A giant among educationists has fallen

Several educationists in this country have left a deep imprint on the nation by dint of the institutions they founded and the lives they have shaped.

This super league of transformers includes giants such as Mr E. Carey Francis, Mr Stephen J. Kioni and Mr John Katumanga both of the Kenya National Union of Teachers, Mr Fred K. Kago the linguist, and Mother Teresa Joseph, the founder of Loreto High School, Limuru.

The list would be incomplete without Dr Geoffrey Griffin, Mr Geoffrey Geturo and Mr Joseph Gikubu. In 1959 this trio founded Starehe Boys’ Centre in the last days of the Mau Mau liberation struggle.

Mr Gikubu, who was buried yesterday, was a truly remarkable person. As a teenager and armed only with a primary school education, he supported the Mau Mau war by running errands between the liberation fighters on the southern edge of the Nyandarua-Kereita forest and Mau Mau supporters in the general population.

Fearing apprehension when information of his secret mission leaked to the home-guards, he fled to Tanganyika.

Upon returning to Kenya, he was captured and locked up in Manyani Prison and later sent to Wamumu Rehabilitation Camp.

It was in Wamumu that he met Mr Griffin and Mr Geturo, and the idea of Starehe was mooted.

Mr Gikubu belonged to a category of freedom fighters that had a passion for education as a force of transformation in people’s lives. He is remarkable for several reasons.

He rose from an obscure existence in Kiambaa, Kiambu County, with little formal education, to co-found a unique, national institution that became both a home and a school.

Starehe Boys’ Centre and School is an institution that has achieved global renown and fame. The three founder-directors themselves became institutions.

IMMENSE COURAGE

Mr Gikubu had striking personal attributes. A man of immense courage and conviction, he believed that he was capable of making a difference in life.

He did not allow handicaps, be they of language or material resources, to discourage him. He never felt threatened by other people’s abilities, or endowments or higher education.

For the last 12 years, I had the fortune of working with him in the Juja community, Kiambu County, where he has a rural home.

Even as he served as a director of Starehe, Mr Gikubu participated vigorously in community, education and church activities in Juja.

He always acted locally, even as he thought nationally. One of his concerns was that young people be given the opportunity and be challenged to engage in physical training and athletics.

Mr Gikubu was convinced that one of the principal reasons our society is experiencing drug abuse and alcoholism is negligence of sport and healthy recreation. Sport and athletics need re-thinking in our education curricula.

He knew what he was talking about. As narrated in Mr Roger Martin’s book, Anthem of Bugles: The Story of Starehe Boys’ Centre and School, Mr Gikubu and Mr Geturo were pivotal in developing the institution’s physical training programme to national and international acclaim.

For as long as he lived, the struggle to improve the human condition never ended, right from his freedom fighter days to the founding and running of Starehe.

In a very true sense, the struggle has always continued, but driven by strict discipline.

Prof (Fr) Njoroge serves in St Augustine Catholic Parish, Juja and teaches Development Studies at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT).