08/27/2026
It’s a calm, sunny day at the University of Nairobi’s Chiromo Campus. Griffins walks the halls slowly, taking it all in - the place that will become his second home for the next six years.
Today is a big day. Griffins is being admitted to study Medicine.
But he is not alone.
His mother has travelled nearly 300 miles from Busia, a rural county in western Kenya bordering Uganda, to be here - to watch her firstborn son become the first in their family to attend university.
“She had to be here… for her firstborn son. Being with her, today, and witnessing all this is a blessing,” Griffins says, smiling as he looks at his mum.
It is a simple sentence, but behind it are years of belief, sacrifice, resilience - and a journey Griffins himself once struggled to imagine.
“Being where I am today would have just been a mere dream about six years ago. If you had told me this was going to be me, honestly, I would have disagreed with you.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, while schools were closed, Griffins’ mum bought him a book that would change how he saw himself: Dr. Ben Carson’s Think Big.
For Griffins, it became more than a book.
“That was the pivotal turning point. I started looking at myself differently.”
And he did.
Inspired by Dr. Carson’s story, Griffins began to see beyond his circumstances and imagine what his own life could become. Today, as he begins medical school, his dream of becoming a neurosurgeon is slowly coming full circle.
Ahead lies an even bigger dream: the operating room, a career in neurosurgery, lives he may one day save - and perhaps another young person who will hear his story and begin to believe that their circumstances do not have to define how far they can go.
For Griffins, the future that once felt too big to imagine is now his to pursue. The first in his family to walk through the doors of a university. A doctor in the making. A dream that is only getting started.
