We are driving to NTU in a car so compact that the four long-legged guys have to fold themselves in carefully.

Malaysian Gabriel Teo, 60, and the three tall Kenyan youths who call him “Mzee” (Swahili for Elder) are on their way to the educational institution that was Gabriel’s first “home” in Singapore when he was 15.

As we make the long drive to “Pulau NTU”, Gabriel clucks over the boys paternally.

“How’s your cough?”

“Still coughing, Mzee.”

“Better take that TCM medicine.”

“Okay, Mzee.”

Pristone Tola Amuma, 23, Buya Yezziel Marere, 32, and Salat Soye Dullu, 26, have come a long way to share with Singaporeans about their life in the Tana River Life Foundation, Kenya, founded by Gabriel 20 years ago.

To the boys, Gabriel has many names: Mzee, Sir, Semkuu (like “Tua Pek”, or Elder Uncle, explains Gabriel).

After all, he has played many roles in their life – teacher, mentor, father – not just to them, but to the 80 youths in the Foundation home and 430 primary school children in the Foundation school. Some of them Gabriel carried as babies and now mentor as young men and women.

The story of how Gabriel, an ASEAN scholar, gave up a stellar tax career and a glittering social life to spend the last 30 years in a bandit-infested, Malaria-ridden Kenyan delta that “no one visits on holiday or for business” is an extraordinary one.

I would have been crazy to do it if not for God, Gabriel says.

Pioneer ASEAN scholars 

Gabriel was 15 when he found himself on a bus travelling from his home town of Melaka to Singapore to join the pioneer batch of ASEAN scholars in NTI (Nanyang Technological University was known as Nanyang Technological Institute at the time).

The batch of approximately 20 bright teenagers had passed a matriculation exam and an interview before spending the next five to 10 years in Singapore’s rigorous education system.

On their first day, the teenagers – who were housed in NTI’s student lodging – were trooped to the co-op to buy mattresses and were given a broom to clean their rooms and bathrooms.

The pioneer batch of ASEAN scholars, who were just 15 when they came to Singapore to study.

Gabriel’s Secondary 4 ASEAN scholar cohort in 1982.

“It was exciting, like going on an extended camp for us 15-year-olds,” recalls Gabriel. “In those days there were no handphones, so we called home maybe once or twice a week. But I don’t think we missed our parents!”

On weekdays, the group would take Bus 174 for the whole length of its journey, from its start in Jurong to its end at Raffles Institution for the boys and Raffles Girls’ School for the girls. At the end of the day, it was the reverse journey, with the teenagers ending up in an NTI canteen for a communal dinner.

“The girls didn’t want to sit with us boys because boys don’t talk during mealtimes and we eat too fast. So if you talk, you end up eating only rice,” he remembers with a grin.

In NUS, Gabriel was the extrovert who organised gatherings and drove his friends around in his father’s second-hand car.

Gabriel, who grew up “wanting to be number one in everything”, found himself enjoying the challenge of the scholarship programme, going on to Hwa Chong Junior College and then to National University of Singapore, where he did a Business Accountancy degree because it was “the shortest degree for earning lots of money”.

“I was annoyingly competitive,” he says. “I remember I had eczema as a kid and it used to flare up just before exams. When my mother took me to the doctor, he said, ‘Boy, no. 4 is also okay, you know, don’t need to be no. 1 all the time.’ But no, I had to top the class.”

Although his family went to church, he looks back now and reflects: “While God was always present in my life, I didn’t allow Him to be the driver; He was the backup plan.”

In university, the extroverted Gabriel was the life of the party, often organising events and gatherings.

His smarts and ambition saw him being offered a job at the top accounting firm of the time, Arthur Andersen, before he even graduated. He was on track to fulfil his dream of being the youngest tax partner in Singapore.

There was nothing to indicate that his life’s trajectory would shortly spin 360°.

Crooked lines

Gabriel’s graduation trip was planned for Turkana, Kenya, where he would surprise his older brother serving in a Catholic mission.

Those were the days before mobile phones and GPS, and when an adventurous Gabriel landed in Nairobi, he did not know how to find his brother.

Staying at a church-run hostel on the first night, he sat across from an American over dinner. While chatting, Gabriel shared that he was looking for his brother who was staying with a priest while serving in a mission in Turkana.

Some of the youths in Gabriel’s Tana River Life Foundation have known him all their lives. Gabriel took care of Salati when he was a baby. Salati is now 26 and has joined the Foundation as staff.

To his astonishment, the American said: “I’m the priest you are looking for – your brother is staying with me!”

That would be the first of many instances of God’s miraculous timing in Gabriel’s life.

“That incident told me clearly that nothing happens by chance. It’s just that God writes very crooked lines in order to draw straight.”

The priest took Gabriel to Turkana and the brothers’ reunion was heart-warming. But after two weeks, the priest told Gabriel that he was keeping his brother from focusing on his work.

So Gabriel joined a Spanish mission that allowed him to stay at their guest house and tag along on their medical missions. 

