Of Uasin Gishu scholarship riddles and how society is failing the youth
Parents and students from Uasin Gishu protest about the aborted airlift education programme in Eldoret on August 8, 2023.
What you need to know:
- For many people, education has become the only glimmer of hope to hold onto when everything else is dark.
- Why then should society betray such trust, and disappoint its youth on the promise they paid for?
Last week, the video of Mercy Tarus calling out her governor and other leaders in her county of Uasin Gishu trended online.
In the video, the 24-year-old painfully explained that after her parents and several others sold property and took loans to enlist their children in the now infamous airlift scholarship programme, everything seems to have been lost. Many of them failed to get the promised scholarships, and they have been waiting indefinitely for county officials to communicate their fate.
Besides Mercy’s video, I saw two other videos of desperate, young people pleading with the Uasin Gishu leadership to at least refund their money if the promised scholarships had failed to materialise. What struck me was the ease with which they talked about dying – these young people were deeply frustrated by those they trusted, to the extent they saw death as a viable alternative.
Education has been sold to many people as the ultimate equaliser, as the master key that opens doors and brings you into places you could only dream about.
Upon graduation, we get admitted to the club of the educated. To use Condoleezza Rice’s words, in her commencement speech at Southern Methodist University in 2012, the prestigious club of the educated is one where, once you are admitted, you can never be expelled, and you can never withdraw. And for many people, indeed, education has become this ladder, the only glimmer of hope to hold onto when everything else is dark.
That is why it is not surprising that, for the promise of quality higher education, parents were willing to part with all their valuables, to educate their children – because, really, what could be more valuable than the education of their children?
Just why should society betray such trust, and disappoint its youth to the extent of them coming out to plead for what was not only promised but also paid for?
Also read: Scholarship scam: How top Uasin Gishu officials colluded with bank, agents to fleece parents
Many young people today are deeply wounded – from lack of access to quality education, unemployment, mental health issues, and economic setbacks… to mention but a few. This group is already vulnerable to the draw of crime, misuse by the political class, and drug traffickers.
So, when a few of them step forward and are supported by their parents to follow the right process and get further education, which then gives them a better stab at life, we cannot have leaders frustrate these efforts, for goodness' sake!
But again, maybe I should not be surprised, because we are largely a society that would do everything except stare honestly into the nakedness of its deceit, face up to mistakes and do the right thing. We set the wrong example of misusing public funds and get shocked when young people do not believe in the value of hard work.
We teach the youth that it is okay to attack the person rather than the issue in public debate, and pretend to be surprised when they perpetuate ethnic stereotypes. Old men catcall college girls and we are surprised when youth run after money rather than meaningful relationships. Are we even serious?
Time and space will fail me if I were to detail the latest investigation by NTV – #Painsofthepodium that unveiled sexual harassment and assault of young athletes by people they trust: their coaches. When we are busy pointing fingers at young people for being ‘a lost generation’, no one is ready to look inwards at the role they may have played in this ‘getting lost’, because it is easier to judge than understand, no?
I am a big advocate for being firmly in the driver’s seat of one's life. Of not allowing the bad things that happen to us to dictate the course of our lives; of being the stewards of our destinies. I believe that somewhere, deep within us, there is a power to rewrite our stories, no matter how dark the old ones are.
In Ramatoulaye’s letter to Aissatou in Mariama Ba’s classic So Long a Letter, she says: “It is from the dirty and nauseating humus that the green plant sprouts into life.” And like Ramatoulaye, I believe happiness and the dreams of young people broken by society still have a chance to blossom.
To people in power and authority, please, do the right thing, so that our youth do not have to live with wounds that could have been avoided.
The writer is the research & impact editor, NMG ([email protected]).
