If The Whole World Is A Game, What Is It Like To Be Born In Kenya? | David Chege.
David Chege, who has lived and worked in Kenya for a long time. He has held financial positions in Naidu Hospital and Orient Sacco. He has long-term thinking and writing about new technologies from an African perspective on Freelancer, including blockchain technology, network information security, etc. He proposed the concept of "Sustain coin" and started and promoted the concept. He hope to bring you more different understandings of technology and finance from the perspective of Africa.
I wonder if you have ever made such an assumption. If the real world is a large-scale survival game, we, as players, are assigned different levels of difficulty and clearance conditions from the moment we are born. For example, the clear conditions for South American players are enthusiastic football, for Central Asian players is black gold oil, and the CIS players are steel torrents and so on. So, if it is an African Kenyan player who is generally considered to be a Hard difficulty start, what is his experience and goals? In such an environment, what kind of ideas and diverse gameplay will players have?
Greetings. My name is David Chege. Now turning twenty-seven years of age in a month’s time, my twenty-six years of living has been nothing shy of eventful and I consider myself abundantly blessed to have experienced such a wholesome journey. I found myself on this earth on the 18th of February. The ordained year was 1995.
From | Wikipedia
The Republic of Kenya.
Although the episodes of the early stages of my life are a little blurry in my memory, there are moments that are significantly vivid. From the onset of my life and throughout, I have always known myself to be a curious individual. It is now that, in retrospect, I’ve discovered that this trait comes naturally when one is deprived of explorative freedom. I say this with reason because my old man (Caesar Chege Mwangi, God bless his soul) was quite restrictive in my movements and interactions with the external world. You keep Moses away from the bathtub for long enough and he will over time develop an insatiable desire to discover the ocean.
The burly man that I call dad was and still is a strict and no-nonsense individual. To him, the law had to be loudly heard and heavily respected. The law was himself. This is a quality that at first and until much recently, I had a considerable challenge getting to understand the reasoning behind but it is with growth and life experience, I have grown to admire and embrace the same quality about the man and also embody it in my everyday living. In African culture, a man has to be stoic and oftentimes abrasive to protect what he loves the most, his family. Also, raising a young family in downtown Eastleigh, a neighborhood famous more for its cons than its pros isn’t exactly a walk in the park.
From | Wikipedia
Agĩkũyũ.
My dear mother’s name is Mary Wanjiru Ndungu and though a bit liberal in her character, she has always been equally as tough though her angle has always leaned towards being more meticulous. Of my parents, she was the one working a stable job as a filing clerk in a major insurance company in the Nairobi business district. She wasn’t your typical office mom. Despite her busy work schedule, she always managed to quality family time to the ones she loved the most.
My father, on the alternate end, was and still is the more entrepreneurial type. It might be the Kikuyu in him, but the man was always striking a deal here and there, mostly dealing with agricultural products. That and the lease collections he and his siblings gathered and shared amongst themselves every month from tenants in two or so apartments they inherited from my foresighted grandfather, made up most of his earnings.
It has always been a simple life for us from what I can recall. Fast forward three years later, a phenomenal miracle manifested itself in my family. My dear mother was expectant with triplets. It was a challenge adjusting to the new lifestyle to accommodate her situation but the excitement and the joy of an expanded family kept us going.
It was a tough but miraculous journey all the way to delivery. This event introduced three angels to the world; Derrick, Diana, and Dennis. Every day was Christmas after their conception. The house was always full with guests oftentimes carrying gifts.
Fast forward three presidential regimes and one pandemic later after multiple Christmases, birthdays, and significant life events, the year is 2022 and a lot has definitely changed but one thing that remains constant is the love and togetherness of family and my unparalleled curiosity on life and its many many dynamic forms.
After introducing my family, another important branch is my academic life. Kenya's education system is divided into two categories: formal and non-formal education. Formal education implements the "8-4-4" school system of primary school, secondary school and university, that is, 8 years of primary school, 4 years of middle school, and 4 years of university. Non-formal education includes adult education and literacy activities. Primary schools focus on skills, labor and science and technology education. Courses include Swahili, Mathematics, General Science, Home Economics, Geography, History, Civics, Religion, Fine Arts, Crafts, Music and Physical Education. After graduation, primary school students pass the national examination and obtain a Kenyan primary education certificate. The certificate can participate in the secondary school entrance examination, but the admission rate is only 30%.
Middle schools focus on skills and ideological and moral education. Courses include English, Swahili, other foreign languages, mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, history, religion, literature, agriculture, industry, business, home economics, aesthetic education, music and fine arts. After 4 years of high school graduation, students are required to take the Kenyan General Certificate of Education examination (similar to China's Gaokao) to enter local universities to continue their studies.
