Kenyan users of Google got a surprise on Monday–a Google Doodle honoring one of their own. Monday marked the 11th anniversary of independence hero Kimani Maruge going to elementary school–or primary school, as it’s called in most of the Commonwealth–for the first time. Although he had no papers to prove his age, nearly all sources accept his claim to have been 84 years old at the time–making him the oldest person to start elementary school in world history, according to the Guinness Book Of World Records.
Google says that it crafted this Doodle in order to remind us that “it’s never too late to learn something new.” Maruge took that message to heart on January 12, 2004. When he heard that the government of newly elected president Mwai Kbaki was offering free primary education to all Kenyan children, he immediately enrolled in the same school where his two grandchildren attended in western Kenya. He wanted to be able to count the money he was due to receive as compensation for his role in the Mau Mau rebellion during the 1950s. He also said at the time that he didn’t trust the version of the Bible he’d heard in church, so he wanted to learn how to read it for himself. In 2005, he spoke to the United Nations on the importance of free primary education; the trip to New York City was the first time he’d ever been on a plane.
Maruge continued to attend school for five years, with a short break for a few days in June 2008 when he was forced to move into a retirement home. Even after moving to Nairobi in 2008, he continued to show up for classes. He died of stomach cancer in 2009. Google’s communications manager for East and Francophone Africa, Dorothy Okry, praised Maruge as an “extraordinary Kenyan,” and added that Google felt honored to feature someone “whose life stood for such an important cause.”
It’s a shame we didn’t hear much about this here in the United States at the time. Indeed, I didn’t know about this until I saw this on my BBC News app this morning. When you consider that we take going to school more or less for granted, we forget that there are a lot of people in the developing world who never even get that chance. Calling Maruge an inspiration would be a colossal understatement.
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Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC on Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
