[lilfox12]

http://www.nationaudio.com/News/Dail...ent/story3.htm

This could be a 'tired' story by now but I hope our friends at home are getting the message.

[Sweet9]

"My friend Dr Smokin Wanjala once told me that before Kenyans leave home, they think the United States and other Western countries are as close to heaven as they can get. Thankfully, this view is slowly being eroded, and it is beginning to dawn on many people that home is best"

True dat!


Keeping it real ma peoples, keeping it real!

[waweru]

Even though the article has alot of truth in it, I still believe that Kenyans and Africans at large need to travel inorder for them to experience the outside world. Otherwise they will become 'wajinga' and foreigners will be able to take advantage of them like they used to.

I am one of those who has become very 'enlightened' through travelling to different countries. When I realised how people were taking us for fools, I started asking myself hard questions and I came to a certain conclusion. Our good is rewarded with wickedness!

I encourage people to travel outside Kenya as much as they can, but I also tell them exactly what to expect.

I appreciate and love Kenya and Africa so much.

[zimmy]

WAWERU, neke!! BRAINWASHED already ??

[MissK]

waweru, how true. Travelling is the best way to see jungus etc in all their ignorant flavours and less glamorous lives. If kenya saw that side of the west they would not all think the grass is greener abroad.

[SirViKtor]

Tilting the balance

Story by ELLY WAMARI
Publication Date: 12/10/2004
Unable to handle both studies and work, many foreign students in the US end up dropping out of school, reports ELLY WAMARI.

They now call it "flying out". Before, it was "going for further studies", and it is the "in-thing" among young people.

The ambition to leave the country is often packaged with romantic fantasies of how one will combine study with work and fun, and come back home with a fat account and high academic qualifications.

Well, some students do make the money and return with good degrees, but not without having had to "work their butts off" for it, as Americans
would put it.

Many, it is said, end up with substandard degrees or diplomas because they have had to concentrate more on a string of part-time jobs to make ends meet. Others drop out of school altogether, and get caught in a vicious cycle that takes them from one menial job to another, as they play hide and seek with authorities.

The weak ones get hooked on drugs out of frustration.

One Kenyan has been in the United States for 28 years, stuck with a cleaning job he took up to finance his studies after his "harambee" money
ran out within the first year of study. Day-to-day demands became too high for him, and after struggling for a while, he had to make a tough
choice. He dropped out of school to work.

Now aged 46 and with no family, he is a lonely and miserable man, waking up every morning to do the same job he did in 1976 as an
18-year-old ambitious student.

A bright boy in school, his going to the US was meant to get him quality education and to enable him to get a "big" job on return. But as things
stand now, that will remain a pipe dream.

This may be an extreme case, but a lot of Kenyans studying abroad are not lying on a bed of roses as often assumed. Self-sponsored students,
in particular, have a rough time trying to maintain the delicate balance between studying and working at part-time jobs, most of them menial, to
pay their way through. Quite often, sleep becomes an alien commodity, as Prof Atieno Ndede-Amadi testifies.

Amadi, who only managed to return to Kenya permanently last year after living in the US for 27 years, had a tough time of it during her initial
years of study. She only became comfortable when she got a professional job after her first graduation, which took her five years to attain.

By that time, she had done various menial jobs, including cleaning classrooms and toilets, taking care of the elderly at a nursing home, and
waitressing at a fast-food joint.

"Those were extremely difficult times. I could hardly afford four hours of sleep a day. And when schools closed during summer, I would take at
least two jobs in order to be able to save some money for the next season. This is what every other foreign student still does to survive," she
says.

"The situation in the US can sound very attractive when people talk of a place where one can get a pay cheque and go to school at the same
time. But when you get there, things are different.

"One realises that splitting time between work and school denies them a lot, including concentration in class. The quality of study depreciates,
and in the end, many come out with sub-standard degrees that automatically put them out of the job market. Often, they go back to that menial job they did while studying, hoping that things will improve.

"It is very demoralising, especially to the ambitious 18-year-olds who have probably been pampered most of their lives, and are now having to
struggle just to survive. A lot of students get overwhelmed by the cost of living and usually have to drop something.

That something is quite often the school, which they leave for a semester or so to take up additional casual jobs in order to raise money for studies. So, when they get into drugs or fail to go back to school, it is out of extreme hardship."

The students end up playing hide and seek with the authorities. Rules have changed and with a student visa, one can be charged with working
illegally if the job is outside the institution of learning.

Naomi* found that out the hard way recently. The middle-aged woman had gone to the US in September 2001 to study theology. Like most
other self-sponsored students, she had to balance between work and school.

Her part-time job entailed working at a centre for the elderly
throughout the night. She would then go straight to college from morning to 1 pm. She had to sacrifice sleep, only managing a few hours in the
afternoon.

