It is no bed roses for Kenyans in US

Last week, I met 12 Kenyans in Atlanta, US.

We discussed the challenges Kenyans face in the US. On average, each of us has lived in America for 10 years. We had come to the US for higher education after high school.

However, only two had completed a college degree! It is not that the others did not have the desire for education. But it became difficult to do so. Money was the main reason most dropped out of college. The cost of going to college in the US is astronomical. Non-resident students pay three or four times the cost of the average American student at a State university. In Georgia, a Kenyan student pays $19,000 (Sh1.2 million) a year. This is just for tuition and does not include food and accommodation.

Many Kenyans depend on harambee to meet the cost of travel and study in the US. The initial money runs out after the first or second semester. When that happens, students drop out of college. They hope that they will get a full-time job and save enough money to go back to school. In most cases, things never work out.

Being non-citizens, most Kenyans turn to menial jobs for a minimum wage of $5.75 (Sh385) an hour before tax. To pay for a year's tuition at university, one would have to work for 3,304 hours.

George Kyalo Mutua,
United States