A Mother’s Determination, A Daughter’s Future

“It all started with my mother.”

Mariam Abou traces her story long before she came to Kenya. It begins in Kananga, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where her mother Hanifa was born before being taken to Uganda as a baby, carried across borders by family trying to survive through small scale trade and persistence.

Growing up, Mariam heard how her grandmother sold bitenge fabric between Congo and Uganda. Her grandparents eventually bought land in Lubaga, Kampala, but that stability collapsed when her grandfather died in 1991, leaving her mother Hanifa orphaned at just eight years old. What followed for Hanifa was a childhood shaped by loss, stigma, poverty and insecurity long before Mariam was born.

By the age of 15, Hanifa was pregnant and alone. Within a few years, Hanifa also lost her mother, her land and any claim to family protection. The small plot that should have secured her future was taken from her, forcing Hanifa into rented rooms in Kampala, raising her children while struggling to survive. Mariam was born in 2003. Mariam never knew her biological father, who died when she was still an infant. When Mariam’s stepfather also died, blame and suspicion followed her mother, Hanifa, and with it, social exclusion, which increased their vulnerability. Returning home from work one day, Hanifa found their house destroyed, with no explanation and no recourse through local authorities. With no land, no protection and no safe future in Uganda, Hanifa made a decision that would change her children’s lives. 

Unable to afford transport, Mariam’s mother did what many displaced women do in silence. She sent her eldest son to work as a fisherman, placed Mariam in domestic work and took cleaning jobs herself ,  all to raise enough money to leave Kampala. 

In February 2014, Hanifa departed Kampala for Kenya with her children and three handwritten place names: Bungoma, Kitale, and Kakuma. She crossed into Kenya and, guided by directions from strangers, eventually arrived at Kakuma Refugee Camp. Mariam was eleven. 

Life in the camp was not easy for the family. They slept on blankets in makeshift shelters, queued for food,  struggled with the heat, encountered language barriers and overcrowded services. “It was so hard,” Mariam recalls. “Everything was different.” 

School became Mariam’s lifeline, but it was fragile. Soon after arriving in Kakuma, she enrolled in Fuji Primary School inside the camp. It was a struggle to adapt to crowded classrooms and intense competition from her classmates. Luckily, her mother is a teacher and with her support, Mariam’s school performance began to improve.  To support Mariam and her siblings, Hanifa worked as a refugee incentive teacher in the camp and earned a modest salary. When Hanifa was diagnosed with diabetes, this forced Mariam to drop out in Grade Seven for an entire year to care for her mother at home.

When Mariam was ready to return to school,  she could not go back to Fuji Primary without repeating Grade Seven. To avoid repeating a grade, Mariam transferred to a private school in Kakuma town. This was only possible through the continued support and sacrifice of her mother, who prioritised Mariam’s schooling despite her illness and limited income. Through hard work and perseverance, Mariam was able to compress Grades Seven and Eight coursework into a single year, allowing her to catch up for time lost. 

She sat her primary school examinations and achieved impressive results, allowing her to secure a scholarship for secondary education from the Windle Trust programme.  Mariam attended a secondary school in Kisii County, where she consistently ranked among the top students and ultimately earned an A‑minus in the Kenya Certificate of  Secondary  Education (KCSE) examination. 

After finishing secondary school, Mariam fully understood the invisible scaffolding around her education. Fuji Primary School in Kakuma was built with UNICEF’s support, as part of broader efforts to expand access to safe, inclusive learning spaces for refugee children. “Before, I only knew UNICEF from school bags, and school supplies we were provided in school,” she says. “Later, I realised UNICEF helped build the schools in the camps, too.”

After completing secondary school, Mariam returned to Kakuma not just as a graduate, but as a young woman determined to give back and help her community. She applied to and successfully became a UNICEF Youth on the Move Fellow, where she worked in Kakuma to support education and child protection interventions, identifying child‑headed households, linking them to services, and helping vulnerable girls go back to school and access refugee services. “For the first time, I knew who to talk to and how to help,” she says.

Despite her academic success, Mariam’s transition to post‑secondary education was not immediate. She was unable to apply to several competitive scholarships because she lacked a refugee identification document, a basic eligibility requirement for most scholarship programmes offered for refugee learners.

Instead of losing hope and giving up, Mariam persevered. She asked questions, sought advice, and followed leads. She regularly sought guidance and assistance from UNICEF, UNHCR and the Government of Kenya’s Department of Refugee Services. Step by step, she learned how the system worked, what papers were needed and where to follow up, ensuring her case was given the attention it deserved.

In parallel, she did her own research about scholarships available for refugees like her while working as an assistant teacher. She also took on various other jobs, including her active involvement in UNICEF-supported programmes in the camp.  By the time her refugee mandate was confirmed, Mariam was well-prepared to send her scholarship applications. Her strong academic record and demonstrated community engagement, strengthened her applications and enabled her to secure a university scholarship to study in Canada.

Later this year, Mariam will leave the Kakuma refugee camp for Canada, her home for the past 13 years, to pursue a bachelor’s degree in medicine.  She is clear that this is not leaving Kenya permanently. After getting her education and relevant experience, Mariam plans to return to Kenya and work with UNICEF or similar organisations, supporting refugees and giving back to the community that shaped her. Her message to other refugee girls is direct: “Don’t give up. Don’t let anyone choose your future for you. Education can take you anywhere.”