Page 76 - Senior Link Magazine Spring 2024 - Online Magazine

OPPORTUNITY
TO Serve

Continuing Her

DR. MARY
FATHER'S VISION MURIMI

As told to Jane Bromley

Whether we had a good father
or not, most of us would
agree the value of a good one
in the lives of his children
cannot be measured. Dr.
Mary Murimi describes the
incalculable influence of her
visionary father:

A good father is a provider, a
protector, an advisor, a friend, elementary school—
and a soft landing when things grades 1 to 7. She had
fall apart. While my father, Joseph to walk three miles
Runanu, was all the above, the each way, and she
main channel of influence to his 11 didn’t have shoes. All Ground Breaking Ceremony
children was education. He believed of the other students
that education was the key to the were boys. “My next
future. Even though he only attended seven siblings were
school through grade 4, Dad wanted girls, so I spent my days with
his eight girls and three boys to go boys and my nights with girls.”
as far as they could with formal She begged her mother, the hard-
learning. . . even though the culture working farmer who provided the
[in the village in Kenya where Mary large family with food, to let her
grew up] preferred only boys as stay home. Her mother would say,
learners. “Mary, don’t be like me. Just stay

When Mary was four years old, till you can read and write.” When
Joseph took her to stay with her she learned to read, her mother gave
grandmother in a different town, her a new goal. “My mother kept
so that she could attend preschool raising the bar till I owned the love Dr. Murimi
[almost nonexistent in rural African for learning and appreciated the
villages]. Since Mary was his oldest opportunity to go to school.” arranged with his employer to
child, he knew that, by educating When it came time for high school, give up his salary for four years
her, he was setting a standard for the most fathers in the village were in exchange for Mary’s secondary
others to follow. encouraging their daughters to education at a boarding school in
the neighboring town. Mary worked
Mary returned to her home to attend marry for dowries, but Joseph hard because she recognized her

76 Lubbock Senior Link