Former street boy beats all the odds and earns a degree

Former street Boy who graduated from Kenyatta University, Michael Ooko on January 12, 2016. Mr Ooko now says he is going to pursue a Masters Degree. PHOTO | ANTHONY OMUYA |

What you need to know:

  • A fighting, pummelling Ooko was pushed into a vehicle and later transported over 330km to the Kisumu Children’s Court.
  • Following what happened that evening, Mr Ooko returned to class and continued his education from where he had left it in Standard Three in 1999.
  • Fast forward to 2015. Last month, he was one of the hundreds of students who graduated during Kenyatta University’s 39th graduation.
  • And on Monday, it will be exactly a month since Mr Ooko obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Finance, alongside 465 others.

Michael Ooko considered it brutality when police officers rounded him up one evening as he planned to snore the night away outside the Ambassadeur Hotel in Nairobi.

The streets were his home, his life, his all. By that evening in 2003, while aged 13, he had survived two years in the concrete jungle called Nairobi; and he thought he was doing just fine. But police had other ideas.

He had managed to evade them for long but on this day, his luck had run out. The officers were implementing a directive by the then vice-president Moody Awori, who wanted children taken off the streets and rehabilitated.

“It was a hide-and-seek with the police but we could not manage it because the number of children in the street was decreasing.

CAUGHT BY POLICE

Some policemen caught me at Ambassadeur. We used to sleep there, outside on the veranda,” he said.

A fighting, pummelling Ooko was pushed into a vehicle and later transported over 330km to the Kisumu Children’s Court.

Following what happened that evening, Mr Ooko returned to class and continued his education from where he had left it in Standard Three in 1999.

Fast forward to 2015. Last month, he was one of the hundreds of students who graduated during Kenyatta University’s 39th graduation.

And on Monday, it will be exactly a month since Mr Ooko obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Finance, alongside 465 others.

The 25-year-old orphan shared his story with the Sunday Nation last week, in what he said was out of his desire to thank those who have made it possible for him to reach that far. It was never easy, he says.

Between the time he joined a rehabilitation facility and the time he graduated from university, many were the times he had to do odd jobs to get his fees and upkeep money.

While a student at Homa Bay Boys’, for example, he spent the better part of his Form Three year hundreds of kilometres away from school, breaking his back to get money after offering labour at construction sites in Nairobi’s Githurai estate.

“When I joined Form Four, I talked to the principal to let me take my KCSE and clear the fees later,” he said.

KENYATTA UNIVERSITY

And while in KU - he was lucky to get a scholarship that catered for his tuition fees - sometimes he spent days off looking for avocadoes in Kisii County, which he would later supply to Githurai food vendors for a profit.

This would help him pay for his rented house in Githurai and help him meet other expenses.

The capital for his avocado business was from Sh16,000 that well-wishers sent him via M-Pesa after he shared his story with a local daily in May 2012.

He would later close the business because the fruits are not always in season.

In his fourth year, he would burn candles at both ends trying to balance studies with online writing - a venture that has been his source of income since September 2014.

Such is the hassle that has characterised Mr Ooko’s life ever since his father, Mr Silas Onjiko, died in 1999.

He is the lastborn of Mr Onjiko’s 12 children. His mother, who was the second wife, had died in 1998. After the death of his father, life became unbearable at his ancestral home in Wiobiero village in Homa Bay County.

Because none of his siblings was welcoming, he left home.

“I just decided to disappear; to get lost completely,” he recalled. “I carried everything. Everything. I decided not to go back.”

He would make it to Nairobi in early 2000. As a street child, he used the Central Police Station as his base, sneaking into the premises at night to sleep inside vehicles.

His first stay in Nairobi lasted only two months. One evening, a female police officer found him footing to the station yard and after hearing his story, took him to Kamkunji police station.

KISUMU STREET BOY

He would afterwards be transported to western Kenya alongside other street children. He says he somehow managed t0 convince the officers to drop him off in Kisumu, where he decided to continue life as a street child.

A beating and a “dressing-down” were all he got as orientation to join the Kisumu street children.

“When you go there, if you are clean or smart, they have to beat you up. That’s a way of welcoming you.

They beat you up, they take the clean clothes and they give you the glue. After the beating, now you are a friend. they show you the corners of the town.

That’s how I went to Lwang’ni Beach in Kisumu,” Mr Ooko said.

They baptised him “Jakanyada”, a reference to the place he comes from. He would spend a year in Kisumu, begging for food from visitors at the popular Lwang’ni Beach, after which he returned to Nairobi.

In Nairobi, he would spend two years orbiting between Gikomba, the Central Police Station and other city alleys. Then Moody Awori happened.

When he was made VP in September 2003 after the death of Kijana Wamalwa, Mr Awori championed to change the welfare of prisoners and the rehabilitation of street children, and Mr Ooko was one of those who benefitted.

After being rounded up from the street, Mr Ooko was taken for rehabilitation at Gitathuru near Kabete. After six months, he was admitted to the Kakamega Approved School from where he was admitted in Standard Seven.

He chose to skip three classes of primary education out of his “dislike” for the facility.

TOP OF CLASS

He sat his Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination in 2005; where he came top of the class with 296 marks.

From there he would return to Nairobi; this time as a labourer at Githurai. While there, a Good Samaritan offered to take him to Kwang’ethe Primary School where he retook KCPE in 2006, scoring 356 marks.

He was admitted to Ichagaki Boys in Maragua but he could not go past Form One because of the 2007 post-election violence.

“They (fellow students) were excited about the politics. And some of them had not seen how Luos looked like. You know, every now and then I did not have that peace of reading. Some were even coming to see how a Luo looks like,” Mr Ooko said, laughing.

“They became excited in politics and they told us - we were three - ‘Don’t come back here."

That is how he requested for transfer to Homa Bay High, and a non-governmental organisation took care of his expenses.

SCHOLARSHIP

He scored a B- in 2010 KCSE; applied for a Kenyatta University scholarship and was lucky to get one. He studied as a privately sponsored student.

However, he is not satisfied with the degree he has. He wants to study law.

“With my degree, I’m targeting to get a job in financial institutions; though I didn’t give it a priority.

My priority is to be a lawyer and work with children. In fact, when I was joining KU, I didn’t apply for Bcom.

I applied to be a lawyer. But with the grades, I could not be admitted to pursue law; so I opted to take Bcom,” he said.