Njeri Mbure smiles 24-7 and when she does, few would believe she is capable of doing anything gritty, like leading strikes. Behind her smile, lies years of life’s beatings that pushed her to almost giving up, despite her happy-golucky attitude.
She is the marketing manager of the World Heritage Programme at Ohio History Connection in the US. She oversees Ohio’s only Unesco world heritage site Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks.
Born and raised in Kiambu, Mbure started her education at Muthaiga Primary School and attended several high schools. After Muthaiga primary, her best friend was admitted to Consolata Girls’ Secondary School in Meru and she wanted to go there too. The school was so austere she could not ride it out.
“We were used to eating a whole tray of eggs almost every day at my friend’s place because they used to rear chicken. The adjustment was not easy, ulcers came and I decided to go,” she says.
The two friends were transferred to Moi Girls’ Secondary School-Kamangu in Kiambu.
“There we got a new deputy principal. She was very tough. One of the things she cut off was snacks. My fellow prefects and I decided one day we should lead a strike just to cause a revolution. It was the first-ever strike in that school,” she says.
She was the environment prefect. Mbure was suspended and when she came back with her parents after two weeks, everyone was pointing at her telling their parents, “there she is!” She became the most famous girl in the school and slashed grass the whole week as punishment.
“Unfortunately, students planned another strike and the school management wanted to suspend me again because I did not snitch. Snitches get stitches. I wasn’t going to snitch. I preferred to transfer,” she says.
“As part of the deal to come back to school after the first strike, I was to tell the school administration in case there were any strike plans.”
She went to her third high school at Mary Leaky Girls’ High in Kabete, where she did not fit well. Her academic performance deteriorated.
“There were people tougher than me, so there was a lot of bullying. Around that time my dad passed away. I was in Form 2,” she says.
Her mother decided she needed her closer and transferred her to Loreto Kiambu High, where she was forced to repeat Form 2.
“For me, I think I needed that. I needed a reset. Now, when I reflect, I can see why I needed that because I gained my focus. I was still suspended,” she says.
This time, she was suspended just because she was suspected of being part of a group that scratched the deputy principal’s car one night when the lights went off.
“When I came back from suspension and I tried explaining that I was not in the group, they said I was not remorseful and suspended me for another week.”
However, when she finished her secondary studies, she was given a prize for being the most responsible students. She scored B plain in her KCSE exam.
“For me I had always known I had leadership qualities but I didn’t know to what level. So, when I went to Tangaza University I did media and communication, TV and video production as my first degree,” she says.
She became the department’s communication unit representative in her first year and in second year, she became the general secretary in charge of entertainment. In 2010, she did her internship at K24 TV.
Two years later, she went to the US for her master’s degree in applied communication, public relation and advertising at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts.
In 2015, she came back and became a lecturer at her alma mater. In 2016, she was among the 24 youth picked from Anglophone countries in Africa to attend the first Africa World Heritage Youth Forum in Robben Island, South Africa.
During the forum at Robben Island, they were sleeping in the cells where apartheid hero Nelson Mandela and his comrades slept.
This is where she got the concept of “Each One, Teach One”, where one is supposed to teach at least one other person whatever one has learned. She got interested in world heritage and she created a Facebook page – Each One Teach One Kenya, where she used to post information about world heritage, what it is and how the youth can get involved.
From the 24 who were in Robben Island, she was chosen to go to Istanbul, Türkiye, for the World Heritage Committee.
“Every year, Unesco organises a World Heritage Committee and that’s where sites get nominated,” she says. She was supposed to give a report of what they did at Robben Island.
“At Robben Island, we had come up with a declaration from African youth on world heritage and what we wanted is for youth to be included in decision-making tables,” she says.
After the Anglophone meeting, there was a second one for Francophone countries and a third one for Lusophone countries and all attendees were called to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2019.
HARDSHIPS
The Addis Ababa trip found her jobless after she lost her job at Tangaza University. That was the beginning of four years of hardships.
But she did not lie down feeling sorry for herself “I used to make coasters, used to hold drinks, because I am a creative. I used to go to River Road to buy those things. I also used to do wall arts,” she says.
She learnt how to paint because her husband was in the furniture business. “I learnt to paint so well that someone hired me to paint his whole house,” she says.
Then she was called to go represent Africa in Azerbaijan. “I didn’t have money. I told them the truth that I was broke. The Africa World Heritage Fund (AWHF) was very kind to me. I am truly their child,” she says.
Then 2020 came and Covid-19 happened. Broke and Covid-19 was a bad combination. Her sister, who used to work for the church, included her in the fortnight food donations from the church.
This is what she was surviving on. “I hadn’t known what it meant to lack fare until it happened to me. I used to borrow Sh20 for fare. It was embarrassing.”
Again she was nominated by AHWF to be involved in the Unesco periodic reporting for World Heritage Sites in Africa that year.
Then good news came towards the end of 2020. Her mother, who had relocated to the US, called and informed her that her green card, which she had applied for in 2015, was ready.
MOVE TO AMERICA
She relocated to the US. In the US, her Kenyan friend in Florida, with whom they had had gone to university together, offered to host her.
“But when I went there I only stayed with her for two weeks and they felt like 50 years. She was mean. I knew I needed a place to stay and a job,” she says.
A white woman in her 60s in Ohio, who was looking for someone to take care of her husband, got in touch. “When I went to work at her home, she never looked at me as a nanny. I found myself just keeping them company and I was getting paid $1,000 a month,” she says.
“I only stayed with her husband for six weeks and he died.” The woman asked her to stay and keep her company. Mbure was pregnant, something she found out after she left Kenya.
Her employer was excited there was going to be a baby running around. An opportunity arose to join the University of Turin in Italy to do a master’s degree in World Heritage and Cultural Studies, and the woman supported her.
Because she had a baby then, she could not go to Turin and a special virtual programme was created for her. In 2022, she came to Kenya on vacation and landed a contract job at Unesco, spearheading a programme that was being implemented in eight.
In January 2023, she went back
to the US where she landed a job as
a cultural heritage specialist at the
Cleveland Restoration Society in
Cleveland, Ohio.
In September 2023, Ohio got a
World Heritage Site at Hopewell.
In March this year, she landed her
current job at Hopewell Ceremonial
Earthworks in Ohio, but she started
her new job in June.
