Boniface Kinoti Gatobu was just 23 and fresh out of the university, when he rejected three job offers, (and the six-figure salaries that went with them) to work in his Kibirichia Village as a primary school teacher on voluntary basis.
What looked like the beginning of his end has actually paid off though. Bonny, as he is popularly known, may be slight in stature but he is tall in talent, determination and leadership. His passion for a better Kenya will hit you as soon as he engages you in conversation. “I am determined to prove that by helping others, we can be genuinely successful,” he says.
In 2001, Kinoti was admitted to Nkubu High School where his academic star continued to shine. “I won virtually every academic contest in our area,” he says. In 2004, he sat for his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams and was ranked 31 provincially. His career plans were different from those of other top performers though; he wanted to work in the villages!
While waiting to join university, Kinoti worked as an untrained teacher at Kibirichia Secondary School. All along, his parents thought that he was just keeping himself busy. “I would have wished to continue working but I also knew that pursuing a degree course would help me in the future,” he says. “In addition, I was not ready to handle my parents’ reaction to my idea.”
His teaching stint at Kibirichia Secondary School was not in vain. He helped the school to get its first ever ‘A’ in the KCSE exams. In 2006, Kinoti Gatobu joined the University of Nairobi for a bachelor’s degree in commerce. He was also a prolific writer and by the time he graduated in 2010, he had been featured in publications of the Nairobi Stock Exchange, Marketing Africa, Institute of Management and Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ magazines. However, his big break came in 2010 when he scooped the Safaricom award for designing the best marketing plan for Safaricom Live.
A few months later, he hit the headlines again, this time for being among the finalists for a worldwide business award sponsored by World Bank. “I was among the top five,” he says with pride. Upon graduation, Kinoti Gatobu received one job offer after another but while his parents delighted in the success that their son had attained, Kinoti did not respond to any of the job offers that came his way.
“I got some big offers from Mastermind, Safaricom, and KPMG but I was not ready to accept them,” he says. “I still dreamt of going back to the village and working as a volunteer teacher but I did not know how to tell my parents. They had sacrificed a lot to see me through school and would inevitably oppose my decision.” He says that he had developed a passion to work for his community. “I believe that positive change in my village and the whole of Kenya is possible,” he says. “If we all joined hands and came together, we would do much more for our communities and ultimately for our nation. I have learnt that it is the little things we do that really matter. For me, helping poor children attain academic and technological success is my little thing.”
Currently, Kinoti Gatobu is facilitating the murraming of all major roads in Ruiri Rwarera ward. Next week, we will begin murraming of Tutua-Kwa Koome. His efforts though are not constrained to roads alone.Last year, he sunk five water dams and in January, began to drill boreholes.
In the same vein, in 2011, Kinoti established an educational welfare to assist poor school-going children access textbooks for free. The organization, Kibirichia Educational Welfare, works in collaboration with corporate sponsors.
“I realized that I could not achieve my dream of helping others on my own. I had to reach out to others; I had to stand with other people,” Kinoti says. Apart from head teachers and parents, Bonny gets support from firms such as Target Publications and the Safaricom Foundation.
Although he started out with Standard Eight pupils in 22 schools, Kinoti Gatobu says he has been able to enlist 4,400 pupils in his textbook programme, while another 8,000 pupils benefit partially. “Each school requires a minimum of Sh80,000 worth of textbooks, depending on the number of children in class,” he says.
“I am glad that our we are reaping the fruits of these efforts. For the second year running, our constituency was the most improved in Meru County,” he says proudly. The icing on the cake is the award given to Kinoti Gatobu for being the best debater and contributor to education in the National Assembly.
Always an optimistic young man, Kinoti Gatobu adds that in future he would wish to spread his programme into other areas: “I always feel that there’s still something out there that I can do to make life in my village better. I would want to try something in health or water perhaps. Maybe one day, with the help of others, I will be in a position to roll out such projects.”