When growing up, I really wanted to be a footballer. I had the talent plus the passion in football. Back in high school, I used to save my pocket money to get good football boots and just write formation mostly during inter-classes games skipping doing assigments. Football to me was more than passion; it didn't work out as expected. Sometimes I sit down to reflect on my football days and say I could do best, especially when I go to Kasarani stadium to watch games. Back in the day, I had a chance to train with Austin Odhiambo (Roll Royce) when he was still at AFC Leopard junior Team before transitioning to the AFC Leopard Senior Team. I didn't train a lot with them due to not having consistency because of some challenges. I'm really happy to see him shine for our national team.
In school, I was not a top student but an average one and did not envision myself continuing with education because I had the dream of becoming a footballer. But with the help of my mum, who always told me, "Tommi wewe ni Mwanaume lazima usome," I was able to push forward. Today is when I have reflected and seen the importance of those words since football didn't work out as expected.
After completing my Diploma in IT, I met a friend in 2019 who was really good at programming and introduced me to software development. He was teaching, but I was not grasping the content and had to quit since I was not able to build anything meaningful. I didn’t know ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and others existed to aid helping one understand what certain function does as these days . I began coding again, and the following week, I attended a hackathon at Ubunifu College led by Harun.
It was about leveraging JavaScript and ML to solve agricultural problems. You know what, guys? Me and two friends of mine from Cooperative University—one doing a Bachelor’s in Disaster Management and the other in Business and Technology—wrote one and a half pages of theory explaining the impact of technology on agriculture.
When Harun was moving randomly and asked us to show him our work, we showed him the page we had written. Wait, when it was time to present, people had great projects. I remember very well a guy from JKUAT, known as Codes, won the hackathon solo, and Silikhe with his team came second. This really challenged me, and I promised myself not to quit again and pushed forward.
It was not until 2023 that I got a chance to join Moringa School a. That's where I got to learn the basics right and escape the tutorial loop hell I was facing earlier, with the help of Faith Kilonzi, who was the Technical Mentor. That's where I knew I had an interest in back-end development after trying out both front-end and back-end. I chose to specialize in back-end, and after graduating from Moringa School, I landed a back-end role in a certain startup where I quit after two months—we were not paid (tulioshwa) and chose to walk away after so many dramas.
After that, I landed a project from someone I was with at Moringa School. Instead of doing it solo, I recommended working with someone from the previous startup who was good in Flutter, while I handled the back-end side. The guy was good in Laravel and Flutter, but I insisted on doing it with Django to gain experience. It was something, but the guy was really insisting on using Laravel since he was a beast. I declined, and he started doing the front-end while I started writing back-end APIs using Python-Django. After just the first phase, I faced an error figuring out multi-user authentication in Django (I had a skill issue by then). I tried to consult him, but I didn’t get any help. Then he sent me the API done using Laravel, while on my side, I had figured it out in Django, but I had spent a lot of time on it. One day, the guy called me midday, saying, "Tommi hu handle aje msee aki ku throw under the bus." My response: "For me, I forgive since no one is perfect." I didn’t know what was coming. When the time came to meet with the owner of the project, the first question was, "Na sikia backend iko na shida and you are shifting from Django to Laravel." I didn’t answer anything; I just kept silent since I had nothing to say. Remember, the owner of the project was my friend, and I was the one who negotiated the deal and invited the other guy. I was forgetting, then the guy I was building the project with called me and told me, "Tommi, nime toka kufanya demo na client to see the interface," which we were supposed to do together. I didn’t ask anything, just chose to remain silent. That incident ended our friendship from both parties.
I'm not afraid to talk about my mistakes; it's just part of telling my story. I'm not a victim-hood mentality person but I to out where the problem is. I took time to reflect on myself, accepted my mistakes where I did wrong, and continued learning to be a great back-end dev as I had promised myself not to give up. I have been doing solo projects, and that’s when I saw an X post from @kipkiruidjango. He’s looking for guys to contribute to building it. I texted him and got onboarded to the back-end team, where I’m interacting with him and Sospheter Mongare. I have learned from them and am still continuing to learn a lot.
This is just my failed football dream to tech. I honestly say I lacked proper mentorship, grit, consistency, resilience, and discipline to achieve my football dream. Sometimes I regret, but I choose to channel that loss and embrace development since I found another passion to prove to myself I can make it—not only failed in football but tried business but failed also due to the above reasons. This idea came to my mind when I was celebrating Austin Odhiambo’s equalizer for Kenya yesterday. I'm not always easier to express myself, but I discovered writing is a way of expressing myself uninterrupted. I wish Austin Odhiambo and the Kenyan National Team all the best in their CHAN games. I'm proud to be Kenyan . Mkenya Daima. I haven’t reached there, but this is part of my journey as I look for opportunities to grow and provide solutions in tech.
Top comments (4)
Great piece Vincent! You were one of my top mentees ad junior devs that wasn't afraid of going beyond the easy route. You were busy telling your fellow developers 'someni screen' to encourage them to read documentation instead of just vibe-coding using ChatGPT which was shiny at the time. I can attest to your growth & grit! I hope great opportunities find their way to you soon!
Thankyou Faith I will keep on going.
This is a good detail of events that led you to something you love. The sky is just a line, may you thrive beyond it.
Thankyou