Collins Koech had not visited home in three and a half years.
The Kenyan cross country runner and nursing major sat in the Deep Quiet room at the library, papers strewn over the table in front of him. Even with the hefty time commitment of nursing school and cross country practice, he welcomed me with a smile, inviting me to share his space for a few precious minutes of his study time.
A junior at Union, he had been in the United States for over three years without ever traveling back to Kenya, the place where he grew up.
But fellow nursing majors Gabriella May and Loghan Mealer wanted to change that.
“They asked me, ‘Hey, how long has it been since you were last home?’” Koech said. A couple of days later, they told him that there was a meeting with a professor after his last final. When he walked in, he was met with a shock.
May and Mealer had made a GoFundMe for Koech two nights before, and in those 48 hours, they had raised over two thousand dollars––enough money for two round trips to Kenya. Their entire nursing class revealed the amount to Koech during the so-called ‘meeting.’
May had had a conversation with Koech prior to starting the GoFundMe that sparked the idea for it, finding out that he hadn’t been able to visit home in years.
“It just made me really sad that he wasn’t gonna be able to go home,” May said. “And so I talked to Loghan about it later that night. And I just like, asked her, ‘You think it’d be impossible if we could raise enough money for him to go home?”
From there, the GoFundMe to send Koech home was born, sent first in Koech’s nursing class group chat and later making its way around campus and even off.
“Everyone loves Collins,” May said, Mealer nodding in agreement next to her. “He’s just like the most joyful person. He never complains and is literally the nicest person you will ever meet. I think that’s why everyone was just so willing to give all that money, because everyone knows that he deserved it.”
Many of the donors were individuals who did not even have a relationship with Koech.
“There’s a lot of people that just joined the thing that I don’t even know,” Koech said.
Because of the GoFundMe, Koech was able to surprise his family last Christmas. His mom especially was overjoyed to see him, literally falling on the ground when he got out of the car to greet her.
“No one had any idea that I was going home,” Koech said, grinning widely. “So I just showed up. It was a big thing.”
He stayed there from late December to late January, spending a month with his family after so long away. He plans to return Christmas of 2022 as well, a trip still covered by his GoFundMe.
Until then, he is busy all hours of the day, waking up at five in the morning for cross country practices and then immediately going––sometimes running––to class afterwards that often lasts till late afternoon.
“Sometimes I just get to class sweating,” laughed Koech. But, while he can joke about it, his workload is not an easy one. Between daily practices and frequent clinicals, Koech has his hands full.
“I feel like it’s, it’s a really tough thing, actually, to just, like, be able to survive in nursing school and be able to be in cross country too,” Koech said.
So the news––which came after his last final––that he would get to visit home for J-term was truly encouraging for Koech, whose stress had understandably skyrocketed during finals week.
“I feel like that changed a lot of things,” Koech said. “It really showed me how people can just come together. And it doesn’t matter where you come from. I feel like I came to Union and I met a family away from home.”
Photo by Laila Al-Hagal
