A lot has been made of Tom Mboya’s airlift for Kenyan students to be admitted to colleges all over the US and whether Barack Obama Sr. received any support from them.
Barack Obama Sr. came here before the airlift was in effect. How did he get here? He certainly wasn’t the ONLY Kenyan ever to enroll in a US college.
My husband was an engineering student at Northwestern U (Evanston, IL) from 1956 through 1959. In his early years he was involved with International House there and was a dirctor of some of their activities (party planner). He got to know many International students. He bcame friends with a nice young man from Kenya, Nyoike F. Njorge, Mathematics, Class of 1959. What’s more, Nyoike had a brother who graduated from Stanford U a couple of years before with a Medical Degree, Dr. Mungai Njoroge, who went on to found the first African hospital in Kenya and staffed it with young US doctors. Dr. Mumbai Njoroge was featured on “This is your Life” with Ralph Edwards in 1959 and his brother and other family members appeared on the show too. Note that this was BEFORE the student airlift.
My point is that somebody got these students over here before there was any airlift, etc. Njoroge’s path was through universities in South Africa and England, since the Colonial authorities in Kenya would not supply him with the proper visas. He had to beg and borrow funds all along the way, arriving in this country with 3 cents in his pocket.
Neither Northwestern (Nyoike’s school) nor Stanford (Mungai’s school) were cheap in those days. And there was a third brother in school in Philadelphia at the same time. I am familiar with the tuition structure of both at the time. Both of those men are still living in Kenya according to Google (at least as recently as 2008).
Mumbai Njoroge (pronounced “jer-or-gi”) worked for Kenyatta as Minister of Health and Minister of Defense, among other jobs. According to reports he was Kenyatta’s cousin. He’s retired and raises roses for export now.
Stanford Medical Magazine Profile of Dr. Njoroge today
These are just personal observations from the time and people we knew.
airlift history:
http://www.journalofamericanhistory.org/teaching/2008_12/article.html
footnote 25 makes it clear obama sr arrived in Hawaii before the first Kennedy trust sponsored airlift.