Her aspirations came to an abrupt end when, on September 24, 2003, she was picked up at her place of work and accused of having violated
her student status. "They told me that I was not supposed to work, and that I should have a sponsor."

Naomi was arraigned in a "video court" for removal proceedings to be instituted, after which she was taken to the Rolling Plains Regional
County Jail and Detention Centre in Haskell, Texas, and held for eight months pending court proceedings.

Her attempts to get asylum and withholding of removal were denied at an immigration court in Dallas. "In shackles, I was taken back to the
cells and locked up with hard-core criminals, some serving life sentences, others charged with peddling drugs," she says.

After several fruitless attempts, she finally got to see a deportation officer and asked to be returned home. Although she had instituted an
appeal, she could no longer endure life in custody.

"We were being treated like rubbish in there, and constantly reminded that we were foreigners. I eventually told them I just wanted to go home."

So last month, Naomi was escorted all the way to Amsterdam and put on a plane to Nairobi. She was not even allowed to pick up her things from where she was staying.

"I do not want to go there any more," says a bitter Naomi, who reveals that she left several other Kenyans detained in the same facility. On October 20, while still in detention, she and three other Kenyans wrote to the Kenyan Embassy in Washington DC, outlining incidences of irregular deportation.

Besides the economic hardships, one should be prepared to encounter elements of discrimination and sometimes mistreatment, which come in
various subtle forms.

"Imagine walking to a pew in a church," says Amadi," and the moment you sit the other people get up to go sit elsewhere, or walk out of the
church altogether. It is very dehumanising, yet you feel helpless to correct it."

Her long stay in the US, explains Amadi, was because she was unable to find a job in Kenya. "I would occasionally take a few weeks' leave
from work to come back and seek employment, but time would run out for me before I could get one.

It is difficult to job-hunt from abroad, yet a lot of people out there would really want to come back," she explains.

It is out of this frustration that Amadi established Africa's Brain Gain to "facilitate return of talent" by serving as a link between professionals
working abroad and the local job market. The organisation will host a conference in Nairobi from December 19 to 22.

[SirViKtor]

The untold story

Story by FRANKLIN AWORI
Publication Date: 12/10/2004
Few people talk about the dark side of living abroad, of the daily financial struggle, of deep loneliness, of racial prejudice and of terrible weather, writes FRANKLIN AWORI.

It is a fantasy that is encouraged by the Western media — that life in the west is no struggle. That anybody with half a brain can make it big.

These stories fire up young people in Kenya and other developing countries, who obsess with leaving home to catch up with the big dream.

True, some have made it big, but only after years of sacrifice and working extremely hard. The few success stories are often magnified to give
the impression that all it takes is a visa and a plane ticket to make it.

But there is an often untold story — of daily financial struggle, of deep loneliness, of racial prejudice and of terrible weather.

The darker aspects of life abroad are rarely told to relatives and friends because they go against expectations. The Kenyan society long made
up its mind that those living abroad must be successful.

So people like Joseph Karanja continue to feed the misconception of a lofty lifestyle to friends and family members back home. He writes back
about his big car, his nice apartment and the nice hotels in which he eats — all signs of a successful man.

I bumped into Karanja in the US. It only took a little prodding and all his insecurities, his loneliness and the tough challenges that come with life
in a foreign country came flooding out.

Karanja had been in the States for six years, struggled to completed his masters degree, but had not found a decent job two years later.
For about a year, he had worked in a home for the old, bathing septuagenarians, changing their clothes and carrying them out daily to bask in the sun.

"This is the kind of job I could never imagine doing at home. Can you imagine bathing your grandmother and changing her clothes daily?" he
asked.

The money, however, paid his bills and even enabled him buy a small car to move around in, but it all took a heavy toll on his physical and
mental wellbeing. He had even developed back problems due to months of lifting the aged from their beds to the bathroom and outside.

Many other Kenyans work in the home for the aged or various medical facilities in the city. These are the easiest jobs for foreigners to find
because they are looked down upon by local residents.

Now chocking with emotions, Karanja said it would be even more humiliating for him to pack his backs and go back home without any
savings.

"I keep telling myself that I will work for one more year, save and probably buy some property at home, before taking a flight back, but that
has become a song."

Karanja has no meaningful social life. "Life is about work and more work. Everything I earn ends up paying bills. I only send a little home."
During winter, life is much harder and expenses much higher. About 20 per cent of the money he earns goes into paying gas bills to heat up the
house.

Without house heaters, the biting cold leaves many people, especially those living in low income areas, with hypothermia.

But one of things Karanja detests most is the social life in America. He was socialised in an environment where people were open, friendly and
welcoming. Not so here. And being black only makes it worse.

He hates it when white people coil away from every black person who passes nearby. "They think most black men are either beggars or thieves."
Karanja's dream is to come back home soon. But he wanted to know whether he would be able to get a good job in Kenya.