Kenyan universities still churn out half-baked graduates

This past Wednesday, I graduated from arguably the best journalism graduate school in the world. Attending the school and living in New York City has been a truly humbling experience when I reflect on my background. It is nothing short of God’s grace that I made it through.

Picture this, in primary school, it was routine to carry cow dung to school and clay soil to use for smearing the floor of our classrooms to keep off jiggers. It was standard practice to carry Mauritius thorns to fence the school during the holidays. Some male teachers always asked us to go to the forest to fetch tiny seeds of the black wattle tree. Such errands were not frowned upon by the community and were considered normal. High schools were like voluntary jails, where we ate githeri, beans and porridge that were more like poison, only God knows how we survived. Don’t even get me started on the intellectual death among students during my undergraduate years.