Joyce Wanjiru’s dream was to be a medical practitioner and turn pain and suffering of the ailing into joy and smiles.
When she joined Ng’othi Primary School in Mwea, Kirinyaga, she worked tirelessly towards attaining that goal.
She passed her KCPE exam and joined St Chavara CMI Girls Secondary School in Machakos, where she attained a mean grade of B+ in her KCSE exam in 2022.
But after completing Form 4, she found herself doing menial jobs like working on other people’s rice fields in Ng’othi village.
She was called to join Kenya Methodists University in Meru for a Bachelor of Pharmacy, but her family could not raise the more than Sh500,000 fees for her first year.
She was supposed to have joined the college in the last academic year (2023-24), but that was never to be and hopelessness is setting in fast.
Wanjiru, 20, is appealing to well-wishers to help make her dream a reality.
“The realisation of my dream will be beneficial and impactful not only to my family but the community and country at large,” she said when we visited her farm in Ng’othi village.
Her mother, Beth Wanjiku, describes her as a bright child, saying she was the top student in the schools she sat her KCPE and KCSE exams.
“After completing her primary school education, we did everything within our means and took her to secondary school in Machakos, where she excelled in her academic work and became a darling of her teachers,” she said.
Wanjiku said well-wishers helped her pay secondary school fees for her daughter.
But they had no money to take her to university and as a result, her mother decided to keep her busy by tagging her along whenever she got a casual job in the village.
“Many a times she would lock herself in the house and cry the entire day asking herself and the family why she was so unlucky,” Wanjiku said.
She would hide from her former schoolmates and villagers and would sometimes run away from home to live with relatives living away from the village due to the stress of remaining at home while her age mates are in school.
She is pained and her daily tasks has been reduced to planting rice, weeding and doing domestic chores like washing clothes for others.
Wanjiku said the amount of fees needed for Wanjiru to join university is prohibitive as they rely on casual jobs on the rice fields whose proceeds are barely enough to put food on the table.
She is now urging well-wishers to help her daughter join university so she can pursue her dream of being a pharmacist.