-es, therefore, also meansthat I will have hence broken a vicious cycleand now my siblings

can have footsteps to guide them in their paths. God is faithful.