His heart beats for Mandera: Salat Sheikh’s story of daring

After the guns went quiet following the bloodbath that claimed five dozen quarry workers in Mandera County in 2014, nothing would ever be the same again. In the wake of the madness, non-native teachers and other workers fled the county, fearing more sectarian violence.

As if by reflex, destiny thrust responsibility into Salat Sheikh’s hands; he decided he would fill in the gap left by the fleeing teachers. In January 2015, he gathered his books and notes and walked through the gates of Mandera Boys Secondary School, his alma mater.

Just a year before, he had been a student there, and now he was scribbling notes on the chalkboard.

A rough childhood

If his life followed the normal Mandera boy’s curve, Salat Sheikh would have been out herding his grandmother’s goats, corralling the wayward ones. He’d be out there where the sun burns white, where the earth turns red then ashen, for in Mandera County, life answers to a different drum.

The degrees that separate Mandera from other counties and cities of the country are not merely the ones that show up on a thermometer screen. This northern outpost — part of what the British named the Northern Frontier District, and then left it raw; and subsequent regimes took cue — has been systemically left out to work its way, left to its own devices.

“It’s a place that can break you, a place where hope dies early,” Salat said in an interview with DN2. “It is also a place of promise; it makes one impervious to destruction if your heart is right.”

Roses in the desert

In Mandera, this unforgiving land, you grow up quick. You grow up listening. You become a witness. You must hang on hope for better days.

Hope is an infectious disease, and Salat, now in his final year of college at Egerton University, where he is studying a degree in clinical medicine and surgery, is a carrier. It is this hope, this dream of becoming someone, of overcoming, that has kept him going.

Salat, 24, gets around by the aid of a crutch. He lost his leg in 2003 after one of the family’s camels kicked him. The wound from the blow could have been treated, but the distance to the nearest hospital was too far. By the time he was checked in, the leg had gangrened and had to be amputated from the knee.

In 2016, Salat stood at the rostrum of the college hall at Egerton University for the swearing-in after being elected director of persons living with disabilities. Two years later, he stood before a packed hall to give his maiden speech after clinching the post of director for security, accommodation and catering.

A long journey

Looking out over the attentive audience, Salat talked about his journey, his pilgrimage, about surviving Mandera. “You can climb up from anywhere, even the unlikeliest of places and change the narrative,” he said.

Salat was born in Bula Nguvu in Mandera East constituency, right on the Kenya-Ethiopia border. The fifth-born of 11 children, he grew up in a household that struggled to provide some of the most basic of needs. His father, a pastoralist, worked hard to provide for his large family, even when the bankrupted soil hardly yielded anything.

Of the 11 children, only Salat and his elder brother attended school. Through a scholarship offer from the philanthropic arm of a local bank, Sheikh enrolled at Mandera Boys Secondary School, graduating with a score of B+.

While the grade might appear average, consider this: the county is a tinderbox of fractious communities, anaemic rivers, perennial drought, and most damning, the death of hope.

Experience births a career

That Salat chose to study medicine was a shoo-in. It goes back to the fatal camel kick. “It’d have been a different outcome had I made it to the hospital in good time,” he says. “I want to go back home after my studies and help change lives as a doctor.”

For the past three years, during recess, Salat has been traversing Mandera, giving talks to young people.

“I have a big vision. I want to be in the front line supporting people with disability,” he explains. “You know, for a long time, I was bitter about what had happened to me, the amputation and what came after. Looking back, the accident made me a strong person. I discovered I had the power to trump odds.”

It takes a village

While Salat is not charmed by politics, he hopes that there will be a change of attitude about his home county and the larger Northern Frontier. Young people, he says, should aim to make a difference in the lives others.

“What the society in Mandera needs is not just graduates,” he says. “We need graduates who can think out of the traditional closet; people unafraid to point out the loopholes that curtail growth here.”

In the days after he lost his leg, Salat was despondent. He didn’t know what would happen to his life. Help came from his grandmother, a sturdy woman whose family had migrated from Ethiopia.

“She sacrificed a lot for me,” Salat recalls. “She moved in with us, took care of me, and cheered me on to what I’d become. She only returned home in 2015 when I went to college.”

The old woman’s example left an indelible mark in Salat’s life. There are no islands; life is a network, a stage, a loom. You give back what you get, says the young man. Armed with this reality, every holiday when college closes, Salat gets on the bus and heads back home in the north, to impact life.

Charity begins at home

This past January, Salat stood in front of students at Mandera Boys. It was one of several stops he had been making, doling out his acquired wisdom. He holds young people in high esteem, but Mandera Boys has a special place in his heart. It is his home.

“When I joined this school, I was an insecure young man. By the time I was leaving, I had been transformed into a citizen of the world. Change begins with you,” he told the students.

Wonders of the city

When he came to Nairobi for the first time in 2011 to collect his scholarship cheque, Salat was blown away by the roads, the lights, the vehicles. Everything was many years ahead of his county.

For a while, Salat hoped he would be granted a transfer to a school in, or near the capital city. It didn’t happen but as the years went by, he acquired a stubborn fidelity to his county.

“The reason I was able to join university is because of a grant. Similarly, I joined secondary school because of a scholarship offer,” Salat says. “We all need a hand at some point in our lives. I can’t wait to do the same for others. I hope to help improve health services in Mandera,” Salat says.