the spark that wouldn’t die
You know those gadgets you’d see in magazines or on TV as a kid - the spy watches, the remote-control cars? I was the kid so fascinated with them, that I had to figure out how they worked and then try build my own prototype. I remember spending a lot of time as a kid tinkering with gadgets at home, trying to add new functionalities onto them. It was a core part of my daily after-school routine, attempting to build out the grand idea that I had dreamed up in class that day.
Technology wasn’t just functional to me. It was a world into which I could escape ordinary life, bend the rules, break things apart and imagine possibilities that didn’t exist yet.
When I was 13, my best friend and I turned that passion into a business customizing RC cars with LEDs and custom decals. We were so successful that we soon started another venture: hand-painting football posters during class and selling them to my classmates. From these experiments, I learned 3 things about myself: I liked building, design, and the thrill of starting something from scratch.
Fast forward a few years to high school, and life had become all about exams and the pressure to perform. I was drawn naturally to Physics & Economics because they helped me make sense of the world around me. But within the rigid confines of the curriculum, there was little room to connect those subjects to the passions that had fueled me as a kid. It all became about marks and competition.
Every so often, I worked on small projects here and there - a website for past exams papers, building a drone (I didn’t get very far), understanding how to use Arduino controllers. But these projects were momentary distractions in an otherwise monotonous academic grind.
Boredom was never an excuse to fall short, so I pushed it aside and saved my building dreams for later. Instead, I locked in on academics, shut out distractions, and gave it everything I had. I was driven by the belief that if I made it to a top university, in the right location, I would be in the kind of environment where I could pursue innovative ideas, rather than just study all day.
I had this belief because I’d been reading about the stories of Silicon Valley start-ups, many of which began as creative projects on university campuses and grew into major ventures (Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit).
I was fascinated by them.
I also marveled at the idea that there was this almost magical program, Computer Science, that taught you everything you needed to know about building with code. And if you went to a top university, you could gain direct access to the world’s leading tech companies.
It seemed insane to me that a world like this existed, far beyond the borders of Kenya, and that maybe one day I could be part of it.
So when I was awarded a full-ride scholarship to study Computer Science at the University of Toronto, I was ecstatic. It felt like the start of everything I had been working toward.