20 Years of Gratitude
This year, 2022, marks almost 20 years since I got introduced to computers. What a blessing! This was not sheer luck, but God orchestrating my early steps into computing, till to date. I have a number of people that I believe were very vital in shaping my career from the early days.
If you meet any of these people, tell them I said muchas gracias!
The Mukwas, 2003
The Mukwas (Prof. Mukwa family) took me under their wings and mentored me. There’s a lot I learned and just the motivation that it could be done. Right from Bill (RIP), Max, Jottie and Sam (now doc). I looked up to them and they were so hospitable to me. The time they’d leave this village kid to play around with their computers almost all afternoons — Typing Master, some intro to C++ though I’d no idea what that really was until later, and many more things.
Friend School Kamusinga, 2003–2006
- Ms. Ndunya (RIP): she was my Form 1 Math teacher. The time that I scored 100% in Math, she made sure the whole school knows about it. She was a great Math teacher that made me fall in love with Math even more.
- Simon Nabukwesi (now Ambassador and PS, Ministry of Education): the prestigious Principal’s Award (only went to 1 person per year) that he accorded me that year 2003, after scoring 100% in Math (last person to do this in the school as 1997 as it was told). This really boosted my morale and showed me that I had something special.
- Mr. Namachanja (now Dr, PhD) — at the beginning of Form 2, I went to plead with him that I change my technical subject from Music to Computer Studies. After some crying at his office, he finally accepted. Just that decision, changed the course of my life. The foundations that Computer Studies laid for my CS career can never be underrated!
- Mr. Batoya, he was my Computer Studies teacher. He also played a part in accepting me to the course. And later was a great mentor throughout my high school and shortly after when I started iTech2020.
- Mr. Ndukuyu, he was our programming teacher. It was my first exposure to clean code! How he used to organise the Visual Basic code was just amazing.
- My Computer Studies classmates: these are the ones that come to mind most since they have also ended up into ICT careers: Eugene Ligono (later we co-founded Deveint with him and Martin Muraya, another FSK cohort-mate and my village-mate), Dennis Birundu (later CS classmate at UoN), Nathan Ateya, Frank Ochieng (later CS classmate at UoN).
- Mr. Chetambe (now Prof of Literature at Kenyatta University) — He was my English teacher from Form 1- 4. I was terrible in English at the beginning. I remember in one of my early compositions, I wrote something like “I had a pair of sox”, yes, it was that bad! He really helped me work on my English. This helps me to date, as a software engineer, I don’t struggle with documentation much :)
My Dad, 2007, Beginning iTech2020
He invested in my first venture (iTech2020, itech2020.com — yes, I should get back this domain name some day!). He bought me some 2 desktop computers right after my high school. We mainly just did type-setting, printing, and I also taught a little of computer packages (MS Word, Excel, etc). At night I would spend learning web development. It is iTech2020 (integrity technologies) which later morphed into Deveint (developing with integrity) when I ganged up with my high-school-mates, Eugene Ligono and Martin Muraya.
Also growing up, my dad made me get used to solitude and reading! He wouldn’t let me go play football with my friends but made sure I stayed indoors reading. And growing up without a TV at home, I count it a blessing, looking back. I believe this has contributed a lot towards my own self initiative to learn a lot of things in the CS field, through reading. Also programming is sort of a solitude sport.
George Kiogora, 2008
I met George virtually through a newspaper classified ad. He had advertised that he does domain name registration and hosting. He helped expose me to domain name registration and hosting. Funny to this date, we have never met in person.
Sidenote: Since then, I became a domain-name junkie, I collect domain names like artwork. Recently I got to flip one of them for a reasonable fortune — champions.io (not a lot, but good money). I’m selling some more like fix.ke, fix.africa, makes.africa, builds.africa, nairobi.us, nairobi.to — send your best bid!
Dr. Kisaka, 2008
He gave me my first shot when I went to propose to him to do a website for the village hospital (Lugulu Mission Hospital, luguluhospital.org — thanks archive.org!). That was my very first website to build, self-taught (with Macromedia Dreamweaver). That was really a big gamble on a kid just fresh from high school. I remember even presenting to the hospital board! I think I was paid around KES. 40,000 ($ 400); a lot of money then, to me! Helped further my iTech2020 business.
In 2008, the village boy comes to the city for his Computer Science degree at the School of Computing and Informatics, University of Nairobi.
Bernard Rono, 2008 onwards
I met Dad Rono when he was our Christian Union chairman at MCCU, he was completing his studies when I was just joining as a freshman. He literally took me under his wings, really teaching me how to hustle in the city. Gave me a number of web development gigs as a freelancer. He was also a great mentor on matters business, and life in general.
He is now Head of ICT at Ketepa, and still a great friend.
Zablon Ochomo and the Jambopay/WebTribe Family, 2009 onwards
I met Ochomo at the Masters lab at SCI (School of Computing and Informatics) when he was doing his MSc. Introduced myself to him and told him that I do build websites. He connected me with his company where I worked as a resident web developer for the next 4 years; and introduced me to the rest of the team — Danson Muchemi, Robert Muna.
Danson Muchemi was a great mentor. I learnt a lot of business acumen and innovation just observing and interacting with him.
Robert Muna introduced me to Linux!
Basically Jambopay was responsible for my campus upkeep. I don’t really recall ever being broke while at the university and even I had enough to send money home, when most of my cohorts were calling home for pocket money. Blessings!
It was also here that they insisted on calling me Prof and the name stuck!
Danson / WebTribe later acquired a stake in our company, Deveint Limited.
Prof. Wagacha and Prof. Orwa, 2009 onwards
They gave me a shot, when selecting “top coders” at the school to work on an R&D project with Nokia Research Lab. Just that “summer” break, we learnt a lot and our eyes were really opened to how nice and vast this field is. We also got to earn quite some good money for kids still in college!
It is during this time that I interacted with some great folks that we’ve forged friendships till now. They were also great mentors of mine and learnt a lot from them: Geofrey Mimano, Derrick Lung’aho, Joel Mukuthu, just to mention a few.
She is the one that sparked that interest in academia for me, and advocated for me to get a tenure at the university to run C4DLab as a Graduate Assistant.
If I’d end up in academia, I wanted to be like Prof. Waema. I admired how he was so good with his teaching, and also so great in his consultancy work, that’s what I wanted. Prof was also very instrumental for my being at C4DLab and actually used to pay me from his personal income before the university gave me a tenure.
Maybe one day, I will go back to academia, never say never.
CONCLUSION
I felt that it is important to pay homage to those that paved the way for me, in whichever way, great or small. I truly appreciate everyone that has had an impact on my career directly or indirectly.
Gratitude is a must.
Over and out, -NA.
I must have left out one or two people, I’ll still come back and update if I remember something. Thanks for reading! 👋
