Photo by Flo Omosa /ML

As an adult, Nyamora had never thought he would clamber up to the Kenyan middle class only to fall into tough exile, do menial jobs, take orders from boys younger than his son and accept handouts from his children. The 55-year-old man was forced to flee from Kenya in March 1994, when Society, a magazine he founded, ran a foul of the Daniel Arap Moi government.

Nyamora's story might have ended like that of so many African immigrants who land in the U.S. expecting milk and honey, but turn to the bottle or go mad when the big American dream fizzles into nightmare. Instead, the veteran journalist overcame tough odds and last month graduated from Johns Hopkins University in Washington, with a master of international public policy degree.
   
Nyamora's graduation on May 20, came just weeks before his daughter Margaret Nyamora, 27, earned a doctorate degree from the California School of Professional Psychology in San Francisco. His son Peter Nyamora, 31, graduated with a bachelor of art degree in music from Adrian College in Michigan.

Nyamora and his daughter's academic milestones come at a time when only an estimated 46 percent of Americans who enroll in college for an undergraduate degree ever finish college, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Statistics are not available how many of the 6,229 Kenyan who enrolled into U.S. colleges in 2000-01 -- the largest number for all African states – graduated this year. But there are indications a large number of those East Africans quit school for various reason, including lack of funds and the inability to cope with the American system of education and culture in general.

In a recent telephone interview Nyamora said his path to enrollment and graduation from John Hopkins' Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies was beset with difficult challenges. The journey was precipitated by harassment from the Moi government because of the critical coverage his magazine undertook. Society was the first news publication in Kenya to publish an unflattering caricature of the former strongman, and the magazine also pioneered coverage of multiparty opposition politics in the nation. 

"Society was impounded frequently from distributors and printing presses. At one point the government dismantled the printing press," Nyamora recalled. "Our office was also fire-bombed before the 1992 general election."

The firebombing, in which no one was injured, and warnings from a Kenyan intelligence official spurred Nyamora and his wife to flee from Kenya, in fear of their lives. The Nyamoras arrived in the U.S. on a cold day in March 1994, first landing in New York and then catching connecting flights to Michigan, where their son was studying and sharing an apartment with a friend.

In the first few months, the Nyamoras couldn't seek any employment in the country because they were on tourist visas. They instead tried, with little success, to make some money by selling some Kenyan curios they had brought with them and also depended on their son for upkeep.
"We just wanted to survive, it was hard and it was a cold winter," Nyamora said.

Eventually with the help of friends including Vincent Khapoya, a Kenyan professor at Oakland University in Michigan, the Nyamoras found an American immigration lawyer who helped them obtain political asylum and work authorization in the U.S. Michael Piston, the attorney and a former student of Khapoya, did not charge them a fee.

Despite having permission to work in the U.S., work was hard to come by for the Nyamoras. The only job the couple could get where minimum-wage menial gigs that had nothing to do with their education or experience. They worked for years in low paying jobs.

"These were jobs where when you clocked in you had a young person supervising you, a young person shouting at you," Nyamora said

Photo by Betty Press

Prior to founding Society, Nyamora had been a senior reporter with the Daily Nation, Kenya's largest daily newspaper, and a radio producer for the Kenya Ministry of Cooperative Development. His wife, Loyce Nyamora, is an accountant.

The Nyamoras eventually moved from Michigan after about a year and lived in Ohio where their daughter was studying. After a while, the family moved to New York and then settled in Centerville, Va., near Washington in 2000.

In Washington, Nyamora found work as a publications coordinator with the National Endowment for Democracy, a non-profit organization that aims to spread democracy around the world. That was the first meaningful job Nyamora had found in the U.S. since his arrival in 1994, and in which he was finally able to use his journalism and publishing skills.

Working for NED enabled Nyamora to get a mortgage loan to buy house in Centreville. The job also helped him obtain a student loan to pay for the education at Johns Hopkins. His wife also found a job as an accounts payable specialist with Patton Boggs LLP, a big law firm in the capital.

Nyamora credits his success and perseverance to his early upbringing in a Kenyan village as the first born of nine children sired by his parents Tom and Prisca Manoti Nyamora. His parents were poor -- his father, a World War II veteran, died of alcoholism. – Nyamora, a staunch Catholic, attributes his success to his faith, African values, hard work, discipline and determination.

Nyamora said his early life also was influenced by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Listening to news programs from the broadcasting organization in the village gave him ideas about the outside world and dreams of becoming a journalist.

Nyamora's next move is to Florida later on in the year where he plans to study for a masters degree in journalism at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. He also will be a contributing editor for Mashariki Leo.

For many Kenyans and other East African who come to the U.S. to study but drop out and fall into the perpetual trap of menial jobs and immigration problems Nyamora has a message: It's never too late to start all over again and do what you came here do to, he said.

"For young people especially, they should know they can make it," Nyamora said. "There is opportunity here, but if you are a Kenyan you have to work five times or 10 times as hard as the American."