- Betty Kilonzo left Kitui and moved to Nairobi to follow a career in aviation, hoping to change her story having grown up as an orphan
- Cabin crew training required a mandatory medical examination costing KSh 12,000, an impossible sum for a young girl who formed a WhatsApp group to raise bus fare
- She went to the hospital bathroom and, while crying her heart out, three women she had met only moments before quickly organised an impromptu fundraiser
When Betty Kilonzo left Kitui town in 2021, she carried almost nothing with her, no savings, no certainty, and no safety net.
Source: Facebook
She was sleeping on a thin mattress laid on the floor, and the hardest goodbye was to her one-and-a-half-year-old son, whom she left with her grandparents.
She told TUKO.co.ke that Nairobi beckoned with the fragile promise of a future, as she hoped to train as cabin crew and secure a job with a local airline.
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What awaited her instead was hunger, humiliation, and, unexpectedly, kindness from complete strangers as the odds were stacked against her from the start.
Cabin crew training required a mandatory medical examination and licence, to be conducted by a well-known aviation doctor recommended by the airline.
The fee was KSh 12,000, an impossible sum for a young woman who had just formed a WhatsApp group to beg for bus fare.
With two days to the deadline, Betty borrowed, pleaded, and took small loans wherever she could. By the morning of the exam, she had raised just KSh 4,000.
Betty nearly missed medical tests
Desperate, she gathered her academic certificates and carried them to the doctor’s office, hoping to negotiate a loan and leave the documents as collateral.
The answer was a polite but firm no. Without the medical exam, her aviation dream would end before it had begun. She retreated to a bench in the waiting area, her body giving way to the weight of disappointment.
Soon, two others joined them in the bathroom, where Betty poured out her story to strangers she had met only moments before.
What happened next would mark a turning point in her life. The three women quickly organised an impromptu fundraiser, sharing Betty’s plight with others present.
In less than twenty minutes, they raised KSh 18,000, enough to pay for the exam, buy food, and cover her transport. It was generosity without obligation, compassion without conditions.
Even more astonishing was the response from the doctor’s secretary. Moved by her story, the woman drove her home and handed over two boxes filled with designer shoes and clothes she had outgrown.
As she dropped Betty back in town to catch a bus to Huruma, where she was staying in a cramped single room with a former classmate, she offered words that still echo years later:
“Betty, welcome to your new life.”
Source: UGC
Poverty followed Betty
Even after entering professional spaces, Betty found that poverty followed her like a shadow.
In one airline job, a senior official publicly announced that she had been hired because she came from a poor background and was the sole hope for her grandparents’ survival.
Eventually, she left aviation behind and reinvented herself as an editor. Today, she is a student at Mount Kenya University, studying Public Relations and Diplomacy.
She has built a home in the village, owns a car, and carries a story forged in hardship and resilience. She does not deny where she comes from. She embraces it.
“Yes, I am a village girl,” she says, proudly. “A village girl from Kitui.”
And perhaps that is the heart of her journey: a life shaped not only by struggle, but by the quiet, powerful decisions of ordinary people who chose to help a stranger at her hour of greatest need.
Betty’s humble upbringing
Betty’s childhood had been marked by loss and survival. Orphaned at the age of five, she was taken in by her aunts, lower–middle-class women who did their best with what little they had.
Her education was funded through sponsorships and the kindness of well-wishers. By 20, she was married, believing promises that education and stability would follow.
Two years later, she had a son. Soon after, the marriage ended. She kept the child while her former husband kept everything else.
To survive, she worked on construction sites, as a sales agent, a storekeeper, a domestic worker, and a hawker selling porridge and rice in Changamwe.
Source: TUKO.co.ke