I commenced my academic life in Eastleigh, Nairobi. The first academy I remember myself attending was a Deliverance Church School. Here is where I did my Kindergarten. I went through three primary schools before completing my primary school education at St. Mary’s Ruaraka. I did very well in my final exams and I managed 410 marks out of a barely possible 500. The school was a boarding institution and it really did teach me a lot regarding being independent and responsible at an early age.
From | Teacher.co.ke；The Standard
Njiiri School.
After a short wait, I received an admission letter to Njiiri’s Secondary School, a very prominent public secondary school in the country. It was a moment of joy for me and the family at large. The first few months were challenging because I found a bit of trouble adjusting to public school life. It was tough. Though I had grown used to being independent in a private primary school public boarding was an entirely different ball game.
Extremely early mornings (given that the location of the school was in a very cold tea-growing area),heavily rationed/unseasoned food, and iron fist management to enforce the rules of the land. Nonetheless, whatever has to be done has to be done and I quickly learned to dance the tune of the song, foxtrot by agonizing foxtrot until, after some time, it wasn’t agonizing anymore.
It became a routine and a while later I got amazed by the kind of a hardy/bulletproof character adjustment I had gotten from the experience. I attribute my embodied overachiever core values to my high school experience. Time management, team spirit, and resilience are all qualities I gained a practical awareness of in high school. I also made a number of meaningful connections in high school, most of whom we still interact with to this day.
I completed my high school education in 2012. I managed a C+ which was a little underwhelming given that I knew I was more capable than that but what I failed to get academically, I realized that I gained in other areas. They say that life is the ultimate teacher. Life really did teach me a lot for the four years I spent in Njiiri boys’ high school.
After high school, I contemplated long and hard on the professional journey I intended to take. I knew I had to go to campus but I really struggled in finding what best served my interest as a course and which campus to pursue it in. I finally settled on a Bachelors of Commerce at Strathmore University. Commerce because there are plenty of ways through which I could exercise my curiosity and make a profit while at it and Strathmore because I had been hearing a lot of great things about it over the years from people.
Strathmore is an elite university institution compared to others in the country. They have worked long hard to build their reputation throughout the years. Quality is what they deliver, sheer, undeniable quality, and quality is what I got from them. I was there for five years and undoubtedly, those were the best and most profound years of my life.
Academically, I have also pursued other individual interests such as social psychology, intellectual property, disaster management, digital journalism, fundraising strategies, and mixology to mention but a few. Newfound knowledge is something that I am constantly in pursuit of. I am somewhat of a polymath, you could say.
From | Strathmore University Website
Strathmore University.
The first-ever job I did was article writing for a digital platform called Kendesk. After a successful online application, I was summoned to their offices for a physical interview, which I passed. What followed thereafter was the performance of an unwritten contract whereby I would periodically send them well-done articles in the area of technology and sustainable development in the country. Ms. Sharon Adisa was assigned to manage me. She’s an incredible individual.
I performed this duty quite diligently, I believe, and I wrote some of my most profound and influential work in the course of this assignment. This was way back in 2019 when knowledge and interest in digital journalism had taken flight and everyone felt like somewhat of an investigative journalist on Twitter. Urban Kenyans really love their Twitter.
It was a great experience working at Kendesk and one particularly significant attribute is that it later set a precedent in defining my role in society, not as a journalist but as a social innovator. In my work research, I got to explore environmental conservation and sustainability e.g. electric mobility on a deeper level and the topic area instantly had a hold on me. It was an instant connection and I realized that this was a noble cause to pursue in a lifetime, and such a life needed to be mine.
Almost three months down the line and from the diverse research that I was doing while doing my job, I came up with the concept of Sustaina-Coin. The idea came to me almost like a eureka moment. Imagine a token that can be used to incentivize individual sustainable acts and practices. It would essentially be saving the earth from excessive carbon waste and making the population derive real-time benefits from doing so.
The concept to me appeared farfetched and crazy, just crazy enough to work. I was completely open and invested in the challenge to a point that I became obsessive over it. I went on to draft my very first white paper on the concept. It was brilliant and I loved every word of it. I then went on to seek angel investors and grant opportunities to accelerate the project. I was, however, adversely unsuccessful at this. To this day, I am persistent in my pursuit of an investor for this project because I truly believe that it has the potential to bring positive change to the world as we know it.
Other significant jobs that I’ve done include being a casual worker at Gearbox maker space in Enterprise road, Nairobi in 2020 and being a cashier at Pete’s Connected Coffee, Gatitu road, Thika town where I currently still do work to this day.