The Competition
Acts of the Moderns III — Part 3/1 of Kenya: A Transformation Story
Dedicated to all my relatives named Njeri and Hazel. You know yourselves, and may your names and your light endure and shine forever
The 4th DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) driverless-car Grand Challenge — dubbed “AI-Max” — took place on October 25th, 2025, in the sun-baked Mojave Desert, USA. The 180-kilometre race stretched from Barstow, California, to Primm, Nevada.
Against all odds, a little-known team from an obscure country emerged victorious in this global competition. Their win, the most improbable in the event’s 20-year history, saw them beat the odds-on favourite from MIT by a staggering 4.57 minutes — creating an instant worldwide sensation!
Which team was this? Where did it come from? How did they defeat the world’s best, including entrants from China, South Korea, India, Japan, France, England, Germany, and the US?
Part 3/1 focuses on the journey of one of the six core — and team lead — members, Dr. Priya Asha Mehta.
The Meeting
A pivotal meeting took place that set the stage for all that was to come.
It was held in the tastefully furnished, wood-panelled, cream-and-earth-toned upholstered, Private Lounge of State House, Nairobi, on a drizzly Sunday morning in late July, 2024.
In attendance, seated in deep leather armchairs, glass coffee table between them, was the President and his innermost coterie of advisers — Bedan Sigor, Richard Maasalit, and Jacklyn Bundotich. In their hands was a 217-page preliminary draft report compiled by Jacob Orowe and his team, recently tasked by the President to come up with a plan about producing and exporting hydrogen energy.
“I trust you have read this early report,” the President began, flipping through it casually. “Is it practical?”
“A pipe-dream,” Richard said, smiling incredulously. “Hydrogen is energy of the future. Even advanced countries like China and the US are just in early stages of using it. The difficulty is that producing it at scale is only practical using natural gas, the so-called Blue type, which in itself is a highly specialized technology beyond us at this time. I see this as something ten or twenty years in the future!”
Jacklyn observed quietly, “Jacob’s emphasis is on scaling production of Green hydrogen using water electrolysis based on renewables. I think it is not only practical, it is brilliant! The science is well understood. The challenge is mostly technological. If we are prepared to crack the technology of especially storage and transportation using modern R&D as Jacob recommends, then this would be a game-changer, no doubt.”
The President turned to Bedan. “What do you think?”
Bedan breathed and sat up in his armchair, which dwarfed his small frame. “It’s ambitious, no doubt! I think we can succeed if we approach it in stages. The question is what kind of partnerships we would need to get us going? I think strong partnerships with China or South Korea can help us get going.”
Jacklyn winced. “I think this is something we would have to do on our own! Jacob is right that no country has succeeded yet transforming into a Green hydrogen economy. We would be the first — if we pulled it off!”
Richard scoffed beneath his breath. “And how would we “pull it off” when we don’t even have the industrial basis to start thinking of being players in the hydrogen industry, in the first place?” He turned to the President. “I think Jacob is an old dreamer who spends too much time playing Space Invaders when he’s not hiding from his bickering three wives! I think we’re better off looking at how to boost our agricultural sector and tourism industry.”
The President sat up and looked at him dryly. “Did you really read this report?” He waved the report at him. “If you did, then you would know that it shows that everything changes if you unlock the hydrogen economy! We reap the multiplier effect. Agriculture, education, healthcare, even tourism — everything is transformed!” He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “The question is, how do we crack this thing?” He turned to Jacklyn, who was his niece. “Chebichii, you seem to have done your homework on this. How do we pull this off?”
Jacklyn answered softly but firmly, “We change our thinking, sir! We stop being a developing country and instead become a developed country. It’s a mindset shift. No more fooling ourselves that we’re catching up with anybody! How? Like the Chinese did it under Deng. We plan exactly how we want our economy to work for the next several decades. We also attract outside investors — not development partners. The difference is investors bring in capital and know-how, while development partners take both out. And we bring in all our best people to help.”