“That was my first eye-opener,” remembers Gabriel. “The Turkana tribesmen were still wearing goatskin at the time and would collect drinking water from rock crevices. In my naïveté, I thought everyone in the world could just turn on a tap.

“The sisters in the mission were measuring babies’ weight by hanging a spring scale from a tree. 

“I saw many children not in school. Their meals were maize and vegetable; sometimes they only had rice with food colouring.

Mticharaka Primary School, with furniture donated by a Singapore school.

“It shattered my perfect world. It was as though God pulled up the blinds over my eyes and I could see outside the window of my small life.  

“I was also touched by how they cared for one another in the community.”

At Gabriel’s request, his mother kept calling Arthur Andersen to delay the start of Gabriel’s job. At the end of nine months, the manager told her: “Mrs Teo, if your son doesn’t report by January, he doesn’t need to report for work.”

Gabriel called his father: “Papa, I think I want to be a social worker in Kenya. Can you pay off my bond?”

“My father said, ‘No such thing. We invested in you all these years, you can finish your bond. At least give yourself a chance to see what the work is like. After five years if you still want to return to Kenya, you can.’

“That turned out to be excellent advice. I returned to Singapore to work in Arthur Andersen and what I picked up in my years there – administration, accounting, management skills – were invaluable when I set up the Tana River Life Foundation years later.”

Full but empty

Gabriel’s career took off and he enjoyed climbing the social ladder, collecting promotions and having a “big base of colleagues and friends”.

He subsequently joined Sedco Forex, part of a French-American oil drilling conglomerate, in a regional role. His career trajectory continued to rise, and he enjoyed the travel that came with the job.

Yet he found a gnawing yearning for a life of fulfilment, not just comfort.

“Something inside of me told me life is bigger than what I had. There was a restlessness, a desire to live out my life fully with the gifts God gave me,” he recalls. “Corporate success couldn’t fill that. My yearning only grew with my success.

With the youths who are farming at Idsowe, a village in the Tana River Delta.

“Looking back, I realise that God didn’t give me nothing in order for me to realise that I needed something. He gave me everything that the world offers in order for me to realise that it was not enough.

“The  everything that we need is not what the world gives, but what comes from God.”

Reasoning that the best place to answer the question of his restlessness was the place where the question first started, he made two more trips to Kenya.

When his company wanted to send him for further training to be promoted to a bigger role, his conscience would not allow it, and he quit his job.

At Hewani village, chatting with the local farmers who have accepted Gabriel as a member of their community.

“When I went home to tell my parents about my decision to move to Kenya, my dad said, ‘Look, this is very embarrassing. We always tell our friends that our son is an accountant in Singapore. Now our son is going to Africa. What kind of a story is that, very shameful! So he was very disappointed.

“My mum was cooking at the back kitchen and when I told her, she didn’t even stop cooking. She simply said, ‘I knew you would go back one day.’ 

“Later on, after I’d been in Kenya for 18 months, my mum called to tell me that my father had bone cancer. I returned and stayed with him for three months.

“After three months, he recovered well enough to drive and he told me, ‘You go back to Kenya. I think you are doing something good there.’ So, on his own, he resolved the issue of my giving up my successful job to serve in Kenya.”

Facing death three times

The move to Kenya did not start well for Gabriel.

“I was so full of myself. At the back of my mind, I thought God would be ‘grateful’ that I had given up everything to serve His people. But God quickly knocked some reality into me.”

At the Garsen High School tree planting. Gabriel has ties with many of the schools in the area, as he helps channel donations in kind from Singapore to them.

For 18 months, every door Gabriel knocked on remained shut. He found no work and his social visit pass was soon expiring.

That first year, he was also stricken with Malaria not once, but three times.

“For the first time in my life, I thought I was going to die. And then it happened two more times. I was vomiting for days and at night there was fever and body aches.”

His sister, who spoke to him online, said he looked like a ghost.

It was only when he sank to his lowest point, acknowledging his helplessness, that he saw the wheels slowly turning. God was drawing His crooked lines.

He was staying with Salati’s family when he noticed that the youngest child did not go to school. The family could not afford his secondary school fees. Gabriel walked the boy to his school and paid his fees.

In time, he was sponsoring a number of youths. Salati’s grandfather, who was an elder in his Methodist church, introduced him to the Methodist Bishop, who sent him with a letter of recommendation to Nairobi to see the Presiding Bishop of East Africa about his visa.

“I was given five minutes and I told the Bishop, ‘I’m from Malaysia and I’m volunteering in Tana Delta. As a missionary, I would like to stay long term in Kenya and help students to go to school.’

The Garsen High School bus – the first school bus in the Tana River Delta.

“He listened to my story and said, ‘We will sponsor you. If you are in Tana River, you must be sincere – it’s the last place somebody would choose to go for business or holiday. But remember, don’t do anything that will shame our Church. And you have to look for funding on your own.’ So he gave me a letter for immigration, with my sponsor being the Methodist Church of Kenya.”

