On 12 January 2004, Kimani Maruge walked into the first-grade classroom at Kapkenduiywo Primary School in western Kenya. It was his first day of school, and, like other boys, he was wearing school uniform—a blue blazer with matching shorts and grey long socks—except that he was leaning on a cane and nearly 80 years older.
Although there was no official birth record, Maruge reckoned that he was born in 1920. Like many other children in his community, he missed out on schooling because he had to help his family make ends meet by planting crops and tending livestock. In the 1950s, he fought in the Mau Mau uprising against the British for Kenya’s independence. Illiterate all his life, Maruge had always wanted to read the Bible. When free primary education was finally introduced in Kenya in 2003, this widowed grandfather of 30 grandchildren decided to seize a belated opportunity. He knocked on the door of the primary school in the village and was admitted. He became a schoolmate of his two grandchildren and the Guinness World Record Holder for being the oldest pupil in the world.
At the age of 84, Kimani Maruge started learning how to read and count. He pursued words in the same way he used to work in the fields, slow but determined. With excellent grades and attendance records, he was made a school prefect in the second grade. That same year, he flew for the first time in his life to address the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York on the significance of free education.
A few years later, Maruge was forced to move to a refugee camp due to Kenya’s post-election crisis, but he remained undeterred in his quest for knowledge, limping slowly more than two miles to school every day. He was compelled to drop out after being relocated to a retirement home in Nairobi. The indomitable octogenarian, however, subsequently enrolled in the sixth grade at a primary school nearby. The former freedom fighter said, “For me, education is the key to liberty.”
In 2009, Maruge passed away from stomach cancer. Although he did not complete his education, his passion for learning has lived on and has inspired many others. His journey of self-improvement is immortalised in a feature film titled The First Grader, which was released in 2010.
Ever since Maruge made the move to go to school, Africa has seen some older members of society who never had the opportunity to attend school trying to follow suit. Among them is Priscilla Sitienei, a Kenyan woman who went to Leaders Vision Preparatory School in her nineties with six of her great-great-grandchildren.
It all began when one of her great-granddaughters dropped out of school due to pregnancy. Sitienei, who had dedicated much of her life to raising her children and working as a midwife, decided to go to school herself. She hoped that by learning how to read and write, her midwifery skills and knowledge of traditional herbal medicines could be preserved and passed on. Like Maruge, she wanted to read the Bible. But more than anything else, she wanted to show the younger generations just how valuable education was. She said in an interview with the BBC: “I want to say to the children of the world, especially girls, education will be your wealth.”
Fondly known as “Gogo”, which means “grandmother” in the local language of Kalenjin, Sitienei was an enthusiastic participant in all school activities, even in physical education classes. During recess, Sitienei would share stories about the old ways with her schoolmates, some of whom had actually been delivered by her. Pregnant women still came to seek her advice in her dormitory at the boarding school. On the door was a sign that read “education has no age limit”. Before Sitienei passed away at the age of 99 in 2022, she had still been studying hard for final exams alongside her 12-year-old classmates.
Maruge and Sitienei are not alone in rekindling their dreams late in life. Peter Mark Roget published the first Roget’s Thesaurus when he was 73. At the age of 79, Barbara Hillary became the first African American woman on record to reach both the North Pole and the South Pole. Huang Gongwang (黃公望), a Chinese painter of the Yuan Dynasty who did not start learning the art until 50, was of the same age when he started painting the legendary masterpiece, Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (《富春山居圖》). Their stories are powerful testimonies to what Paulo Coelho, the reputed Brazilian novelist, states in The Alchemist: “People are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.”
