If you decided to go for a walk on the campus of Cameron University, you might see a young man named Francis Waweru hustling past on his way to class or the library.
In that moment, you might easily mistake him for any other young, 20-something student. Tall, athletic, and friendly, he doesn’t immediately stand out from the crowd.
Or, perhaps you recently attended the Lawton Ballet Theatre’s presentation of “The Nutcracker,” where you would have seen Waweru in his lead role as The Cavalier. You might have been impressed by his graceful performance or his commanding stage presence, but otherwise see him as a typical ballet dancer.
In fact, his story is anything but typical.
Francis Waweru was born in Nairobi, Kenya, which is 8,745 miles away from Lawton, as the crow flies. Kenya is a large, democratic country in Eastern Africa, located on the equator. Nairobi, the capital and largest city, has over 10 million people in its metro area.
That’s more than double the population of Oklahoma.
“I grew up in one of the slums,” Waweru recounted. “Life was rough.”
Waweru was no stranger to hardship during his early years. Raised by a single mother who had to leave every day to go to work, he spent a lot of time with other kids in his neighborhood.
“Crime rates were really high,” he explained, “It was a lot.”
In one instance, some of his childhood friends had bragged about stealing phones from a popular public place and then invited him to join them the next evening to do it again.
“It (going into crime) was very tempting, and if you’re not careful you can get sucked into it, or get hurt, or cause a lot of upsets,” he said.
But his mother wouldn’t let that happen.
“I always say that I was fortunate that my parent was really strict,” Waweru explained. “She was always onto me about being careful with who I had around me, and I appreciate that so much. I’ve seen a lot of my friends grow up and go onto a different route in life.
“Now that I’m here looking back at all of that, I see a picture of how my situation could have been way worse than it is now. And I just appreciate me being here and all that I have going on for me right now.”
Waweru said coming to the USA had always been a dream, but he had never considered it possible.
“You always want that dream, but you have to live in reality,” he said. “So, you learn to appreciate what you have. I never knew I would leave … I always believed, but I never knew.”
The story of how a poor boy from a Nairobi slum came to be living in Lawton, studying in college and starring in ballet productions is a poignant one.
It all started when Waweru was around 10 years old.
“At the time I was playing football, what you guys call soccer, because that’s what I wanted to be at the time, like a lot of kids, a footballer,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about dancing.
“We had assemblies every morning in school, and one morning during our assembly a studio came in and said they were looking for young, local dancers.”
The studio was named Dance Center Kenya (DCK), which was led by professional American Ballerina Cooper Rust. Unbeknownst to Waweru, DCK had decided to sponsor 10 talented students from his school.
“So, they started showing us steps, and we would copy them,” Waweru recounted, “And now, looking back, I know that they were ballet steps. They ended up selecting just 10 people out of the 800 students.”
Waweru was among them.
According to Dance Center Kenya’s website,
“From DCK’s inception there has been a commitment to reaching into the Kenyan community and finding talented students, irrespective of their ability to pay for training. DCK’s sponsorship program, in conjunction with American charity Artists for Africa, has already affected the lives of many future dancers from disadvantaged backgrounds.”
It certainly made a difference in the life of Waweru. But, at the time, he only considered it a fun new hobby.
“I wasn’t taking it seriously at the time, I was just doing it for fun,” he said.
Before long Waweru and his new dancing friends created a routine and performed it at a regional dance competition, about five hours away from Nairobi. They only finished 10th out of 30 teams, but it still felt like a victory to Waweru. “We were really excited by that,” he recalled.
That competition got Waweru noticed again, and another round of scholarships were given.
“But it was only three of us who got sponsorships,” he said.
Once again, he was among the three.
With this new phase of dancing, Waweru started to notice how seriously the folks around him were taking it, always pushing him and the other students to be better and to take more classes.
“That’s when it clicked that this could really be something,” Waweru said. “The more I did it, the more I invested into it.
“And then one day in 2015, Cooper threw in the idea about us going to the States (USA) for the summer to do a training camp.” Waweru said, “That really shook me. It was something I never expected.”