At the time Tana River Delta was a bandit-ridden area. Foreigners were sometimes the target of kidnappings. 

But Gabriel’s heart was moved by the living circumstances of the people. There was no piped water, no electricity – people used kerosene lamps that were nothing more than a small container with kerosene and a wick.

Water was fetched using jerry cans, and families lived in mud houses along roads riddled with potholes. Buses were not frequent and had to travel in convoys for security.

“It was very hard to start an education project. Getting the land, getting the funding, was a big struggle. And then when we did manage to get the funds to construct a community centre, primary school and hostel, the contractor played us out,” says Gabriel.

“But it turned out to be a test of faith. Our beneficiaries, our villagers, the chiefs, came to know about the case. They saw that my team and I stayed and they saw that they could lose a lot for their children. They started praying for us. And from then on, they felt ownership.”

God does not shortchange you

In 2004, Gabriel registered Tana River Life Foundation to provide education for the youths in the surrounding villages.

At the time classrooms in some public schools were no more than four pillars with either canvas sheets or makuti (grass) for a roof. When it rained, the children would huddle in corners where the rain did not blow in. Textbooks were rare, with only the teacher instructing from one textbook.

Young kids sat on the dirt floor. From standard two or three, they could sit on jerry cans or logs. As they progressed, three or four students squeezed around a wooden desk.

Onwardei Village youth helping to transport classroom furniture across the river.

Challenges were daunting. When there was rumour of violence in the area, Gabriel set up a round-the-clock roster for himself and the students to keep a lookout for bandits. When asked if they had any means of defence, Gabriel replied: “None. Our defence was to run if they come!”

In 2012, there was ethnic violence during political elections. The entire delta was on tenterhooks. When Gabriel remained with the youths he was sponsoring instead of fleeing, the local community finally embraced him as one of them.

The local government invited him to be on the Peace Commission that sought to promote cohesiveness and mutual understanding through education.

Gabriel and his students went from one village to another in the entire Tana Delta sub county, by land size  approximately two-thirds the state of Johor, to convince the local communities that it was better and cheaper to live in peace rather than war.  

Farming sweet potato in a farm in Idsowe Village.

Today, the Foundation runs a primary school for 430 children, and a home for 80 youths where not only education but character formation and Christian values are taught.

Fees for the primary school are tiered, with the more well-to-do paying full fees, farmers paying another tier, and the needy fully sponsored. The youths in the home are also sponsored.

“Our youths are rostered to cook for all 80 people,” says Gabriel.

“Each meal is simple – rice or bread, and mung beans. They do a good job – sometimes someone new to the kitchen may produce what they call ‘ballgum’ bread – bread that turns out like bubble gum! But in general they bake very good bread.

“I’ve also trained them to be good bookkeepers, to be accountable with money. We teach them how to handle cash and be very stringent about office administration. We follow the laws and regulations very strictly and don’t waste resources so that the Foundation can be sustainable.

Gabriel with some of the youth he mentors at the Foundation home.

“They also do bush-whacking to clear the bushes around the school.

“The boys and girls tell me that my favourite phrase is: Don’t be maziwa mala (sour milk)! Be tough. Be resilient. Don’t be softy softy!”

On Sundays, after breakfast, each of the youths tells Gabriel which church they will be attending. After lunch when they return, every single one shares what they learnt from the day’s sermon.

About 40% of funding for the Foundation comes from donors in Singapore.

Loading shipments of study aids from Singapore for use in Tana River Delta.

Women are also beneficiaries of the Foundation.

Through sponsorships in kind, Gabriel does not just resource his Foundation, but also passes on donations of furniture and laptops to the 17 public secondary schools and 72 primary schools in the delta.

“We want to uplift the whole delta, we don’t want to leave any child behind,” says Gabriel.

“A high point for me is when our students, whom nobody gave a chance to, grow beyond expectations to not only do well in school but become grateful young people. 

“You know the kids here love to learn. When they find out they cannot go to secondary school or college, they cry. Their desire to move forward in life and improve their lot is very strong. When visiting teachers come to our classes, they are so touched when they ask a question because every student puts up a hand – that’s how enthusiastic they are!”

With farmers’ children in Fej Village.

Gabriel’s investment in the families of Tana River Delta is personal. Having seen some of his youths grow up from babyhood, he is the one entrusted to attend their parent-teacher meetings and receive their exam results when their parents live too far away.

“There’s a Swahili phrase: Kukamilisha mwito yako, meaning to bring to full realisation your calling. My job is not just to teach these youths academics. It is to see that they grow into men and women of God.

“If you come and live my life for a week, you would understand that I make no sacrifice to be here. In fact, I’ve received much, much more than I’ve given. We’re not talking about money or material comfort. We’re talking about living life to the fullest.

“God does not shortchange you.”

If you would like to find out more about the Tana River Life Foundation, you can do so through its WordPress or Facebook. Or email Gabriel Teo at tanariverlifefoundation@gmail.com.

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