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Success Story – Roseline Akoth!
Roseline is 24 years old and is a qualified nurse working at a Mission Hospital in western Kenya.
Roseline was born in the village of Kagan in Homa Bay County, western Kenya. Roseline grew up with her mother, father and five siblings. She is the fourth born out of the six children in the family. Due to her father, who provided the majority of the income to the family, falling ill and being unable to work, Roseline’s family was pushed into a difficult situation: “My oldest sister was forced to drop out of school due to a lack of fees, the second and third children had the same issue. I was the only one blessed to get a sponsor who supported me through my high school.”
“Team Kenya has been helping me for a long time, since 2007. I visited the UK on a school trip and was fortunate enough to meet a sponsor who funded me through my secondary studies and then through Medical Training College at Meru Campus. I graduated from my studies in 2016.”
The illness of Roseline’s father inspired her to become a nurse. Having witnessed her father suffering from a growth in his kidney, which resulted in kidney failure, Roseline was determined to help other families in similar circumstances, “I have been able to achieve my dream of being a nurse. I decided to be a nurse when I was in class seven at primary school. My father developed a complication and, since he could not afford to go to the hospital, he was just at home suffering. I was sympathising with him, but since I could not do anything I wanted to study medicine so that I could understand diseases and help my father. He motivated me towards becoming a nurse.” Thankfully, Roseline’s father’s health is improving, “he’s doing better now and is going for surgery next month. I now know he had an intra-abdominal growth and it is going to be removed.”
In the future, Roseline has high ambitions for her career, “I am now a general nurse, in the future I would like to specialise in renal nursing. I also want to achieve a PHD, I still have a long way to go in my studies.” Roseline is happy to delay her studies until she is able to commit funds towards them, “I won’t continue my studies straight away as I am using my income to care for my parents and to ensure my two younger siblings can continue in education. I want to ensure that they can complete secondary school, after this I will fund myself to go back to school. At home, no one can pay for my fees – I take responsibility for everyone at home.”
“I really know and believe that education is the only thing you can give to someone to assist them in the future. Without education, there will be a situation where my family depends on me in the future as they have nothing. My siblings are also bright, so I think that’s the best gift I can give them at the moment!”
If she had not received an Aspire Scholarship, Roseline is pessimistic about how her life would have been, “My life would have been more miserable. I wouldn’t have been able to go to school and would have got married very early. I would have been giving birth to many children with no future, because that would be the only thing I could do. Maybe I would have been selling bananas by the road side. It’s not a good life and that’s what most people do.”