Founder’s hardships that inspired BoyChild Pillar Organisation

It was with a Sh20 coin handed to him by his father and a Sh100 note squeezed into his right palm by his mother, that the couple bid goodbye to their eighth born child. He was heading off into a new phase of his life.

At 21 years, Samuel Karanja was joining Egerton University, Nakuru Town Campus, to study Computer Studies. A friend had covered the fees for his three-month course, which was Sh12,000.

But he had no place to stay or money to buy food.

Left with no choice, he pleaded with a well-wisher to help. He lent him Sh2,000 and his sister-in-law added an extra Sh1,000.

A weight on his shoulders had been lifted. He found himself a shanty in Eastleigh slums, Elburgon. The rent was Sh200 per month but he was excited by his new life away from home.

Mr Karanja commuted three times a week to attend lectures, spending Sh300 in total. He also saved Sh200 by asking a friend to host him for two days in Nakuru town.

The well-wisher had offered him an administration job at his computer training college in Elburgon in exchange for fare and rent.

NO MORE FEES

This was not the first time Mr Karanja had had to fend for himself. At 16 years, he was working to raise fees and feed himself.

When he joined Form One in a day-school in Molo Sub-County, Nakuru County, his father escorted him, paid fees for the first-term and left. From then on, he was on his own. It was his responsibility to raise fees and cover other costs related to his studies.

It was a major struggle for him. He was 70 kilometers away from his home in the remote village of Bagaria in Njoro Sub-County, Nakuru County, which rendered operating from home an impossibility.

However, the school was a kilometre away from Elburgon centre. He was focused on completing his studies. It was a struggle but he found a former classmate from primary school who agreed to co-share his room without a charge.

Three months later, his friend's father chased him away. Had he not saved Sh200 from charcoal burning and farm-work wages, he would have found himself on the streets.

He used the savings to rent a shackle from which he continued to do menial jobs to feed himself, raise fees and cover costs related to his studies.

BEGGING ON THE STREETS

His struggles however, trail back to when he was a child.

When he was six, Samuel lived with his father at Brook area in Kericho County.

They lived in a rented single room. His father was a peasant farmer then.

One day, he left to visit Samuel’s siblings who had a shortage of food and needed his intervention back home.

Six-year-old Samuel was left in the care of a male guardian when his father was gone for several days. He cannot remember how many. What he clearly remembers is that the guardian visited him only once and never returned.

He neither knew how to cook nor had money to buy food.

He begged on the streets of Brook market centre and scavenged for food until the return of his father.

BIASED TREATMENT

But it is the biased treatment of boys and girls that he noticed while tutoring in high schools between 2004 and 2017 that shocked him.

Thus pushing him to make a decision of arousing the consciousness of society and the government on disempowerment of the boy child.

That girls would be sent home for fees and return with the fees after just a few hours or utmost a week while the boys took longer – three to four weeks, triggered his advocacy campaign.

In 2013, he registered BoyChild Pillar Organisation, with the purpose of advocating for empowerment of the boy child.

The 41-year-old uses his experience to change the attitudes of fathers and fathers to-be on parenthood. His father died in 2004.

ROLE MODELS

“How I wish my father was there for me and guided me through the struggles,” he said.

He is worried of the future of boys if their fathers and male guardians “abandon the boys in the markets to wander and mature into men even before they know the meaning of becoming a man,”

“We cannot fix the boy without fixing the man,” he said during an interview on Wednesday at Nation Center.

He said boys are losing hope in life, committing suicide and turning into criminals because they lack male figures to mentor them and build their character.

“I speak for the boy child because I fully understand what they are lacking. That father, that one male figure who can identify with them," he said.

Policies on empowerment and affirmative action must be live to the realities of boys, he argues.

SENSITISATION

He says to secure the future of boys, the county and national government must mainstream the interests of the boys and ensure public servants are sensitised to that effect.

“I am not saying that we stop empowering girls. All we need is a balance. What will happen if you have a weak boy and a strong girl and the weak boy wants to marry the strong girl and she refuses?" he posed.

He says boys equally need to be holistically empowered to be mentally, socially and financially stable.

He expressed concern that women are preferring to have kids and raise them single-handedly because men are still "babies or sissies"

Mr Karanja proposed a national-wide programme on mentorship of boys and men through which the gender would be trained on masculinity and dropping outdated cultural norms.

“I have been to Meru, Mombasa, Kiambu and different parts of Nakuru County to speak to men and boys and I can tell you, we need to give them a listening ear. It would be a waste of time to empower girls and women without empowering the boys and men,” he said.