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Worldâ€™s oldest student dies of cancer - PHOTO

Worldâ€™s oldest student dies of cancer - <font color=red>PHOTO</font>

15 August 2009 11:12 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Kimani Nganga Maruge, the world’s oldest student, has died in Kenya at the age of 90 from stomach cancer, an official at a pensioners’ home where he was living said.
Donatila Ekuyi from Cheshire Home for the Aged, announced his death on Friday, saying: "He has been sick and his condition had deteriorated lately."
Maruge made history at the age of 84 when he earned an entry in the Guinness book of records as the oldest man ever to start primary school.
As a veteran of Kenya’s 1950’s anti-colonial Mau Mau revolt, Maruge once said that he was inspired to start learning when he suspected a preacher was misinterpreting the Bible.
A great-grandfather who had outlived 10 of his 15 children, Maruge took a belated opportunity to educate himself when Mwai Kibaki, the Kenyan president, introduced free primary schooling across the east African nation in 2003.
From his tent at an agricultural showground housing 14,000 displaced people, Maruge walked at least four kilometres each morning to the Kapkenduiywo primary school.
"I came here when fighting broke out - they started burning houses and I was scared because I thought that they would kill me," Maruge said.
Years later, members of his Kikuyu tribe who had moved into western Kenya to farm were attacked by gangs after the disputed re-election of Kibaki in December 2008.
Maruge was forced to abandon school in 2008 and moved to the Cheshire Home after he was displaced with hundreds of thousands of others by the post-electoral violence.