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Kenyans speak American English, not British English. And though our writing is British, It doesn’t seem like 70 years of British imperialism influenced us to become aligned to the values of our colonisers. We are more Americanised than some Americans. Besides our social class system, we have very little that is British. How so?
Well, it all began in 1950s Kenya with Tom Mboya’s ‘Student Airlifts’ which triggered an unprecedented thirst for higher education. Did you know that education harambees began when Mwaura Ngoima, head of Kenya African Traders and Charles Rubia, later the first African Mayor of Nairobi, organised a fundraising for Dr Julius Gikonyo Kiano in Murang’a in 1948?
Though Kiano left Kenya with Sh60 in his pocket that March, the plane’s convoluted trip over Sudan, Israel and Italy left him penniless by its fourth stopover in England. There, Mbiyu Koinange, later Minister of State in the Kenyatta administration, donated his winter coat, while Charles Njonjo, later Attorney General, gave the future Commerce Minister some dough. Things weren’t made any easier when the plane developed technical hitches and landed in Boston instead of NewYork. Kiano had to make do with a bus journey all the way to Philadelphia with no cash left on his arrival. His ‘full scholarship’ included being a kanda ya mkono at Pioneer Business College to earn pocket money, Robert F Stephens writes in Kenya Students Airlifts to America 1959-1961: An Educational Odyssey.
Kiano, the first African lecturer at what is currently the University of Nairobi, later inspired many Kenyans to apply for the scholarships funded by the African American Students Foundation and the John F Kennedy family. Selecting potential candidates took place at the American Embassy’s Cultural Affairs Office which was situated opposite the City Market, with Tom Mboya, Dr Gikonyo Kiano, Kairuki Njiiri and Robert Stephens (the Cultural Affairs Officer) as panelists.
The stories behind the airlifts were as dramatic as they were hilarious. Ernestine, Kiano’s American wife, had to help the late Prof George Saitoti, future Vice President, fill in his scholarship forms while she suckled her son in the college quarters where the Kianos lived! There were examples of sheer courage, like the late Dr Njoroge Mungai arriving at Stanford University with under five cents in his pocket in 1951. His family was later flown from Kenya to America to feature in the TV show, This is Your Life, on Mungai’s journey to Stanford from South Africa’s Fort Hare College eight years earlier. Others were portraits of unflagging zeal.
Media mogul S K Macharia yearned for his American ‘airlift’ education, but lacked the Sh4,000 air ticket. His 140 day, Sh1,200 road trip took him to Kampala, Juba and on to Benghazi in Libya, before crossing the Mediterranean by ship to Europe. He would then take a boat to Dover via the English Channel then a train ride to London and on to America, where his 8,000-kilometre journey ended in Seattle.
The roll call of the beneficiaries of the ‘airlifts’ include Hillary Ng’weno (considered the brightest Mang’u alumnus who could have ‘succeeded in anything’), Barack Obama Sr, Prof Wangari Maathai, Maina Wanjigi, Lawrence Sagini, Philip Ochieng’ and David Hopcraft, the only colonial Mzungu who ever applied.
Hopcraft studied wildlife management at Cornell University and later supplied game meat to the Carnivore Restaurant from his farm near the Nairobi National Park. It was this educational odyssey, with the first students landing in America appearing in Time magazine, that got Kenyans more interested in the country where ‘Uncle Barry’ is now president.
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