23 March 2026
The Boy Who Fought the Future
Paskali had never spent a single day in a classroom. With his mother gone from the household and his 72-year-old father struggling to exert influence, the boy lived a life of isolation. He earned a few shillings here and there herding cattle in the remote, rural confines of northwestern Tanzania. To Paskali, school was a threat.
Paskali was not just any ordinary child: he was a 14-year-old teenager. On a midsummer’s day in 2025, I found myself traveling through the region with Francis and Shau, respectively a manager and the director of the Karimu team. I was there as a volunteer to help document the reality of the region before Karimu intervened.
Our journey took us nearly two hours from Dareda Kati, Karimu’s headquarters, on motorbikes that bounced over dirt paths cutting through dry vegetation and jagged rocks along Lake Balangida. In the distance, pink flamingos took flight, a sight so graceful it was easy to forget that malaria is prevalent in the area.
When we arrived at Paskali's home, his father was waiting. Like most homes in the sparsely populated region of Dabil, it was representative of the daily struggles faced by the poor: walls of earth and straw, and a roof made of branches that required constant repairs after every rainy season.
Convinced we were government agents sent to snatch him away to a boarding school, Paskali began punching the Karimu representatives. His body was too slender and frail for his blows to cause any hurt, but the desperation behind them was heartbreaking. Before we could even speak, he bolted into the brush and vanished.
At Karimu, our principle is to help communities rather than individuals; helping one person at a time is rarely scalable when you are trying to lift thousands out of poverty. It is already a monumental feat that this organisation, with only a handful of local employees, has helped 15,000 people find a path out of extreme poverty. But something about Paskali felt different.
I walked down the dirt track looking for Paskali. I spotted him a short distance away, fearfully glancing in our direction while half-hiding in the coarse bushes. I spoke a few words of Swahili, inviting him to “give me five” (“nepetano”), moving my hand in different directions until I teased him with a “too slow” (“haraka haraka”). This small game timidly persuaded him to come back towards us.
His reason for not wanting to go to school was tragic: he had heard children were beaten there. Shau, Francis, and I immediately rolled up our sleeves. We showed him our arms: scarless, healthy. We explained that we had all gone to school and had never been treated that way.
The breakthrough came when I asked him, through Francis’s translation, "Do you like the motorbike we arrived on?"
His eyes lit up. "Yes!"
"Would you like to own a bike like that one day?"
"Yes!"
"Well," I told him, "to make that happen, you need to go to school. You need to learn to read, to write, and to count."
He didn't run away again. He didn’t throw any punches. He even briefly smiled. We were making progress, but the hurdles were still high.
In fact, the logistics seemed impossible. At 14, Paskali was legally too old for the nearby primary school. The only other option was a boarding school two hours away by bicycle, a means of transportation that wasn’t realistic considering the rugged terrain, the heat, and the rainy season . The expense of the boarding school was also way beyond his father’s reach, even before factoring in the costs of a uniform, books, and meals.
Months passed but Francis didn’t give up. On his own time, he made Paskali’s future a personal mission. He involved a local member sitting on Karimu’s board and negotiated with Longhom Primary School, eventually convincing them to bend the rules and enroll Paskali. In a remarkable act of personal generosity, Francis and his wife decided to sponsor Paskali’s school equipment and meals for the entire year out of his own pocket.
While looking into the family's situation, Francis discovered Paskali had a 10-year-old brother who had also never attended school. Without hesitation, he extended his sponsorship to both boys.
The end of this story hasn't been written yet. We can’t call it a "happy ending" just yet: life in Dabil remains incredibly difficult. However, there are promising signs of a new beginning. Paskali’s mother has returned to the household, and for the past month, both Paskali and his brother have been walking to the nearby school every morning.
The punches have stopped. The learning has begun.
