By JOE OMBUOR

It’s the stuff fairy tales are made of.

Kakuta ole Maimai Hamisi dropped out of primary school because his parents could not afford to pay for his education.

Today, he builds schools and spends over Sh3.1 million annually to pay fees for unfortunate students in his Kajiado homeland. Currently, he is funding the education of 161 primary and secondary school students in his village.

Kakuta ole Maimai Hamisi (right) Ezekiel Sangash, headmaster at Merrueshi Mixed Secondary School with trophies won by students. [Photo: JOE OMBUOR/Standard]

His journey from despair to high life and philanthropy illustrates just how far ambition, hard work and determination can lift those willing to overcome their woes.

There were no schools in the expansive jungles of Merrueshi where the 38-year-old was born in what is today, Kajiado South District.

Poverty dogged him. He was many times out of school doing odd jobs that included herding other people’s livestock or tilling their land for a pittance to help pay his own fees.

After struggling all the way to Standard Eight, his academic dreams dimmed when he failed to sit the crucial Kenya Certificate of Primary education (KCPE) for lack of school and examination fees.

OFFBEAT JOBS

"I painfully crashed out of school, devastated,’ Hamisi recalls. "I resorted to doing all sorts of offbeat jobs to raise money."

Later, he travelled Mombasa where several young men from his neighbourhood, all of them school dropouts, were leading a better life.

His fortune’s changed dramatically when a tour guide’s job came knocking his way and with it, an opportunity to study overseas in the perceived land of opportunities.

It came abruptly one day. As sweet fate would have it, some American tourists he was guiding around the beaches and game parks were impressed by his eloquent, spoken English and ostensible brilliance.

They could not help wondering why at his age, he was not in school. They offered to educate him in America if his parents would allow it. Kakuta says he snapped at the offer and his parents had no objection.

"That marked the transformation, not only for me, but for my entire village where today I have helped build a fully fledged primary school, a secondary school, a health centre and a tourist camping site", he says, pride drenching his youthful face.

In America, Kakuta shone at school and proceeded to obtain a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political economy by 2001 at the Evergreen State College in Washington DC.

Still alive to his predicament and that of young people in his village, me made a decision to transform their lives. No sooner did he pocket his first degree than Kakuta founded the Maasai Community Association (MCA) to raise funds for projects back home. He is the association’s managing director.

First project

"My first project when I returned home was the construction of two classrooms at then fledgling Merrueshi Primary School where children were learning under trees," he says.

Today all the 326 pupils have boarding facilities and learn in classrooms fitted with solar power.

"We sponsor five of the 12 teachers," he adds.

He proceeded to do his Masters degree in Sustainable development in 2005 at the school for International Training (SIT) Belmont in the United States.

Hamisi is particularly proud of the scores of young girls the school has rescued from forced marriages and given a new lease of life. He sponsors the girls and other disadvantaged pupils through school where they enjoy boarding facilities.

"To tackle the problem of transition, we deemed it necessary to build a boarding secondary school, hence Merrueshi Mixed Secondary School started in 2007. The school currently has 200 students and 12 teachers," he told The Standard.

Health centre

The association has also put up a Health Centre complete with Maternal Health and Family Planning (MCH/FP) facilities in an area where people had to trek 35Km to the nearest health facility at Emali. The health centre that was recently officially opened by assistant defense minister John Nkaissery is currently manned by qualified clinical officers and nurses employed by the society. It among other services handles emergency cases that would other wise cost lives. A Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) centre has played an important role in reducing the incidence of HIV/Aids in the area.

To cap up his home projects, Kakuta plunged into wildlife conservation, complete with a nature trail that attracts tourists from all over the world.

He asks those living abroad not to forget to come back.

"Come back home and help create opportunities for others," he advises.