KEY POINTS:
When Sammy Gitau, a child of one of Nairobi's most notorious slums, discovered a Manchester University prospectus languishing on a rubbish tip, he kept it as a talisman and reminder of what his life could be.
Like thousands of other children living in the squalid conditions of the
Kenyan capital's longest-standing slum community, there seemed little means of escape.
But yesterday Gitau, 35, who spent almost a decade gazing in hope at the precious prospectus, became the university's most remarkable graduate.
Despite just two years of formal education to his name, he was able to complete an MSc in international development project management (IDPM), and receive a merit for his dissertation, which focused on his community projects in Nairobi.
Yesterday, as he stepped out in his gown and mortar board, he carried on his shoulders the hopes of thousands of Kenyan slum-dwellers who never believed such a leap was possible.
"It feels amazing as a personal achievement, but also as a message to everyone, that it is possible to succeed, even when you're from a community that nobody thought anything good could come from," he said.
Gitau's university programme director, Dr Pete Mann, said he had never heard of someone attending the university from a background of such adversity.
"I don't think we've ever taken someone without even high-school education. It's a massive accomplishment," he said.
Attracted by the colourful crest on its cover, and the name - which reminded him of Manchester United - he grew excited by leaflets advertising a development course which mentioned Kenya.
But faced with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, he dismissed it as a pipe dream.
The rubbish heap where he found it was in an alleyway of a middle-class suburb that neighboured his makeshift home in the Mathare slum.
His parents had run an illegal liquor outfit, making moonshine in the slums. He would try to do his homework on the same table that punters came to drink the illegal alcohol, and his studies were interrupted by brawls and requests for errands.
"I ended up sleeping in lessons, because I was up so late, and I couldn't concentrate on work."
With only the bare bones of an education behind him, Gitau became the family's primary bread-winner at 13, when his father was murdered in a gang attack. He turned to drug dealing and theft to bring enough money home for his mother and 10 siblings.
Gitau turned his life around in 1997, after falling into a coma induced by an overdose of cocaine. When he came to, he said he felt a duty to change, and decided to begin helping slum children who were going through the same struggles.
"When you are dying you make a deal with God," he said. "You say, 'Just get me out of here and I will do anything. I will go back and stop children going through the same kind of life as me'."
The discovery of a course that could lift him out of poverty and improve his community projects was one he found difficult to keep to himself.
"People thought I was crazy. I felt like a crusader because I didn't know anyone who had done this. I learned not to share my dreams with people after a while, though, because they only took away from it."
Gitau's projects were helping more than 20,000 children to find a path out of poverty. Reaching out to slum children addicted to drugs, the community resource centres cost just £50 ($130) a month to run. With three volunteers, Gitau had been teaching carpentry, tailoring, computer skills and baking. At the heart of his plans was a library.
It was the imagination and ambition of his home-grown charity that caught the eye of other NGOs. And when Monica Quince, the wife of the European Union's head of delegation in Nairobi, and a colleague, Alex Walford, took an interest in his projects, they provided not only resources, but the vital advice that led to Gitau's Manchester adventure.
Gitau and Walford became friends. A few months later, Gitau told him about his dreams. He wanted to show him the prospectus, but when Gitau couldn't find it, he simply told him "Manchester", and "IDPM". After looking it up on the internet, Walford found details of the course, and set about helping him realise his dream.
Yesterday Walford was among the proud observers as Gitau received that longed-for certificate.
Gitau's vast experience on the ground caught the eye of the course directors, who were quick to see how much others could learn from his existing work as a successful project manager. The university paid his fees, but he still needed a way to fund his living costs.
"I had nothing to cover my accommodation or survival. So I contacted people who had visited my project in Kenya. So many came back to me and donated really generously; I couldn't have done it without them."
No sooner had he crossed that hurdle than another appeared. In 2005, immigration officials, who saw his lack of previous education, refused him a visa on the grounds that, as they saw it, he could not be a serious candidate. It took another seven months before a judge overruled this decision, calling it "thoroughly unsatisfactory and insupportable".
So last year, visa in hand and abroad for the first time, Gitau arrived in Britain to begin the course.
While his spoken English was good, he had no experience of academic essays or research. He puts his achievements down to hard work.
"After all the good will, at the end of the day it's just you sticking to your books."
An extra tutor was arranged to help his study skills. Mann said: "It was great that the university laid on a personal tutor, but it was the way Sammy used that support and built on it that was so remarkable. It's a demanding programme for anybody: a top Masters with constant assessment.
"But for someone with no experience of using research libraries or writing formal essays, it's truly remarkable."
And for Gitau, yesterday signals the beginning of yet more success. "For the past few days I haven't been able to sleep - I've been too excited. So many doors had been shut in my face because I didn't have this or that. But now, finally, I can think big. Now I can go back to my projects and make sure they do well."
WHERE HOME'S A TIN SHACK
Nairobi is a city of ostentatious wealth and desperate poverty. Often the two sit side by side. Korogocho, a slum next to the city's rubbish dump, houses 200,000 people but is less than 1km from the Muthaiga Club, where Nairobi's elite drink in men-only bars.
Mathare, where Sammy Gitau grew up, is a short drive from the plush homes of a handful of ambassadors.
Two-thirds of the three million people in Nairobi live in slums. Home is often little more than a tin shack with a leaking roof. Inside, there is likely to be space for a tatty sponge mattress and a small stove; nothing more.
There is no electricity, no water and no sanitation. Aid agencies build the occasional latrine but most people cope with "flying toilets" - a plastic bag they hurl into an open sewer.
State-run schools are overcrowded, with too few teachers and no textbooks. Those parents who can afford it educate their children privately. Most who live in places like Mathare just have to make do.
Even then, many children do not go to school. Their parents prefer them to find bits of work here and there to contribute towards their meagre income. Many young people end up sniffing glue or joining gangs.
Violence is a daily threat in all of Nairobi's slums, but none more so than Mathare. Police are rarely seen and, when they are, they are there in force and with weapons.
- Independent
