My Higher Education Experience - Essay Example

Essay 1

I vividly recall the events that were a turning point in my life when I was almost three years. I could not bear the pain of being separated from my parents as young as I weducationat they referred to as Education. I wondered what this was at that particular age when I could only speak the Somali language. I later caeducationerstand that some said Education was key to success, but I still wondered was it worth better than parental care and love at that young age?

I started living with my aunt at that young age. She was the elder sister to my brother, the firstborn in the family of ten who had moved earlier to Malindi for the betterment of her children. It waseducation her that the value of education in Tana River was worse. Tana River is a place where you can get a whole school scoring D, D- and an E in the national school, I don't know why many leaders have decided to turn a blind eye on this. A county where the top student in the national exam scores a B- is no joke because it needs immediate action. One can easily infer that lives of nomadic people have been greatly neglected. However,education not mean the value of education in Malindi was any better compared to the other parts of the country. The whole of the coast region was lagging behind nationally in academics and this was evidently seen in the national exams.

Majority of the population in Tana River don’t even know their national language, how could they be taught in school? Use their mother tongue to learn concepts in science? Perhaps that is not possible. I sometimes feel lucky for getting a chance to escape that reality which most children still face but I still ask myself how about the very many children who still live there? Their life being messed up as if they aeducationtitled to the right of education as the constitution states. It is evident that these students, if given a chance can even do better, I consider myself as an example. This is because students who study outside the county do comparatively well.

The land in Tana River is semi-arid and it barely rains. The land is unproductive thus you would hardly find people scrambling for land. Many people focus on pastoralism. Living in temporary houses made of sheets of paper. However, there are channels of water which pass through the land seasonally. This is the same water used by the locals for basic consumption. My father usually farms around these channels of water. Many people in the region don’t farm because they claim that they cannot farm in a dry area where the sun is unbearable. However, my father plants green grams which do well but sometimes don’t do well because of strong winds which destroy the crops and invasion of animals such as Monkeys and even by the neighbors’ livestock. The winds which are present in Tana River not only destroy crops but also houses. I remember our former house which was made of mud and thatch didn’t survive the strong winds thus had to be replaced with one which had iron roof and mud. Since farming is only seasonal and cannot stand for the entire family, my father usually owns a motorbike on which he transports milk from the nomads who reside in the bush with their animals, he sells the milk in the town and makes some profit. It is not an easy deal because he takes more than six hours of ride thus, he has to spend the night there because of the dangerous animals such as lions and hyenas at night.

I usually believed that I was a different kid, this is because is started thinking of my life at a very early age, I didn’t want to disappoint my parents. I usually felt as the chosen one. I had to do all I could so as to rescue my family and open up the community’s at large. To accomplish that, I had to make sure that I secure a place at a national school outside the coast region. However, in Malindi, life was not also easy, I faced critics from many students who believed that I was grasping their opportunity to shine in academics. I was considered as an alien in my own country. It really hurt me to see people in the twenty first century still judging others according to the tribes they are from. At home, Tana River, I was also considered an alien by my own people. I recall how people glance at me to date, I usually feel like a person with no origin, just stuck in between.

While in school at Malindi, I used to visit my parents in Tana River at most twice a year. Many would wonder how I could stay away that long from my family, but it was possible though not easy. What kept me going was the bigger picture, I could not just think of the present but the future. Sometimes I compare myself with my close relatives of the same age who studied in Tana River and its horrible. One who completed primary school the same year as me is already married. Sometimes I sit down and think what if I was in that position, how could I face the future?

Life was not also as swift as it seemed in Malindi, I lost my aunt when I was in class six. I remember missing school in order to help her with her small shop when she was ill. I still don’t understand what she was suffering from, I just recall the growth she had at her neck which made her stop from eating anything. We grieved her, this was a blow to me, a source of motivation was gone. I had to endure this since I was two educationm finishing my primary education. life had to continue though not the same. Her business, which was the shop collapsed due to lack of proper management.

Although my academic performance was greatly affected after my aunt passed away, I regained stability and indeed was ready for the national exams which I had waited for so long. After completing I had to travel back to Tana River, to wait for the outcome of my eight years study in primary school. While I was in Tana River, I was sick for over three months the cause of the disease being unknown even after visiting several hospitals, that made some think of superstition. However, the KCPE results were pleasing. I had scored four hundred and three marks out of the possible five hundred marks. My primary school headteacher called my dad requesting him to allow me to go back to Malindi to apply for scholarships as my parents could not afford to take me to High School . I was happy to secure equity bank scholarship, famously known as Wings to Fly.

I started another phase of my life. Travelling for almost fifteen hours from Malindi to Nakuru for studies. This is another reason staying away from my parents, just because of studies. If I reflect the number of years, I spent with my parents from combining all the holidays, its less than two years. What I have so far gained from the sacrifice of parental care and love is worth it. I joined Nakuru High school, life was not easy because of the change in the weather and a new geographical area. I had to cope as fast as I could. However, the challenges were not few, though I had previously been in a Christian primary school, things were not the same. It was during my high school that I realized what living as a minority group was apart from tribal discrimination.

Things were even worse when I was chosen to be the chairperson of the Muslim society, all the school attention was on us. A crime committed by one Muslim in the school premises was regarded committed by all Muslim just because we were sixty students from the entire one thousand two hundred students. As a leader I was frequently summoned to answer for the Muslims who broke the laws, walking out of classes to attend a disciplinary hearing. I even wondered why we were not treated as the other students; I had a tough time to convince students to attend Christian summons because they were under school program and the administration was strict to it.

However, these challenges posed as motivation to me and life had to go on. I took them as a motivation to accomplish my goal of doing the best in school. After doing my national Examination, I had each and every reason to celebrate my grade A with the rest of the family as I prepared for the best the future has in store for me.