“These spaces healed me,” Taka tells me as we settle down for our interview.

For all intents and purposes, she is speaking as much about the room we are in as she is about Strathmore University.
Ziprosa Agneta Taka Magero, who prefers to go by her first name, Taka, is graduating with a Master of Science in Education Management (MEM), but her journey to this moment has been anything but conventional. What was meant to take about two years stretched into seven after illness, loss and a deeply personal journey of healing transformed not only her academic path, but also her understanding of success.

A self-described “math addict”, Taka has spent more than two decades in the classroom. She built a successful career teaching at Braeburn School, where her passion for mathematics was once only matched by her ambition to one day head the international school. When she enrolled in Strathmore’s MEM programme, she had a clear vision of where her career was headed. Her ultimate goal was to be a school director.

“I was driven by achievement,” she tells me. “The titles, the promotions, the leadership positions… I wanted all of it.”
At Strathmore, she found herself surrounded by school principals and directors as classmates while she was but a department head. Rather than feel intimidated, the experience further fed into her belief that she was exactly where she needed to be, and her career path was on track.

Then came 2020.
When COVID-19 hit Kenya, Taka became one of the country’s earliest critical cases. She spent 12 days in the ICU at MP Shah Hospital alongside five other COVID-19 patients, hooked up to oxygen lines, ventilators and monitors as doctors fought a virus the world barely understood. Clad in full Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), medical staff kept their distance whenever they checked on her. Yet despite fighting for her own life, she remembers worrying most about the cleaners who had to clean the isolation rooms every day. “The scariest moment was when my blood sugar shot up to 19,” she recalls. “My heartbeat dropped to 40. My Oxygen levels shot down to 80, 70. My blood started clotting. I thought I was dying.”
She survived. The other five patients who had shared the isolation ward with her did not.

Leaving the isolation ward did not mark the end of her ordeal. Perhaps it was depression from the isolation or the physical toll of the illness and the medications, but she suffered a mental health crisis that led to an 11-day stay in a psychiatric ward. Looking back, she describes that season as one of the darkest periods of her life.

Trying to get back to class and to her normal life was an uphill battle. She was still receiving counselling sessions to recover from the ordeal. She stepped down from her role as Head of Mathematics, deferred her master’s studies after encouragement from her lecturers and battled the stigma she associated with mental health.

Luckily for Taka, she was not alone. She was surrounded by family, friends, her students and, most importantly, her three children. She has been a single mother for 14 years now, and she tells me that despite everything she has achieved in life, those three children are what she treasures most and definitely her greatest achievement. Her students also came through for her. She showed me where one of her students wrote “Do It” on her Strathmore pass. A visual artist obsessed with designing spaces, Taka also has a vision board at home where her children proudly ticked off the ‘publish a book’ section when she finally completed her thesis.

Throughout that journey, Strathmore University also became one of the places where she slowly found herself again. The space that healed her. Through the University’s mentoring department, Taka attended weekly counselling sessions with Dr Lucy Muturi in the same room we are interviewing in. Every Thursday morning, she would come to campus at 7 am, spend an hour unpacking her experiences, and then head to work. “These spaces healed me,” she says. “We would sit here and unpack the narrative. Did I really crash to that level? That was hard to adjust to.”

Those moments, she says, reminded her why she could not give up. The experience also changed how she defines achievement, and she realised she had been living her purpose, teaching mathematics, all along. By the time she completed her final exam and published her thesis, she tells me her outlook on life had shifted significantly. “The person who started this programme and the person graduating today are two different individuals,” she reflects.

Before illness interrupted her life, she measured success through promotions, titles and the next leadership position. Today, she measures it through peace, purpose and the lives she is able to impact. That purpose now extends beyond the classroom. She mentors young people, speaks openly about mental wellbeing and trains teachers transitioning from Kenya’s CBC curriculum to international education systems, as such resources are rare despite the demand.

Her ultimate dream, however? Establishing Tucker Academy. She paints me a picture of a sustainable and affordable school that combines international standards with the best of Kenyan education while placing children’s emotional wellbeing at the heart of learning. Drawing inspiration from Finland’s education model and the leadership lessons she gained through Strathmore’s MEM programme, she hopes to create a school where every child feels seen, supported and inspired to thrive, ultimately bringing the best education to the Kenyan child at an affordable rate.

Looking back, Taka says she would choose the journey all over again. Enrolling in Strathmore’s MEM programme coincided with the most difficult chapter of her life, but it also introduced her to a community that helped her rebuild it.

As she walks across the graduation stage, she does so carrying a very different definition of success from the one she had seven years ago. It is no longer about titles or promotions, but about living her purpose.

And should life lead her back to Strathmore once more, she says she would gladly return to pursue a PhD.

Article written by Maurine Kirambia