In August 2001, Gilbert Cheruiyot stood in line at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport waiting to board a flight to Sweden. He’d scored double: it was his first time in Nairobi and he was about to leave the country. As the plane sped on the track and ascended, he still couldn’t believe what was happening.

Before the plane or the airport or Nairobi, Gilbert was a little boy in Machorwa Village in Kericho. His weekday routine included waking up at the crack of dawn and preparing himself for the four kilometer walk to Charera Primary School. He was an average performer at school, and while he was sure of his ability to do well in school, he hardly pushed himself further beyond his comfort zone. In 1991 he was a KCPE candidate and the following year he was smartly dressed in his Kaplong Boys’ High School uniform, ready for boarding school. But by this time, he’d had an attitude shift, and he was determined to work hard.

In form two one of his friends fell ill. Gilbert found time between classes to visit him in the Kaplong Mission Hospital ward. He would look on as the smartly dressed doctors with stethoscopes went about their routines checking in on patients and prescribing the required medication. He listened to how they interacted with patients, and sometimes the conversations that were full of medical jargon but it further piqued Gilbert’s interest. Soon enough, his aspiration was to be one of them. His new passion pushed him to work smarter in class. He knew that in order to become one of the smartly dressed physicians he needed to pass his exams. In 1995, he sat his KCSE exams and was relieved when he found out he’d scored an A-.

As is usual for form four leavers, after high school came the long days at home anxiously waiting to receive an admission letter. He kept himself busy by being proactive; he’d pick tea on the plantations that carpet Kericho and sometimes walk to Londiani, a nearby town – to herd his sister’s cows. In 1997, a letter that bore the Moi University School of Medicine stamp arrived addressed to Gilbert and at that moment, nothing else mattered; he was going to study medicine.

At Moi, he met students from different parts of the country. A few of his classmates were from rural settings like him. In comparison to those from larger towns, they were less in number. He became aware of his broken English and tried his best to make himself invisible among his peers. He turned to books in the school library and steadily pursued the end result – because he knew from past experience that hard work yielded positive results. Before he joined campus, Moi University in partnership with Linköping University in Sweden and Indiana University in the USA had rolled out an exchange program aimed at rewarding twelve of the best-performing students. His hard work evident to even the institution’s administration made Gilbert fall within this category. The next chapter was him seated in a vehicle in 2001 on his way to Nairobi aka the big city and after that on a plane, watching the tall buildings become little spots eventually hidden by the clouds.

Gilbert returned from Linköping University with a newfound self-belief. He completed his undergraduate training in 2004 and was then posted to Nakuru Annex Hospital for his twelve-month internship. After this intense year, he was assigned to Loitoktok District Hospital where he affirmed to impact lives. When the time came to move on, he was posted to Kabarnet District Hospital for a brief time, and finally, he was one of the new doctors at AIC Litein Mission Hospital in 2007.

While working as a general physician at Litein, he noticed that every month, a team of doctors from Nairobi would come in to perform cataract surgeries. Dr. Cheruiyot was fascinated by these procedures and wanted to learn more about how to carry them out. After two years of watching from the sidelines, he voiced his interest in becoming an eye surgeon to the team’s lead ophthalmologist. His interest was well received and he was urged to talk to the hospital administration about his plans. The lead ophthalmologist helped Gilbert apply for a scholarship with Bavarian Lion, a non-governmental organization. After the nervous wait came positive feedback, and with the blessing of his employers, Dr. Cheruiyot enrolled in the University of Nairobi for a Master’s degree in Ophthalmology.

He completed his Master’s in 2013 and returned to work at Litein. His time here came to an end in 2017. That year he was relocated to Kapkatet Sub County Hospital to head the hospital’s newly opened eye unit. Thus began his work conducting cataract surgeries and corneal repairs.

“Nothing gives me greater pleasure than restoring sight to the patients who visit the eye unit,” Dr. Cheruiyot says. He has come a long way from his humble beginning, and we applaud his interest and dedication to finding his better self. For this, we celebrate him as one of our Kenyan health workers.

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