As a teenager growing up in the Kenyan slum of Mathare,
Sammy Gitau was a drug pusher, thief and gang member who was nearly beaten to
death twice and ended up in a crack-induced coma.
In 2007 he graduated from Manchester University with a master's degree in development.
The road from the depths of oblivion to the peak of academic
achievement has been a long and testing one, and not without its setbacks. At
one point British authorities blocked Gitau from entering the country saying
they didn't believe he was clever enough to do a graduate degree.
From Kenyan slum to British master's graduate: Sammy Gitau's
story is extraordinary
But Gitau, now a 35-year-old father of three, knew his path
was more or less destined since he found a Manchester University prospectus in
a filthy Mathare skip years ago and began dreaming about making his life
better.
Now, armed with the knowledge he's garnered his studies, and the wealth of contacts he's made, he returned to
Nairobi and expand the projects he's run there for the past decade, helping
people as lost as he once was.
"When I was 13 or 14, I never imagined I would be in
this sort of situation. All I used to think about was how I was going to
die," said Gitau as he talked through the strange twists and turns his
life has taken.
Gitau's life began to spiral out of control shortly after
his father was murdered with a hammer in Mathare, one of the oldest and most
squalid of Nairobi's slums, where an estimated 300,000 people live crammed into
makeshift huts.
As the eldest of 11
children, he was expected to become the breadwinner, but in his desperate
struggle to make money he turned to gangs and drugs, dealing them and then
taking them.
"The next thing I knew I was in a hospital bed, falling
in and out of a coma, and I could hear the doctors and nurses talking about how
I was going to die," he said, retelling the story as if he can't quite
believe how bad it once was. I thought that if I had to give an account of my life
I would have nothing to show. I knew I had to change."
It took a couple of years, but eventually Gitau started
working with the Mathare community, helping young boys involved in crime and
drugs. He also took any free course he could, studying education, counselling,
computers and electronics. A good student, he was soon teaching and counselling others,
and before long set up the Mathare Community Resource Centre, instructing hundreds
of poor residents in useful skills such as tailoring, soap making and basic
engineering.
It wasn't long after that he found the Manchester University
prospectus and knew immediately the next step he needed to take. But even after he had applied, been accepted and been
offered a scholarship to study at Manchester, the British High Commission in
Nairobi was not convinced he was a valid candidate, saying he didn't have
enough formal education.
It took a months-long legal battle and a court case before a
British judge ruled he had been wronged and a visa was issued. But by then the
scholarship had expired. Friends stepped in to help with funding and a year
later he was finally at Manchester.
"It was the lowest hole that I had sunk into," he
said of the time when he was battling for a visa. But now when I look back, it was almost to my
advantage. I met many people I would not have met and who have helped me."
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