From Eldoret to Bristol: The student on a winning streak

It is a competition that requires you to appear before judges and explain engineering concepts and also explain yourself. You are declared the most articulate of them all; the one with most information on the fingertips.

Now you are a quite famous Black student in your university, £1,000 (Sh153,065) richer and with a number of mentors to hold your hand.

That is the situation 21-year-old Zawadi Mwambeyu, or the “Eldoret girl” as she describes herself on Twitter, is in.

She is a civil engineering student at the University of Bristol, which she joined in 2019 on a scholarship. Before heading there, she had set a couple of records in International General Certificate of Secondary Education examinations in Kenya. 

In her Year 11 exams, she sat at Gulab Lochab Academy in Eldoret. She was the best in her school and the best in Kenya in French and geography. 

And in her Year 13 exams taken at Greensteds International School, she was the best in Kenya in geography and the joint top in her class.

To participate in the Women in Property Awards competition that she won in September, one needs to be nominated by one’s university, and the Bristol institution put its faith in Zawadi.

Lifestyle asked her in a recent interview why she thinks she got the university’s nod to represent them.

She suspects it must be because she once challenged her lecturer in class.

“In one of my lectures, I was challenging the ideas of the lecturer and asking him why our architectural history is only from the West whereas people in Egypt have been building for millennia. People in the Arab world have been building for centuries; why do you only study western architecture? And out of that, I think he realised, ‘Okay, this is a student I have to watch now.’ He sent me an email, we started talking. And he actually got me an interview with the mayor of Bristol, where I was able to ask him about his role in the Race and Housing Conference that was started in 2020,” she said.

That Zawadi is an inquisitive person is a fact confirmed to us by the Beacon Scholarship, a UK-based institution that is paying a third of her fees at Bristol.

“Zawadi is highly intelligent, both in rational and emotional intelligence,” the institution said in a statement.

“It was a wonderful surprise (that she won). She told us that she had made it to the national finals, and that is the first we heard of it. We were very proud, as we are with the achievements of many of our scholars.”

Zawadi says it was all like a dream, especially in the final stage where she and 12 others battled it out for the top prize.

“I was the only woman of colour at that stage,” she said. “It is quite impressive because the winner in the year before was also a woman of colour and she was invited.”

Also proud of her are her parents Elijah Mwambeyu, an employee of a real estate management firm in Nairobi, and his wife Joy, a teacher. Zawadi’s two younger brothers are also overjoyed.

“We are proud of her,” said the father.

Given the struggle the parents have been going through to raise the third of Zawadi’s fees at Bristol – the other third is paid by the university – they are besides themselves with joy.

“It’s been loan after loan to keep her there,” said Mr Mwambeyu. 

Zawadi plans to study up to Master’s level by the time she completes her studies at Bristol in 2023. 

“I grew up always knowing that I wanted to be in the build environment,” she said. “Even though I’d make a good doctor, I wanted to be a civil engineer.”

The Women in Property judges who declared Zawadi the winner of the competition, which was in its 15th edition this year, noted a number of positives in her.

“We were wowed by her comments, for example ‘great things never come from staying in your comfort zone’, and adopting Verna Myers’ quote – ‘Diversity is being invited to the party but inclusion is being asked to dance,’” they said.

They described her as “having great maturity and professionalism, confidence and humour, and a real serenity and depth about her”.

“She gave very well-structured responses to our questions and, in our view, embodied the potential for an alternative way of leadership,” they added.

How did she get this mature this early? We asked.

She said it was partly because of the books she has read. Another reason is her desire to stand out.

“Being a firstborn and then being in schools where I’m not really in the majority (Black girl among many races). So, I’ve grown up having to work for what I want. Nothing has ever really been handed to me,” she said.