The Andanje Story

By Elly Tuti

The Andanje Foundation is named after my grandfather Melickzadeck Andanje, who is the inspiration behind the foundation. When I was a little boy, he told me a story of his livelihood. Born out of wedlock, he was very unlucky never to set his eye on his biological father who died in combat during the colonial period. Upon the death of his stepfather and mom, my grandfather, who was then married with kids, moved to his ancestral home where his paternal uncles assigned him a small piece of land and where he turned to cattle farming. He was successful in this, but it was not to last long because his sons and daughters were fast becoming of age and needed to go to school. Without a profession, my grandma and “mzee” had one option, to sell a few heads of cattle and crops every school term to pay for fees. He watched his riches dwindle one head after the other until he had none left (in those days wealth was determined by the number of cattle you had). He sold his cloth, furniture and eventually his bicycle, which was his only form of transport to keep the boys in school. My grandfather said that through this time, he was okay because he still had his radio and was still connected to the world and he believed that he would still hear of an opportunity that he would grab. He explained to me that the most difficult time for him was when he had nothing to turn to but his lovely and only radio. With lots of pain in his heart, he sold his radio to keep his offsprings in school. I then realized that no matter how bad your situation is, as long as you are still connected to the rest of the world, there is hope for a better day. Through my grandparents’ struggles, his children (one of whom is my parent) went through school and at least some college education. The sacrifice started paying off when they got jobs to support my grandparents and their families and sent their own children to school. Through his sacrifice, my education became a reality.

I went through elementary school and high school without ever knowing how to start a computer. I equate a computer in today’s world to a radio in my grandfather’s days. When I was in form three, an equivalent of grade eleven, my school bought one computer, which was kept on the principal’s desk. In fact I never touched it even though I saw it many times as I visited his office. The computer was not connected to the internet and was more of a symbol. Even today, I do not know what it was used for. After high school I enrolled into church computer classes where we paid some fee to learn the five basic packages. After learning the packages, I started visiting cyber cafes in Kenya to exchange emails with friends and browse the web. When I left Kenya for the USA, I had unlimited access to the Internet through college and it was amazing how much learning materials are on the web. I was puzzled by the amount of information on some sites and even the animation of some scientific processes like biological processes. My mind went back to my days in elementary school and high school and realized that if I had this opportunity when I was there, my grades would have been much better than they were. I thought of my grandfather’s joy to remain connected to the world even when you lost his “wealth”. I then realized that there is a mass of knowledge and opportunities in the world and only if you are connected will you be able to access it. With this in mind and knowing that there were some boys and girls in the developing nations that still don’t have access to this information, I decided I could do something.

This led to the birth of the Andanje foundation. Through this foundation we can bring about change; we can empower global youth and help to lessen a divide that otherwise may take generations for families to struggle through. The knowledge and opportunity that can be accessed through technology cannot be brought about by the foundation on its own, but by the involvement and cooperation of the global community, and our mission is to facilitate in this exchange between individuals and developing communities. Education is not a privilege, it is a priority and we need the global community to believe in what we are doing and come with us.