NAIROBI, Oct. 5 (Xinhua) -- Power cuts are nothing unusual in Kibera, Nairobi's largest informal settlement. On many nights, a small solar lamp and a few candles are all that light Miriam Achieng Kenyatta's books.
The 23-year-old university student, with a Chinese name "Mi Yao," could not afford tuition for Chinese classes. So she turned her cramped home into an immersive Chinese environment.
She renamed every contact in her phone in Chinese, repeated lines from Chinese TV dramas, found language partners on learning apps, and joined Chinese-language voice chat rooms where she forced herself to keep talking.
"I used the phone and internet I could afford to fill my life with Chinese as much as possible," she said.
Within six months, she found she could follow a full 40-minute episode of a Chinese drama without subtitles.
In April, Kenyatta reached the Kenya division finals of the 25th "Chinese Bridge" Chinese Proficiency Competition for Foreign College Students.
Wearing a red cape, she struck a large drum painted with dragons and recited "Song of the Great Wind," a poem over 2,000 years old by Liu Bang, the founding emperor of China's Han Dynasty.
"At first I was so nervous that I was shaking," she said. "But once the music started, I became absorbed in the story and everything fell into place."
The performance helped her win the Kenya division of the 25th edition of the competition and a place among the top 15 contestants in the global finals in China.
She had very little formal training in Chinese. She studied for three months at the Confucius Institute at the University of Nairobi, then dropped out when she could not raise the 2,000-shilling (about 15.5 U.S. dollars) examination fee required to advance to the next level.
Self-learning and practice with the institute's drumming club changed things. Her spoken Chinese was "very good," said the club's coach, who then recommended her to the Confucius Institute.
The institute made her a key contestant for the competition, gave her special training, and waived her fees, bringing her back into the classroom.
"She is smart and very resilient," said Meng Lingyao, a teacher at the institute. "No matter how late it was, she would record voice messages and send them to us so we could correct her pronunciation and tones word by word."
During the intensive training, Kenyatta turned down the dormitory room the institute offered. She went home every day, rain or shine, to look after her younger brother, Meng said.
That home is in Kibera.
Twenty-five years ago, Kenyatta's parents moved from Kisumu in western Kenya to Nairobi in the hope of giving their children a better education. They settled in Kibera.
The settlement has too little piped water and too few waste and sewage facilities. Homes are built from mud, sticks and corrugated iron, hot during the day and cold at night.
The family of six shared an iron-sheet and mud hut of about 15 square meters. The monthly rent of 700 shillings (about 5.4 dollars) was among the cheapest in Kibera.
Hellen Juma Bonyo, Kenyatta's mother, has not bought herself a new piece of clothing since her children were born. For most of those 25 years, she left home at around 5:00 a.m. local time to sell peanuts and soap on the streets and rarely got back before 9:00 p.m. local time.
Even so, money was always short. The family needed about 600 shillings a day for food, and often did not have it. When Kenyatta got into university, tuition, housing and living costs came to 130,000 shillings (about 1,000 dollars) for the year.
They borrowed from every relative and friend they had. Kenyatta's 92-year-old grandfather organized a harambee, a traditional Kenyan community fundraiser, in his village and raised 40,000 shillings.
"For all these years I have been struggling to climb a mountain," Bonyo said. "At the top is a life where I don't have to worry about paying for my children. I'm only halfway there."
Bonyo never finished high school. "If you don't study now, you will end up like me," she often told them.
Despite the hardship, she has never regretted staying in Nairobi. "Because we stayed in Nairobi, my daughter got into university, learned Chinese, and became the first person in our family to board a plane to go to places we had only seen on television," she said.
When Kenyatta called with the news that she had won and would travel to China for the finals, Bonyo was selling peanuts.
At first, she was anxious about the cost. After learning that the Chinese side would pay all expenses, she worried about her daughter's safety, since no one in the family had ever flown.
Before Kenyatta left, Bonyo fasted for three days to pray for her, as she has done whenever any of her four children faced a major exam.
In China, Kenyatta climbed the Great Wall and toured the Palace Museum. She also heard about China's campaign to lift people out of poverty.
What she saw changed how she thought about home. Before university, she had wanted nothing more than to get away from Kibera.
"In high school I studied as hard as I could and won a scholarship every year," she said. "Apart from easing the burden on my family, my biggest wish was to get into university, find a job that paid well, and leave Kibera forever."
But sitting on a bus in China, she found herself thinking of home.
"I felt very homesick. An ordinary road in China looks like a highway in Nairobi," she said. "I thought, why can't my home have wide roads everywhere? I hope Kibera can become like this one day."
"Many people move to Kibera to escape poverty, but end up trapped here for the rest of their lives," she said. "Poverty is exactly what has pushed me to work so hard."
Had she been born into a different family, she might not have studied as hard, said Kenyatta. Now she hopes to use what she learns to give dreamers in Kibera better opportunities.
Her mother is confident about her future.
"Chinese people have built very good infrastructure in Kenya," Bonyo said. "If my daughter speaks Chinese and works with Chinese people, she will learn many more skills. Her life will not be as hard as mine."
The road ahead is taking shape. Kenyatta, an engineering student, has already secured a scholarship to study Chinese for a year and a half at Tianjin Normal University after she graduates. She then plans to apply for a master's program in China.
Her two middle siblings now board at school, and her parents have moved back to Kisumu. Kenyatta stays in Kibera with her youngest brother. She commutes to class, cooks for him, and teaches English online to help cover expenses.
Asked to describe her ideal day, she thought for a moment.
"A very ordinary day," she said. "I wake up and don't have to worry about where breakfast will come from, or whether eating breakfast means I can't have lunch."
"I won't have to ask, 'What can we do?' anymore." ■
