Graduation Chapel Kennedy 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 the reason 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 will share part of it. I was born in a low-income society, where half of the population is poor by international standards. In such a society, parents tend to hold education on high esteem; education is seen as the only sure way out of the stark poverty. Children are told, sometimes forced by the cane, to go school so that they can secure good jobs and therefore 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 me was that my father had perished when I was six. This left us stranded for he had been the sole breadwinner. My mother moved from place to place doing odd jobs, to get much she could to raise us. And hence due to this financial and familial instability I never got attend the first five years of regular schooling. However, the desire to go to school was burning within me. Often times, on the playing field, my children colleagues would talk of how they had been promoted to the next grade. I would join in by saying that I too had been promotedlittle did they know that I had been at home wandering around when everybody else was in school. Before she died, my mother had heard of a church institution that was granting loans to people who wished to start up small subsistence businesses. She went there, but found out that the period of granting loans had elapsed. However, the institution had started sponsoring children to go through elementary school. She signed me up and thats how I got to enter elementary school. I joined school in grade five. I didnt know how to write and could read a little, so I had to work harder than everybody else to learn how to write, while at the same trying to catch up on the years I had lost at home. But soon or later I managed to catch up and actually emerged top in my class, a position I held till I graduated from the elementary school. My mother died towards the end of my elementary education. Few months later my oldest sister witnessed a murder scene and was taken in custody as one of the suspects. We were left with under the care of the second oldest sister who was sixteen at the time. With

this, we were further destabilized and hopes to join high school followed disappeared went up in smokes. However, God is faithful. I graduated top of my school and was accepted by one of the best schools in Nairobi. We did not have a single cent to take care of ourselves, leave alone paying for school. Therefore, I had to go from office to office soliciting for well-wishers who could pay for my entrance fee. I got one and managed to enter high school. Things did not prove easy during my high school years. First, I always had to plead with the principal not to kick me out of school due to unpaid arrears. Secondly, I had to walk everyday a distance of about twenty kilometers one-way to school and another twenty back. Furthermore, a meal at home was not a guarantee.In the midst of these, education to me was defined by how much it could get 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 little reluctant because it didnt seem to promise this end. Nonetheless I applied and hoped that since Japan is a wealthy country, at least I could work and support my family, while studying. Steve Jobs once said, You can only connect the dots, while looking back. Looking back, I have learned that life is tough, but I am tougher. I have also learned that ignoring the facts and not talking about the life I have lead that does not change the facts about my life. I have learned I cannot chose what life is gonna do to me, but I can choose what to do about it. Getting a scholarship to study here has in a way given me peace of mind; I do not have to worry about how I would pay my fees, hence I have had ample time to concentrate on education and other things important to me. Secondly, studying here has been useful, because I go to school and work at the same time, an opportunity you never get in the low-income societies. Thirdly, and most importantly, ACTes course does not promise an outright job in a big corporation like Sony; however, going through it and engaging in various philosophies, 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 something that because has become part of me. But on the same note, I am glad. I am glad, because looking back I see a path of how my life has improved; looking back I also see the footprints of Gods faithfulness. I will be the first person in my immediate family to have gone through elementary, high school, and university education. Graduating from TCU and leaving the ACT-es, therefore, also means that I will have hence broken a vicious cycleand now my siblings can have footsteps to guide them in their paths. God is faithful.