Meet the Entaisere é Kenya(The Future of Kenya) Class Christine Wambui(Wambo)
“I got a position at Kenya High School but my parents almost enrolled me at Ndururumi High School. My mom had to take a loan to finance my fee at Kenya High School,” Christine remarks about her education journey. An economist graduate in waiting, she considers herself both booksmart and streetsmart.
In our conversation, everything she said somewhat circled back to her mother. Her mother, she says, plays role model. And why not? As the first born in a family of three, she has seen her mother’s life play itself in different seasons.
The year Wambui joined class 5, her mother enrolled for form 1 classes; with she (Wambui) turning to become her mathematics tutor. Initially, a class 8 drop out, Wambui’s mother had to start over—and not for the last time either. She has started and lost businesses, got divorced, failed a couple of times in business again before finding a footing in her tiles business.
It’s this ore that Christine is made from. The determination of her mother fuelling her grit in education and life. As she looks forward to graduating from JKUAT with an economics degree and ‘Entaisere e Kenya’ with a Software Development Certification, I asked her why the combination. Because technology makes everything better, she says. And I want to make everything better too.
He is 31. The first born in a family of 13. He says he has had to embody leadership throughout his life. Therefore becoming Class Representative—chosen by popular vote—was only a natural progression.
Koipapi, as he likes to be called, hails from Kumpa location within Kajiado Central Constituency. Once he mentioned that, I went for the usual questions we Nairobian’s are excited about when we interact with Maasais; is he a Moran, has he killed a lion; because we believe all Morans have killed Lions, right? right. Well, he has not but he belongs to a peer group known as Irnemiri, all bound by the process of initiation.
Before taking on the Software Development class, he says he was a hustler. I tell him even our President was a hustler but while the President sold chicken, he (Koipapi) not such a while ago sold merchandise for a store in Nairobi. A marketer of sorts. But this is not what he has always wanted to do, as a young boy, his mind was foggy about dreams, scattered in the vast lands that is Kajiado. He couldn’t possibly see beyond the herd of cattle but education opened a door and now he dreams of being a business man.