Naivasha
It was an incredible sight to behold! As you drove down the Great Rift Valley escarpment at Kinungi at night, heading towards glinting freshwater Lake Naivasha, a gallery carousel came into view at the foot of the Mau Escarpment: Giant, over ninety-foot tall, three-dimensional, African heroes and heroines, scrolling horizontally — brought back to life as holographic projections of light.
There was Yaa Asantewaa, royal Queen Mother of Ejisu in the Ashanti Empire, commander of the Ashanti army during the War of the Golden Stool, looking proud and dignified in duku head-wrap, and bright purple hand-woven silk Kente wrapper, draped thickly over left shoulder Akan style.
Towering next to her was Emperor Menelik II of Ethiopia, victor at the Battle of Adwa, proudly wearing the Negusa Nagast or ‘King of Kings’ and ‘Elect of God’ gilded crown, and gold-bordered white-and-green Shamma flowing robe made from fine silk and cotton.
Next was majestic Queen Hatshepsut of the famed 18th Dynasty, one of the most powerful pharaohs of ancient Egypt, looking stunningly beautiful wearing the Two Crowns Deshret — the flat-top Red Crown of Lower Egypt with protruding spiral — and Hedjet — the conical White Crown of Upper Egypt.
Next was Tariq ibn Ziyad, Umayyad Berber general and conqueror of Iberia for whom Gibraltar is named after — “Jabal Tariq” — , striking a martial pose with curved Sayf sword in hand, black Imama turban wrapped tightly over his head, tail falling over his right shoulder, and deep crimson jubba cloak with edges adorned with intricate geometric embroidery in gold and silver thread.
Then followed a pensive Queen Nyabingi, empress of the Karagwe Kingdom and spiritual leader of the Banyarwanda, clad in a shimmering multilayered Umushanana barkcloth wrapper, with uplifted regal embroidered cape of leopard skin and raffia cloth.
And more heroes and heroines kept coming and going. If anything, it was captivating and humbling — pleasantly reminding you, perhaps nudging you, that you were in a place where great human beings had once lived and breathed and done their thing. Now it was your turn to do yours while alive. Not for nothing was it known as The Great Hall of the Africans.
People drove from Nairobi and other distant places just to stand and bathe in this unique and magnificent showcase! Tourists visiting the world-famous Maasai Mara National Reserve were dumbfounded and fascinated.
On Thursday evening, the 2nd day of January, 2025, Dr Priya Asha Mehta, her sister Rina Ndambuki, and cousin Vijay Mojaryia, were amongst the awestruck gogglers on one of the many newly-constructed viewpoints along the escarpment highway.
“I recognize that one!” Rina said excitedly. “Dedan Kimathi!”
“Wow!” enthused Vijay. “That looks like Abubai Patel?”
And still between the lake and Mau Escarpment was another captivating spectacle that many came to see: A beehive of construction activity going on day and night, in an area “the size of more than one thousand football fields that never sleeps” — as one wowed journalist had tried to convey its magnitude!
For the whole south-western region around Lake Naivasha had been designated, and now was busy transforming into, the industrial and research hub of Kenya’s new Green Hydrogen Energy Transition Program or GHETAM — a central piece in a more top-secret undertaking publicly known only in outline form as the Murumbi Plan.
Oloombokoshi
Two and a half hours later, they arrived at the main gate at Oloombokoshi, about 70 kilometres south-west of Lake Naivasha as the crow flies and 123 kilometres by road, having followed not just a Google PIN but more conveniently the bright lights and a convoy of unmarked giant covered trucks moving silently in the bright darkness.
The whole place was lit better than daylight by spindly 30-foot-high LED floodlight towers, revealing ongoing construction of a gargantuan 10-storey-high, football-field-size centre. Beyond it and other outlying buildings could be seen an endless tent-city, stretching beyond the eye could see in all directions.
At first there was a problem trying to identify who exactly Priya was. Officious security personnel in dark-blue suits and blue helmets seemingly could not place her name in the computer or manual registers. Then she dialled a number using her sister’s cell phone. After pleasantries, she passed the phone to one of the security officers.
