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 Years ago, he came to Mount St. James from Kenya. Today, Abdi Lidonde is on a mission to bring transformative education to his homeland.
By Laura Porter
Abdi Lidonde has a vision, and that vision is focused firmly on the future of Kenya.
Several years ago, the longtime Holy Cross employee had an idea: build a school in Kenya, name it for his late mother and help children escape the prison of poverty just as he had. Now the Beverly School, to be located an hour west of Nairobi, is less than two years away from opening its doors to primary school students. In the process, Lidonde’s dream has evolved into a plan to effect fundamental change in Kenya through education.
As its mission statement attests, the Beverly School, which will ultimately serve students from preschool through high school, will be a boarding school that aims to “make education and learning accessible to children from financially challenged households and to provide adult and continuing education for vocational training.”
In company with American and Kenyan educators and business leaders, Lidonde believes that the school will spearhead the creation of a new educational system in his native country, leading to sustainable progress and the eradication of poverty.
In working to achieve his goal, he is putting into practice the “wise words” he and his siblings heard from their parents while growing up.
“Even if things were not the best,” he says, “my parents had the vision that education and encouragement were the keys to taking us out of poverty.”
Forty-two years ago, Beverly Lidonde walked her seven-year-old son into the St. Peter Clevers Catholic Primary School, 25 miles from their village in the Kakamega District of Kenya. Despite financial hardship, it was a trip that Mrs. Lidonde would repeat, both literally and figuratively, until Abdi graduated from high school.
“This day she was holding my hand to reassure me that all would be fine,” he recalls. “It was, indeed, the beginning of my journey—a long journey that would take me places.”
Born in the village of Shikoho, Lidonde was one of 25 brothers and sisters. His father, Elijah, worked for the Regional Training School for the Kenya Post and Telecommunications; he was also a national soccer player. Beverly, who was often ill and had only a first-grade education, took care of the children.
“She had plenty to do, and we never had the basic things in life, like food and clothing,” her son recalls. “I remember my mother always praying that none of us should fall sick—what would she do for medical bills? But the family was very much together. I give credit to my parents, who made it easy for us not to think of how hard life was.”
During his schooling, he was, Lidonde says, “more outside the classroom than inside because you had to pay tuition, you had to buy a uniform. That was what really kept a lot of kids from poor families from attending school. The basic necessities of education were hard to come by.”
Every time he was forced out because he couldn’t pay school fees or buy books, his mother would “come and talk to the teachers, to the principal, to the headmaster, just to let me in. And she did this from my primary education to secondary high school education.”
In a chance encounter through his father, after he graduated from high school, Lidonde met an American woman from Worcester who asked if he wanted to go to college in the United States. As a result of this meeting, he came to study history and political science at Worcester State College, attaining a college degree while working nights as a custodian at Holy Cross.
Now a supervisor in the College’s physical plant department, he is well settled in Worcester, with a family of his own that includes five children, ages 15 to 26. For over two decades, he has been a familiar figure on the Hill, developing lasting friendships with students, faculty, staff and alumni—many of whom make it a point to reconnect with him when they return to campus. He occasionally speaks about Kenya to classes or student groups, including students who participate in the popular two-week Kenya Immersion program, now in its third year.
Along the way, Lidonde has worked hard to realize his parents’ dreams for a better life for their children. Not only has he helped to support his family in Kenya, providing extra income and enabling some of his siblings to go to school, but he has also brought at least 10 family members to the United States. Here they have completed their educations, found jobs and started families of their own. (Three of his brothers are in Worcester: Kennedy and Armstrong Lidonde also work at Holy Cross; Patrick Lidonde is employed by the Polar Beverage Co.)
“I was very disciplined. I have a sense of responsibility,” he says. “But, no matter how successful I am here, if I go back to Kenya and my people are not successful—if they are illiterate—then I would have failed in life. And that is how I look at the Beverly School. If we don’t improve literacy in Kenya, we have failed.”
Abdi’s Dream, continued >>>
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