As you are reading this article, some images are forming up in your mind. They are pictures of a state of desolation - of hunger, of disease-stricken humans, of people killing each other, of a people struggling for the next minute, hour, day, week, month and year of life. Yes, that is what you have known, what you always thought and what you certainly expect of the dark continent of Africa!

Yet behind this overall picture of hopelessness as portrayed by media across the world, the people whose struggles and triumphs, delights and sadness, despair and hopes symbolize the dignity of humanity, never really come to the limelight. But there is another Africa, one of progress and hope, and I want to share that Africa - my Africa - with you today.

Twenty-six years ago, Kazungu Kitsao was amongst a group of about thirty young boys and girls who had come to enrol as pioneer students in a brand new school. He was the oldest of eleven children, seventeen if you counted his father's other wife and family. His father was a subsistence farmer, living from crop to crop and suffering if the rains failed. His mother spent most of her time tending the family's maize fields, pounding and grinding the tough ripe kernels into maize flour, carrying water and babies, and cooking maize porridge, the family's main staple food.

Kazungu looked too young then to start school, and he barely passed his enrolment test, which was being able to stretch his little arm across his head to touch his ear on the other side. This was the way that had been devised to establish the entry age for pupils, because the ages of most of them had never been recorded by their illiterate fathers and were therefore not known.

The schoolhouse had no walls; it was only a giant tree, and the blackboard only a piece of wood resting against it. The teacher, Mr. Karani, had only a few pieces of chalk he had brought from home. Sometimes the blackboard was not necessary, when the children would learn to count with piles of stones and bundles of sticks.

As the newly enrolled lads and lasses embraced the new magic brought by the lone teacher, times were many when they would have to shield themselves from the rains under the huge tree that was their house of learning.

Some of the pupils walked many kilometres to reach their school. Kazungu was one of them. He would have to wake up before daybreak and start the long trek to school carrying his only meal for the day, cold maize porridge left over from the night before. Kazungu's father, himself illiterate, didn't care too much whether Kazungu went to school or not. But Kazungu wanted to learn. No one had to make him go. For him, it was a trek of hope, a chance to get what those who had read many books had. He wanted to be like them . . to speak English, to sit in a big office and to drive a car. No more would he have to walk those long distances. Perhaps he would one day actually be able to go back to his village driving, proof of the rewards of his efforts and hard work. Yes, he was determined to scale the heights, and if walking the long distances and staying hungry the whole day was the price to pay for the magic of knowledge, Kazungu Kitsao was ready to pay it.

A local hotel had just been built and occasionally tourists would visit the school. Sometimes a generous tourist would donate supplies or money to the school, and gradually, it began to improve. Unknown to the pupils, some of the tourists returned home and raised money for the school through organizations like the YMCA, which pledged to pay the high school fees of the school's best two students.

Kazungu was a keen student, especially interested in drama and poetry. He was determined to be the top in his class. And when Kazungu clinched the first position from his school in the grade eight national exams, he did win one of those sought-after scholarships. He continued to have academic success, and the YMCA, true to its pledge, continued sponsoring him through high school and eventually even through a three-year college program. When he proudly graduated with a diploma, Kazungu was the first in his family to do so.

With his new confidence and skills, Kazungu was able to get a job within a year after graduation, and with the earnings from that job, help ensure that some of his younger brothers were able to follow in his footsteps. Soon married and the father of his own children, he nonetheless managed to put two of his younger brothers through high school, allowing them to share in the benefits that he had gained by having been helped through school.

Kazungu Kitsao is a real person. And while I now go under my Christian name rather than the African one my father gave me 32 years ago, I am the same boy who learned his first letters under the shelter of that tree.

My struggles in life are far from over, and our family still has far to go. But thanks to the enduring value of education and the generosity of strangers, a cycle has been broken, and a new family story has begun to be written. Now free of the burden of illiteracy, my generation now has a whole new world of possibilities opening up to it. With the money I earn from my job, a job my father could never aspire to, I will be able to ensure that my own children receive higher education and have the chance to surpass me, in turn.

Miracles don't happen overnight, and I still haven't fulfilled my ambition of driving a car back to my village. But when you view the progress that has been achieved within a single generation against the backdrop of a family whose standard of living remained virtually unchanged for hundred of years, you will begin to understand the dramatic difference education can make.

There are many Kazungus out there, in the villages, who in spite of having been born bright academically, have to drop out of school because of lack of school fees. I am far from alone, although I am one of the lucky ones. Without outside help most of those Kazungus will fall by the wayside and live the same life their fathers did, struggling to keep food on the table and disease at bay.

But with the help of individuals and of conscientious organizations - like the YMCA, Plan International, Action Aid, and many others, organizations who deal directly with the people rather than with the governments who have lost touch with them - change is happening for others, just as it happened for me. The successful programs are not those that hand out money. The successful programs are those that reach out directly to the people and help them establish an infrastructure for education, showing them how it is done, helping them get proper books, buildings and teachers, assisting with their school fees, and leaving them the training and tools to continue.

Africa's progress may be slow, it may be discouraging, and there are times that we seem to be going backwards. But it is not hopeless. Because there are many more Kazungus - millions more, waiting in the villages, waiting for their potential to be tapped through the miracle of education. They have always been there, like undiscovered diamonds in the dust.

They will continue waiting, unappreciated, underutilized, until the day when they will be called upon to reveal their true potential. Without education, they will simply live their lives as generations have before them. But with education, this most precious of gifts, Africa's permanent progress can and will be achieved. Because the love of learning, once gained, tends to multiply itself, unleashing a benefit that will ripple down through the generations and thus last forever.