Every one of us is a hero who has helped build this great nation

Kimani Maruge inspired millions of children when he went to school late in his life [ PHOTO: FILE]

By KIPCHUMBA SOME

Nairobi, Kenya: One morning in 2003 soon after the new Narc government introduced the free primary education, a grandfather ambled into a local primary school in Uasin Gishu County to start his primary school education.

His name was Kimani Maruge and this peasant from Eldoret soon became the poster boy of the Narc’s Free Primary Education, which eventually transformed him in to an overnight celebrity.

Siting side by side with youngsters the age of his grandchildren, Maruge became an instant inspiration to thousands of other illiterate adults who had given up on their dreams of acquiring an education.

At 72 years, and instead of waiting for the inevitable death, soon he was on his way conferences around the world and eventually inspired a movie, the First Grader.

Such was the stuff heroes are made of.

Despite this fact, most certainly, Maruge will not feature in speeches of government officials or indeed in the minds of most Kenyans this Mashujaa Day.

In the pantheon of Kenya’s heroes politicians number the most due to the outsized role they occupy in the making of the nation, right from fight against colonialism to date.

It goes without saying that without the personal sacrifices of freedom fighters who took to the bush, the fight for independence might have taken much longer and might have panned out in unexpected ways.

Jomo Kenyatta and the other six freedom fighters imprisoned in Kapenguria only added fuel to the fire of liberty which was fanned by other selfless leaders like Dedan Kimathi, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Tom Mboya and Daniel Moi.

But soon after independence, new heroes emerged in the form of leaders who kept the new government in check, by pointing out the excesses the new leaders had engaged in.

Some in this group, among them Josiah Mwangi Kariuki, Tom Mboya, Pio Gama Pinto, Jean-Marie Seroney and Bishop Alexander Kipsang Muge paid with their lives for being the peoples’ watchmen.

Undeterred others took on the mantle to secure more freedoms for Kenyans and also paid dearly. Among them are Kenneth Matiba, Raila Odinga and Charles Rubia.

Crises spawn leaders and heroes and out of the decades-long fight for political pluralism and greater freedoms, arose many heroes who have occupied a greater space in the national conscience.

However, over the past 50 years of independence, the country has had much more heroes to celebrate in the field of academia, sports, business among others.

Some of these heroes and heroines are simple people, whose life stories, like Maruge’s, have inspired the nation to look and celebrate what is good about them as a people.

In 2004, Prof Wangari Maathai did Kenya proud by winning the Nobel Peace Prize for her conservation work. She was the first African woman to do so. She died two years ago.

Throughout her life Prof Maathai dedicated her energies to conserving the environment, a lifelong campaign best summed up by a cautionary phrase she often used: “If you destroy nature, nature will destroy you.”

Kenyan scientists have put the country in the world map, among them Prof Thomas Risley Odhiambo whose work on insects in Africa earned him worldwide acclaim.

He is the founder of the Kasarani-based International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (Icipe). This is the leading research institution on insects in Africa. He was an avowed advocate of African-led scientific solutions.

Among his peers in the scientific field are Prof Calestous Juma of Harvard University, Dr David Koech, a founder member of Kemri and Prof Esther Kahangi of Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology whose research on banana tissue culture has received international acclaim.

In the early 90s when Aids was a little understood tissue-wasting disease and social stigma was at its highest, Asunta Wagura, who was HIV positive, dymystified it and made it look like any other disease by going public about her affliction.

For more than 20 years now, she has faithfully documented her valiant struggle against the disease and in the process giving birth to two healthy children.

Many living with the disease have taken courage from her example. And let it not be forgotten that Kenyan doctors remain on the frontline in the global quest to find a cure for the disease.

For all the pretenses at unity, Kenya is a country riven by so many divisions; economic, political, ethnic and religious. But one thing truly unites Kenya across its many divides; its sporting heroes.

Kenyans swell with pride whenever the national anthem is sung in the world’s capitals in honour of all conquering athletes, the quick-footed sevens rugby team or the victorious volleyball queens.

Champions like David Rudisha and the recent Berlin Marathon record holder Wilson Kipsang continue to set the pace for the rest of the world.

What of the Maasai cricket team that caused an international stir when they took to the field in their shukas? It was prove enough that the national talent pool is inexhaustible.

More often than not, the police service gets negative press for the excesses of its officers, but the image of an Administration Police   officer appealing to a rowdy crowd at the height of the post-election violence not to destroy the country they had worked so hard to build in a moment of madness

Heroes are minted in times of disasters or hardship such as the recent Westgate attack. Kenyans came out stronger, but even then the personal sacrifices of some of them will remain enduring forever.

The image of a police officer lying on his stomach to reach a mother and her two children who were hiding from the attackers and Benjamin Chemjor spiriting away a clearly tensed child to safety, with a gun on the other hand put true meaning to the word bravery.

In academia, literary giants like Prof Ali Mazrui, Prof Micere Mugo, Prof Ngugi Wa Thiongo and much recently Kingwa Kamenchu, Stanley Gazemba have put Kenya on the literary map.

Despite limited opportunities, Kenya remains the country where a determined, hardworking businessman can build and empire through the traditional honest means.

From the butcheries of Nairobi, for example, industrialist Manu Chandaria has built an enviable multi-billion shilling business empire, a feat that says much about the Kenyan entrepreneurial spirit.

Notwithstanding its natural beauty and the sheer vitality of its people, Kenya is a pretty difficult place to live in comparison to other well-developed nations.

Most Kenyans live on a prayer. If the crazy matatu divers will not claim your life, then perhaps thugs in the estates or in the streets await. If not that, there remains the danger of dying of a waterborne disease such as cholera.

Or one might yet die trying to scoop oil from a broken down oil tanker.

Water shortage is the norm, electricity is never guaranteed, and bribes giving for service is well part of the culture now.   Yet despite these challenge’s, Kenyans remains some of the most resilient people in the world.

Every waking day, in the vast desert stretches of the half of the country mothers wake up at cock’s crow to look for water to cook for their schoolgoing children.

Every morning thousands of unemployed fathers and mothers trek daily to their workstations in their jua kali sheds or the industries in the cities and towns near them to eke out a living.

For surviving all these challenges, for finding the beautiful and the sunny in much of the ugliness that is the life in most part of the country, every Kenyan deserves to be called a hero.