In 1999, when he was in Form Three, Felix was asked to leave an examination room because he owed 5,600 shillings. The paper was Commerce. (The irony.) Sent home, he asked his mother for the fees. “The only money I have is 400 shillings.” So she sold a chicken, handed him 200 shillings, and sent him back to school. “Tell them that’s all we have for now.”

He took it to the bursar, who wrote him a receipt. Balance: 5,400.

The following Monday, the principal sent him home again.

Three years earlier, he had been the best pupil in his primary school, with 476 marks and a place at Maseno School that his father could not pay for. In September 1999, he dropped out, unable to raise the balance.

It took him six years to register for KCSE as a private candidate. He never sat a day in a class. But he passed. “Without that certificate, maybe I would not be working here at Securex.”

He had wanted to be an accountant. He liked mathematics. He liked commerce. Life, meanwhile, had other lessons about money. He lost nearly half a million shillings in Nakuru, sold mandazi in Eldoret, and struggled with a small loan.

In 2016, he joined Securex as a security officer, posted at a financial institution that gave its staff, including the guards, regular training in how to save, invest and grow money. For Felix, it was another kind of education. A higher learning. He listened. Today, he keeps policies for his children’s school fees. They are ten and six. Both are good at mathematics, like him. The younger one wants to be a doctor.

“My children have always worn shoes, yet I wore my first pair in high school.” And nobody has ever had to sell a chicken to keep them in class.