Nairobi News

Mr David Kipyego, the 31-year-old man who has been on the streets of Nandi holding a placard seeking employment from Deputy President, says he has been pushed to resort to such unconventional job-hunting strategies out of desperation.

In an exclusive interview with Nairobi News, Mr Kipyego, who hails from Tinderet Constituency in Nandi County, said he has nine siblings and out of all of them he is the only one who is educated.

“We are 10 children in our family; I have five brothers and four sisters and I am the ninth born in the family,” Kipyego said.

Life has always been hard for this family and things took a turn for the worse in 2003 when Kipyego’s father passed away, leaving them in the care of their mother, Sally Lagat.

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Although their widowed mother earned a living from making calabashes, she struggled to feed and educate her children .

“I used to be frequently sent home for school fees because my mother was never in a position to pay my school fees in time. However, I persevered and studied hard, as much as it was not easy,” Kipyego recounts.

Inspite of all these challenges, Kipyego excelled in class. He scored an impressive 378 marks out of 500 in the 2007 KCPE examinations and a mean grade of A- of 80 points out of 84 points in KCSE.

Thereafter, in 2013, Kipyego joined Egerton University to study Biomedical Science and Technology. In 2016, he was compelled to  defer his studies for a whole year due challenges he encountered.

“My graduation was delayed until June 2021 but even after I graduated I have been struggling to find a job,” he said.

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Mr Kipyego said he once got what he thought was an opening at the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) but after receiving a phone from the firm and submitting his CV nothing came out of it.

Mr Kipyego is a husband and a father of young girls. His wife Mercy Kipyego works in a salon.

Kipyego’s mother told Nairobi News that her son is very hardworking and she had hoped that he would secure a job and save the family from the challenges they continue facing.

“Of all my 10 children, he is the only one who studied to university level and I always believed that since he is very bright he would secure a job and change our family fortunes,” Ms Lagat said.

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