My swim from slum to top coaching job

Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible. So goes an old saying. Swimming coach James Muiruri Gakuya knows a thing or two about that. PHOTO| COURTESY

What you need to know:

  • James and his family were relocated to the bottom of the valley in a small parcel of land where they built a mud hut. They were literally at the bottom of the pile.

  • His mother, after regaining her health, was determined to move her family out of the valley. She applied for scholarships at the primary section of Starehe Boys Centre.

  • James  gained admission, but he only got a partial scholarship with no chance to board. 

Only those who attempt the absurd can achieve the impossible. So goes an old saying. Swimming coach James Muiruri Gakuya (below) knows a thing or two about that.

Born and bred in the crucible of poverty, with rats nibbling away at his toes at night, he has swam away from the humble circumstances in Nairobi’s Mathare slums to become a top swimming coach and entrepreneur. 

James was born in 1972 in a family of six. His father, now an 85-year-old, only played a small part in his life. It was his mother Njoki Migwi, 78, who singlehandedly raised the family through income from her vegetable kiosk. But he does not regret his childhood.

“As a child, it was exciting since there was a lot of adventure. So for me it wasn’t suffering because at times you look at children in the slums today and think they are suffering. Yes, they can do with a better environment and of course better exposure, but in reality, it wasn’t the (Mathare) slum as you know it now. What people call slums today were villages back then,” he says.

He says the area was bushy with cattle grazing around and the now polluted river that passes through it had fresh water. But one painful incident he remembers was the burning of their house at a time when his mother was ill.

“We were left with absolutely nothing. The people who came to help us took off with some of our property,” he says.

James and his family were relocated to the bottom of the valley in a small parcel of land where they built a mud hut. They were literally at the bottom of the pile.

DETERMINED MOTHER

His mother, after regaining her health, was determined to move her family out of the valley. She applied for scholarships at the primary section of Starehe Boys Centre.

James  gained admission, but he only got a partial scholarship with no chance to board. 

“I had to walk from Mathare to Starehe. It was a pretty long distance especially for someone my age,” he says. The school would eventually learn of his struggles and admit him to the boarding section.  

“When I presented my case, I had wounds on my finger tips and toes because of being feasted on by rats at night,” he says. 

He transited to the secondary section where his interest in sports was apparent. During school holidays, he volunteered to work at Pumwani Maternity, Mama Ngina Children’s Home, Mathare Youth Sports Association and Kenyatta National Hospital. After his final exam, James did not qualify for the Commerce course he had applied for at the University of Nairobi.

“I had to go back home. By then we had moved to Eastleigh where I helped my elder brother set up a chips business. I worked with him for about a year, but kept volunteering at YMCA where I was striving to do a life-saving course. That’s how I kept up with swimming. By then I was 19,” he says.

At the age of 20, James moved to Mombasa with one mission: to become a seaman. Since the casual jobs were seasonal, he kept himself busy by applying for a seaman’s qualifications to allow him to work in a ship.

“I worked in a Spanish trawler temporarily. It was too sad because I never got to go to other countries or even the deep sea. I left the job and went to work at the port as a casual labourer,” he says. James relocated back to Eastlands, Nairobi, and started selling vegetables before a friend informed him of a job opportunity at the Aga Khan Academy.

This was in 1993 and James got his first swimming coach job. Another opportunity cropped up. He resigned from coaching to run a centre under the Rotary club which was in memory of Dan Eldon, a photojournalist killed in Somalia.

But he returned to his coaching career in various schools from 1998 while at the same time pursuing courses through the Kenya Swimming Coaches Associations, which he ended up chairing. To further his knowledge, he flew to the US and interned with the American Swimming Coaches Association under the Swim America Program and later went for the World Swimming Coaches Clinic in New Orleans. As fate would have it, he was to jet back into Kenya on September 11, 2001, the day the twin towers came tumbling down after a terrorist attack.

Since 2002, the father of three has been the director of Swim Africa, a locally based business venture in Nairobi where even children are taught how to swim.