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Kenya, as a young country, was significantly changed by the ‘American Airlift’ of students who were taken there for higher education via scholarships.
Theirs was a story of good intentions, unsung heroes and unexpected results in the 10 years to 1963, when the Airlifts by Dr Julius Gikonyo Kiano and Tom Mboya lasted.
The John F Kennedy family foundation, William X Scheinman, a young American businessman and jazz aficionado, sports star Jackie Robinson, musician Harry Belafonte, actor Sidney Poitier and civil rights crusader Martin Luther King Jr were also instrumental in charting the path of Kenyan luminaries, including environmentalist Prof Wangari Maathai, respected journalist Philip Ochieng, politician Maina Wanjigi and Wilson Ndolo Ayah, Arthur Magugu, ambassador Nicholas Mugo (who was joined by wife Beth Mugo who cleared high school there and graduated from Wilmington College in Delaware), entrepreneur JB Wanjui and media guru Hillary Ng’weno. The Airlifts also made Barack Obama Sr, an economist who was given to streaks of self-destruction and whose enduring legacy is fathering American president Barack Obama.
But did you know that the first omera from the lakeside to receive education in the land of ‘Uncle Barry’ was Samuel Ayodo?
The man from Kowidi in the then Kasipul-Kabondo Constituency attended Maseno School where teachers described him as ‘a man to watch.’
From Maseno, Ayodo attended Makerere College before a scholarship saw him attend Union College in Nebraska, according to Kenyatta Cabinets: Drama, Intrigue, Triumph, published in 2012.
That was 60 years after Ayodo made history as the first Luo in America, where he graduated with a Bsc in education in 1956.
Ayodo or ‘rao’ (hippopotamus), as he was later nicknamed, moved from teaching to a career in politics that saw him appointed in the first cabinet when Kenya got independence in 1963.
The son of an assistant chief was one of the youngest ministers at only 33.
Back then, ministers earned Sh7,000 salary and Sh10,000 annual gratuity and had no bodyguards!
The first graduate from South Nyanza died at the Nairobi Hospital on August 6, 1998 aged 68.
