ABSTRACT
Ngoima grew up in the eastern part of Kenya. Her ambition as a child was to be a medical doctor, a cardiologist to be precise. She had watched her community suff er a myriad of medical maladies, from the most common to the most complex, all of which did not have to be fatal, but too many were. As a medic, she would be of invaluable service to the community. The path toward realizing this dream was littered with a number of roadblocks, but none was as insurmountable as poverty. Ngoima was raised by a single mother who also cared for Ngoima’s three siblings. Her father had passed on when she was only ten years old after a severe pneumonia attack. That left her mother to shoulder the responsibility of feeding and educating four school-age children from her three-acre farm in the semiarid region of Kenya. Ngoima spent one-third of her four years in high school at home because of problems related to raising school fees. Raising Ngoima’s high school tuition fees required a combination of hawking farm produce, community fundraisers (harambee), and school bursaries to see her through. She graduated with a B-in the Kenya Certifi cate of Secondary Education, which only qualifi ed her for admission at Kenyatta University (KU) as a self-sponsored (private) student to pursue a Bachelor of Education degree. She was going to be a teacher, not a doctor!
