Boy with big dreams picks rocket science

PHOTO | DENNIS OKEYO Dan Muthomi, who emerged fourth nationally in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exam.

Dan Muthomi has already made up his mind what course he wants to study after secondary school. Well, this is not unusual. Many young people his age do. However, his choice sounds like a dream, quite different from the careers most people his age are set on.

He does not want to be a pilot, doctor, or surgeon, as many pupils who are interviewed after excelling in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination are wont to declare.

The 14-year-old boy, who emerged the best in Meru and Tharaka Nithi counties and attained position four nationally with 429 points, wants to study rocket engineering.

This is not a common field and of course is not offered in Kenyan universities.

Muthomi is aware of that, which is why even as he prepares to join secondary school, he is already visualising himself joining the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to study rocket engineering. That could be four years from now.

Well, the reason he is interested in the course could be because it is not only unique, interesting, and sophisticated, but, he says, “It is innovative and enhances creativity and development of new ideas.”

Rocket engineering involves building rockets and testing them. “It will give me fulfilment. It will quench my curiosity about space science,” states the lad.

Muthomi’s parents, Prof Nyaga Kindiki and Edna Nyaga, are amazed at their child’s career choice and his focus on the subject and insist that they have not influenced him.

Muthiomi says he is hopeful that he will get admitted to a secondary school that would offer him the opportunity to excel in subjects that would enable him to study rocket engineering at NASA.

Muthomi’s interest highlights a problem that affects Kenyan youngsters who are attracted to rare science and technology courses that are not offered by universities in Kenya.

Those who can afford it have to travel abroad to pursue their dream careers.

While many of the highly rated science and technology degrees have traditionally not been considered applicable in Kenya, pursuing them, according to Prof Nyaga, “creates linkages between developed and developing countries” in ways that would give countries that are behind in the subject some kick.

As Kenya aspires to be industrialised by 2030, such linkages need to be particularly supported, according to Prof Nyaga.

If Muthiomi ultimately gets to pursue his dream, he will be joining a few fellow Kenyans like Dr Wilbur Otichillo, the outgoing MP for Emuhaya.

Dr Otichillo studied space science and is one of the first holders of a PhD in the subject in Africa.

Space science courses entail the use of satellite technology in survey and remote sensing for planning and management of space. Dr Otichillo combines this with environmental management.

For example in 1995, then a scientist at the KWS, he became the first person to arrange for the translocation of elephants from Mwea to Tsavo National Park using a specially designed vehicle imported from Italy. The job was to contain rogue elephants that had become a menace to human life and destroyed crops.

“In 1996, I pulled off another dangerous assignment when I moved dozens of the hirola — a rare and endangered species of the antelope family — from Garissa to Maasai Mara using a chartered airplane. We had to immobilise them with tranquilisers and the danger was that if they had woken up in the middle of the journey, we would have come down,” he recently explained in a separate interview.

The rare expertise has earned Dr Otichillo membership at the Pan-Africa Network on Renewable Energy and Climate Change (PANAREC).