From Kenya to America

Ruthie Njagi

Fall 2022

“I think both the US and Kenya are my home because I’ve met good people and established good relationships with people in the United States, but I also have my ties back in Kenya. But if I was to really be honest, which place makes me feel most comfortable it’s going to be back in Kenya.”

Anne Wambui Kimani was born in 1974 in Ruiru, Kenya. She was the second eldest of 5 girls and lived with her mother and father on their farm in a town called Kahawa Wendani. She was born into the Kikuyu tribe, which is known for farming and agriculture. Therefore it is no surprise that she and her family provided milk and other goods for the people in her town.

She went to a day school for primary school, but when it was time for her to go to high school, she went to an all-girls boarding school, Pangani girls high school in Nairobi with two of her sisters.

In Kenya, when students are about to begin high school they have to take a series of national exams that will determine where that student will go for high school. Meaning that the students who performed the best would likely go to boarding and international schools which would either be national or provincial schools and those who did not perform well would continue attending day schools also known as Harambee schools.

Wambui came to the United States in 2002 while she was just 6 weeks pregnant. The one thing that stood out to Wambui about her journey to the United States was how long it was. It took them nearly 24 hours to get to the United States. Wambui traveled with 13 other Kenyans and their spouses. Wambui was a part of 14 Kenyans who were recruited to teach in different high schools within the School District of Philadelphia. None of them had ever been to the United States and were eager to see a world outside of Kenya.

Wambui was the only teacher assigned to Horace Howard Furness High School; most of the other teachers had at least one other Kenyan moving into the school with them. Wambui set out to be a Math teacher teaching Algebra I and Geometry to freshmen and sophomores. After a few years at Furness High School, she became the sole teacher of Calculus Honors and AP Calculus AB as well as the chair of the Mathematics Department.

One of Wambui’s biggest struggles as a new teacher was her accent, which many students said they could not understand therefore she could not teach them. Her second biggest struggle was that she did not understand racism and how oppressive the Education system and other systems are on people of color in the United States. Coming from Kenya racism was a foreign idea for her and Wambui stated that “you really can’t understand oppression and racism in the United States until you experience it.”

Not long after her arrival, Wambui became a mother and gave birth to her daughter Ruthie. Wambui faced a lot of challenges and adversity during her first years in the United States. Her husband filed for divorce, quickly remarried, moved to Maryland, and also took Wambui to court for custody of their daughter. Wambui had to quickly learn how she was going to balance being a mother, going to work, and battling her ex-husband for custody over her 2-year-old toddler.

After finding an expensive but thorough lawyer, Wambui was victorious in court and got primary custody over her daughter along with a small amount of child support from her ex-husband. In Her first few years, she had a lot of thoughts about moving back to Kenya but she ultimately stayed in the US because she did not think she would be able to get the same level of job that she had in the US in Kenya. 

Wambui was fully educated in Kenya. She graduated from Kenyatta University with a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and Math. She went on to obtain her Master of Education at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign through a program at Kenyatta University. Six years after arriving in the United States, Wambui went on to pursue her Doctorate and after 5 years of hard work, she finally received her Ph.D. from Capella University with a concentration in Instructional Design for Online Learning for English Speakers of Other Languages. She also obtained her certification to teach English to K-12 English Speakers of Other Languages from Penn State University.

Wambui chose to obtain her doctorate in this specialty because she wanted to learn how to design curricula for English Speakers of Other languages. She found that during her time at Furness that most of the curricula had not been created to accommodate the needs of English Speakers of Other Languages. She was also motivated to pursue her doctorate specializing in Curriculum for English Speakers of Other Languages because she related to her students since she knew and understood what it was like for people to make assumptions about your intelligence based on your ability to speak English.

Because of her background, Anne has been able to be a support system for English Speakers of Other Languages in her high school and show them that being bilingual and multilingual should be celebrated rather than torn down.

Wambui has now been in the United States for 20 years. When asked whether Kenya or America is her home she said that both are her homes, but she feels most comfortable and at peace when she is back in Kenya. Since coming to the United States in 2002, Wambui has been back to Kenya four times. Three out of the four times were for funerals, but she says now that her daughter is in college and life has slowed down a bit for her, she hopes to go home more often.

When I asked Wambui to reflect on her migration experience she said that she thinks she got really lucky. Because she was coming to the United States already having a job and the support of her school and the program that brought her, she did not experience a lot of stress in her migration process. She laughingly said that her stress her first few years stemmed from mainly her then spouse. Wambui states that she thinks it is ironic that the United States is called a “melting pot” when they are rarely welcoming to immigrants of color.

Wambui is very thankful for the community of Kenyans she came to the United States with. Over 20 complete strangers who she knew nothing about quickly became her family because the majority of her real family was back in Kenya. The Kenyan community in Philadelphia is very strong and united and has grown greatly during Wambui’s time living here. This community helped Wambui maintain her Kenyan culture and they are among the main reasons why she did not feel the need to assimilate into American culture.

Today Wambui is a big Eagles fan and is still teaching at Furness High School. She is also a part-time graduate professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Gwynedd Mercy University. She recently visited Kenya in August with her daughter and looks forward to going back again with her two sisters who also live in the United States.

Wambui is forever thankful for the teaching opportunity she was recruited for to come to Philadelphia because had she not been offered that job, she doesn’t know how else she would have come to the United States.