After a few months, those dreams became a reality, and Waweru arrived at a dance training camp in South Carolina, where he would spend the next month meeting other students from all across the United States, eating his first ever fast-food, being shocked by the South Carolina humidity, and advancing his dancing abilities.
“It was a turning point,” he said, “Like, oh crap — this is really it.”
He had some funny stories about his first time visiting the United States, like accidentally sitting in the driver’s seat of a car, instead of the passenger’s. For context, in Kenya, like in the U.K, they drive on the left side of the road, so to him the cars in the USA seemed backwards.
“That just felt wrong to me,” he said, laughing. “Even now, when I’ve gone and gotten my American driver's license, sometimes I have to think about which side of the car I need to get in on. It just takes time to adjust.”
And he would get more time. The next year, in 2016, he was able to spend another summer at the camp, where he continued building connections and skills. And, eventually, when it was time to go to college, he chose to come to Cameron.
“I kind of fell into Oklahoma,” he explained, “because Scott and Katie own a dance studio here, and they had come to Kenya to visit.”
He is referring to Scott and Katie Veenhuizen, who run the Lawton Ballet Theatre Company.
“Scott was the one who told me about Cameron,” Waweru said. “He gave me an overview of what it would be like. After that it took about a year for me to fully process everything, get my visa, and be able to move out here.”
When asked about how his life is different now than when he was growing up, he emphasized one important aspect.
“It’s more stable,” he said. “I know nothing is promised us, but I don’t have to wake up and carry so much stress anymore.”
However, life isn’t perfect, and there are still some stresses for Waweru. He misses his family, friends and home and finances are a concern.
“To be honest, fees and tuition — that’s a big struggle,” he said.
Waweru is fundraising to try to raise enough money to cover his last few semesters of college. He has a GoFundMe page, which is sponsored by the previously mentioned nonprofit Artists for Africa, and the Lawton Ballet Theatre is also doing its best to help him fundraise.
“We’re pretty close to his goal,” said Katie Veenhuizen, director of LBT.
Waweru tried to downplay his financial situation. “I feel like that’s a normal college kid struggle,” he said.
But his struggle is indeed different.
Most college kids aren’t thousands of miles from home, in a different country, and worried about visa regulations that can restrict how much you can work or earn while studying.
He acknowledged that difficulty.
“I take my hat off to every international student that comes to the States, gets their degree, and goes out and gets a job, because that’s a real struggle just in itself, just to go through with all of that,” he said.
He only has two or three semesters of college left, and is hoping for a Spring 2024 graduation date, with a Bachelor’s of Arts degree in Theater.
Despite his natural ability and high-profile dancing accomplishments, Waweru has focused on the technical side of things in his studies, including lighting and stage design. He works part time at the theater on campus, where he helps build sets and set up for the shows.
After graduation he has big goals. He says his first step will likely be to work for a lighting or stage design company, but after that he wants to return home, to Kenya.
“I want to try to build up the arts project back home,” he said, “It’s not a major thing people do there.”
He recalled how, when he was a child, he never considered the arts as a path out of poverty.
“It would give people an extra option,” he said, “You don’t have to be a footballer or go to higher levels of school — you can go into the arts and get out. That’s the biggest goal I have in my head, to bring it back home.
“But I’ve got to work before that,” he said, acknowledging that it is a long-term dream. “All in due time.”
He lamented how many others are excited to go abroad and leave their hometowns forever.
“It’s a better life going to the States,” he admitted, “But it’s not something that should push you to move out of your own country (forever).”
“You can have a better life in Kenya (too). I want to help people back home to know that we can make it work,” Waweru said. “We can help ourselves.”
Waweru sees a hopeful vision of the future.
“We can build what we have in our country from the ground up,” he said, “and hopefully become something great.
“I just hope to finish this journey, to continue. Not everything is promised, but you’ve gotta go through the steps. I just want to enjoy the journey and hopefully… do something big at the end.”