“I’m done and now on my, hope I’ll find you there,” a text to Dan from me, just after a long meeting with a client who wanted me to create a website for him. With the power bestowed upon me by God, I create unique websites, on a serious note, Unique! The meeting wasn’t that cool due to the back and forth of how the website should look like. Anyway, the super delicious meal was worth it, I was hungry and had no money in my pocket at the time. What a better way than to have a meeting over lunch which you won’t pay? It acted as a way of consolation to my woes.
After the meeting, I got on a bus. In it, clouds of thoughts engulfed my mind “What should I ask Dan?” He is my friend; I’m impressed with the strides he is making to see a better Kenya and would love to write a story about him, but how?” I don’t like asking my close friends questions about themselves but again, I’m touched by his deeds. Then I look through the blurry window adjacent to my seat, maybe it’s not scrabbled well to make it look clean, maybe it only comes into contact with water poured on it once in a while, in the name of cleaning! Across, I see a child in the back seat of a Mercedes E200, I guess she feels like a boss being driven! She waves at me, I wave back. It’s interesting how children are innocent creatures.
Talking about children, I ask myself, “What if I look at things from a child’s perspective? With curiosity.” It will work, I convince myself. After alighting from the bus, I head to ROCK (Reaching Out with Compassion in Kibera), a program founded by Dan. Don’t worry you will learn much about it.
At the Olympic Estate gate, I bump into someone I don’t recall his identity but he is familiar to me. “Ndio kuenda show ama? (Heading to the show?)” He asks “Si leo bro (not today bro),” I answer back. As a familiar face of Young Debaters Society (YDS), a program that offers a debating platform and mentorship to students, which I’m a member, I guess he might be thinking that the only thing that brings me to Olympic Estate is YDS. I head to ROCK and I find some children going through a laptop. I ask them of the whereabouts of Dan, “He is out but will be back shortly”.
As I waited, the doorbell rang and he appeared. We were supposed to meet a week earlier but we didn’t. Dan’s real name is Daniel Oduor. Just looking at him, I recalled the first time I met him with Opondo who happens to be my bff; just wondering if I’m the first gentleman to use the initials. He (Opondo) had told me that there was someone I was supposed to meet, “You should know people” he said jokingly while we were heading to ROCK. In my naughty head, wild thoughts came in, maybe this friend of mine had spotted a beautiful chic he wanted me to meet, and probably the chic would be mine. Opondo is taken, so there wasn’t any competition to me or maybe it was an opportunity for me to meet a potential president. Just maybe? I didn’t know it was Daniel and one year down the line here we were consulting on various aspects of life.
What’s interesting about Dan? As per now, you are familiar with ROCK which he is the founder. A program whose aim is to eradicate illiteracy through providing a place for children from underprivileged backgrounds to learn, socialize and get financial aid.
It’s amazing how this program started and it was all about coming from a tough background that provided limited solutions to Dan. He struggled to go to school, as if that wasn’t enough he again struggled to get a job. Sometimes it reaches a point in a man’s life when you realize that enough is enough. He reached that point and brought his friends together in order for them to do something great.
They started a football team which used to train in Guadalupe Catholic Church in Adams just along Ngong Road, that wide strip of a tarmac road connecting Ngong town to Nairobi ‘ CBD. It didn’t last long and furthermore, its impact in bring something positive in the society was minimal. He had to draft an idea whose impact would cover a wide range.
He came up with ROCK through the help of friends and well-wishers. It created animosity between him and some of his relatives and friends who didn’t see the vision of coming up with ‘that thing’. Some wanted him to spend the resources he had gathered. But he wasn’t in for fun. He wanted change and that is what he went for.
Daniel is now able of pay fees for a number of students in Kibra, the interesting bit is that through his partnership he is now able to provide sanitary towels to more than 250 girls, the whole year. All these come with a challenge; selecting students for the program is usually hard and he tries his best to balance gender and tribes when doing is a selection.
Somebody would ask, “Where is his source of joy in all these?” Well, how does one feel when you are part of a successful story of another person? Some of those who have passed through his hands are now leading better lives that seemed like farfetched dreams to them. Some of them even support his work of giving hope to the hopeless.
Daniel’s champion spirit of seeing a better Kenya reminds me of Martin Luther King’s quote, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable… Every step towards the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering struggle, the tireless exertions and passionate concern of a dedicated individual.”
This article first appeared on The Champion Spirit blog.