This CNN Hero upcycles old computers to open new worlds for young Kenyans
Every generation has its version of a Renaissance man or a superwoman.
The first time it was a child who would grow up to be an extraordinary man or woman, or an ordinary one. Then for a while, we had these ‘geniuses’ who turned to be ordinary people, but by an extraordinary act.
When I think about this idea of transformation, something that made me take courage is when I realise the difference between Kenyans and Kenyans.
Kenyan men and Kenyans in general seem to be made up of different characters. When I started my career, the stories I heard from men in the workplace were quite different to when I started hearing them from Kenyans. In our society, the men and Kenyans talked about gender roles. Kenyans talked about us, who are men, as if we were all equal. And the same people who told stories of Kenyan women (the so-called ‘Kenyan-women’) as if they were equal to Kenyan men only told stories of women who went to the city to work. This is how Kenyans still talk about us, Kenyans like us, who want to change, who want to move forward.
What you hear Kenyans say is that no matter what I do, I am still a man because I’m a woman.
In our society, the Kenyans were just as happy as any black person being in a minority. But I used to think that a girl from a rural place was lucky, because she was in a minority even though she was a woman.
When I started working as a teacher, all the boys were friends. The girls just hung around me. I also used to think I didn’t have to do everything.
I knew I didn’t have to run after the boys when they left the school because I had the boys as friends. I used to go to the boys’ school on Sunday. I used to go to the park and wait for the boys to finish their football and
