Hi! I’m Kirsty and I’m fundraising to try and help my amazing friend Mathias complete his degree. He has been top of his class ever since his first day of primary school all those years ago, and is on track to achieve a First! But every time a payment deadline approaches, it is a mad scramble to try and pay the fees. If he graduates, he will be able to become an English teacher - not only will he then be able to support his mum and dad and siblings back home in Samburu, but I know that he has a deep desire to ensure that education is more accessible for the next generation of children in his village. His hopes and dreams have been shattered so many times throughout his life because he comes from such a poor background, and with only two semesters to go, I wanted to see if we could try and prevent them from being shattered again.

I hope what I write below will help explain why this would be such a wonderful fundraiser to support. I am not including some of the details because they are too personal for me to be the one to share them, and I know that Mathias will tell his own amazing story in his own beautiful words one day when he publishes his first novel - which will be much better than anything I could ever write anyway. But until we can all buy the book and have our eyes opened to a life and world we never could have imagined by ourselves, here is the reason why I wanted to launch this fundraiser.

I met Mathias in Samburu when we hiked Mount Olulokwe together, and he has become a firm friend. Olulokwe is a sacred mountain in Samburu, and is very close to the village where he grew up as one of 10 children in a family that had very little. In Samburu, people are pastoralists, so cows and goats - and nowadays camels, if you’re wealthy - are the most important thing. Families often move house to find pasture for their animals, so most of the primary schools in the area are boarding schools. If you have many animals, you can choose to sell some of them to fund your children’s education, but not everyone wants to do that – and not everyone has enough animals to be able to afford to sell even one.

Mathias’ family was in the second category, so he used to walk 14km to get to school every morning, and 14km home again at night. From the very first day at the age of four, he loved school, and from that moment, it was entirely his own responsibility to get himself there each day. No one walked him to the school gates, and no one came to pick him up again when school was over. And it certainly wasn’t a safe journey to get there and back. We were sitting at the top of the mountain looking down at the vast forest below when he started pointing out his home and where the school was, and just casually happened to mention that there were a lot of lions down there. I remember looking at him in awe and asking if he had ever come across one, and he just as casually replied “Oh yeah, many times” as if it was normal. When I said that at home, parents take their children to school and pick them up at the end of the day, he looked equally in awe, but just said "Wow, that's so different".

After eight years of primary school, he was the number one student in his class, but the scholarship to go to high school was awarded to another child because of that child's family's connections. Mathias was devastated and thought his dreams of getting an education were over at the age of 12. He spent an entire year at home looking after the goats until, completely by chance, another scholarship came along - this time, for truly the most gifted student. Everyone knew it was Mathias, and this time, the stars aligned and he was able to go to high school.

He excelled in his studies once more, but after two of the four years of high school education, the funding for the scholarship abruptly ran out and his dreams were shattered again. His only option was to go home to look after the animals with his brothers, and to leave his hopes and dreams behind him.

But then, a year later, some kind of miracle happened and he was able to go back for his final year. He aced his exams against the odds, outperforming pretty much everyone in his class. Despite having missed an entire year of the syllabus, he earned a place at the prestigious Moi University where he is now studying English literature.

But the high of gaining that place was short-lived, because he had no money to pay the tuition fees. He was not able to take up his place, and instead, went home to his village in Samburu again to look after the animals with his brothers and to try and work out how he was going to raise the funds he needed.

He did any kind of manual job he could find, working as a daily labourer, picking up construction jobs whenever they became available. He washed people’s clothes, looked after their cattle, and put every shilling towards his tuition fees. The area chief rallied the community to contribute whatever they could to support him, which led to people donating a few hundred shillings here and there (the equivalent of one or two pounds). They also donated old clothes, chickens, or even just a couple of eggs – whatever they could spare – which Mathias would then sell so that he could put the money towards his education.

Eventually, after two years of hard graft where he sometimes wondered if he would ever be able to earn enough money, he had 30,000 shillings (which is roughly £175). He was able to combine this with a county bursary he was awarded, as well as a donation from his church, and finally had enough to pay for his first semester at university.

But the tuition fees are a constant worry, and every time a payment is due, it is the same situation where he is frantically trying to raise the funds so that he can continue with his studies. On many occasions over the past three years, he has had to defer a semester and go home to try and find work again. Back to the construction sites. Back to selling eggs and old clothes. When he gets the bare minimum, he pays the fee to sit the exams under special circumstances, and then has to catch up on all the work he's missed when he is once again allowed to join his classmates.

He nearly had to defer again after the Christmas break, for example, because the university announced out of the blue that all tuition fees for this semester needed to be paid in full before students could sit their exams, and he didn't have the money. Previously, you could pay 15% to sit your exams and then find the rest of the money as the semester progressed. He is one of the brightest students in his class and always passes his exams with flying colours, but is one of the students who faces the most challenges to stay in university.

He often goes for days without eating because he’s saving up to pay the tuition fees. He makes sure he saves 50 shillings a week (the equivalent of around 30p), and this often means he has no food. Sometimes he goes to cover for the night watchmen so that they can have a rest and he can at least earn some small change to buy something to eat the next day. He just spends his days reading and drinking water to keep his stomach full, and goes to bed early to try and stave off hunger.

Recently, his landlord locked him out of his accommodation in the middle of the night because he hadn’t managed to pay his rent for that month. And it’s just a room that looks out onto a yard - it's not inside a building - so he was stuck outside in the cold and the dark, with all his belongings trapped inside. There's no running water, and the well in the yard is frequently empty, so Mathias takes his three jerry cans (which are large plastic containers) to some of the student accommodation nearby that wealthier students can afford, and where water is always provided, to see if they might be willing to help him out. There are so many other examples I could give of crazy things that have happened - even just over the past few months, let alone the past three years - but I hope this gives you an idea.

Despite all of these ongoing challenges, Mathias is literally one of the most cheerful people you could ever meet. I know he will make it to graduation no matter what, because he has got this far and is so determined and will never give up, but it would be so wonderful if we could give him a boost to help get him across the finish line. Any money that you donate will go directly to Mathias – I will pay the fee to the bank to convert the money into Kenyan shillings.

Ashe oleng for your support (that is thank you in Samburu)!!!

Kirsty xxx

P.S. Here is our amazing hike, if you would like to see more of Samburu.