Priya was surprisingly energetic and excited. This was despite a long journey: nearly 14 hours flying on Etihad Airways from Bengaluru, India, to Nairobi (with a stopover in Abu Dhabi), followed by an additional six hours from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport to Naivasha.
Priya was used to 18-hour workdays and 8-kilometre daily brisk jogs, including 20 laps front-crawling in a swimming pool, at the crack of dawn. So she could easily shrug off the jet-lag — No! There was something else at work here. A fairy-tale-like, expectant, excitement in the air that you sensed deeply around you rather than just felt in your bones. It was like being inside a dream, a magical, unfolding, adventure. How could you be tired?
Indeed, her country of birth was in the throes of transformation. Coming from something, moving to something else.
As they waited for clearance at the gate, Priya closed her eyes and relived, not for the first time, how this incredible adventure had come to her — just a breathy four weeks’ ago.
Ahmedabad
The small lecture Room E15-D at the Indian Space Research Organization’s Space Applications Centre in Ahmedabad was surprisingly crowded as Dr Argawal Balakrishnan — lead systems scientist for the trajectory modelling team for the Mars Orbiter Mission II — leaned over a digital board typing delta-v calculations rapidly.
“We know we’re dealing with the change in velocity needed to inject the probe into a Hohmann transfer orbit towards Mars,” Argawal explained matter-of-factly as he scribbled. “Every micro-Newton of force counts. If they’re off by even a fraction, the probe will veer millions of kilometres off course over the months-long journey. So, to be safe with our orbital inclination corrections, we need to — ”
But, he was interrupted by the urgent entry of one of the centre’s administration staff members, who whispered something in his ear.
Argawal turned and looked up at Priya. “Priya, you have a visitor!”
The reception lobby at ISRO SAC’s headquarters was a blend of 1980s government Spartan architecture and scientific prestige. Smooth terrazzo floors reflected muted sunlight pouring in through tall glass windows. A large scale model of the PSLV — Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle — rocket, India’s equivalent to NASA’s famous Saturn V, stood encased in a glass near the entrance.
On the wall was a timeline mural showcasing every ISRO mission, with bold highlights for Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan, and Gaganyaan. Next to it a digital display cycled through mission updates and telemetry snapshots, while a looping video in English and Hindi explained ISRO’s legacy and future.
The reception desk was functional, with smiling attendant ladies in crisp saris receiving visitors. Behind the desk a soft blue ISRO logo gleamed against a matte background proclaiming the agency’s mission: Space technology in the service of humankind.
There were plush but simple chairs in the waiting area. Potted plants softened the atmosphere. Near the main entrance a bronze bust of Vikram Sarabhai — the deeply venerated Father of the Indian Space Program — kept silent vigil, as SAC engineers and scientists in sandals and kurtas mixed with visiting scientists, students, international guests, and others.
One such ‘international guest’ was standing imbibing the Gaganyaan mission highlights as Priya, wearing her white lab coat over jeans and T-shirt, hair tied back in a practical bun, walked in through the main entrance. She froze and her mouth dropped when she saw who it was.
“Chamgei, Priya! Koik konyit? Koba nebo somok en Elgeyo! Komie muren ak kwon tum ne bo che kigile. Che Indians en tugui nebo keny chebo?”
Before Priya recovered enough to say a word, the President’s aid handed him a kraft jar marked Purple Tea — Nandi Hills. The President said to Priya warmly, “I hear you’re a chai addict, like me!” He held it out for her to take. “Here’s a present from home, you might enjoy!”
Who could refuse their President? Who could refuse home-grown tea?
Bengaluru
A week later, Priya was back at her lab base at ISRO’s U.R. Rao Satellite Centre or URSC, in Bengaluru, Karnataka. This was the main spacecraft design and integration headquarters, and now also included the Martian Mission II ground rover design project, where Priya was team lead of the remote buggy’s Autonomous Terrain Sensor Unit or ATSU.
Then the video conference she had been dreading was at hand. Sure enough, there in her inbox was the Google Meet invite. She experienced a sinking feeling. How was she going to let down her President?
“No! We cannot let you go, Priya! Mars rover is your baby now.” The Chairman of ISRO had told Priya in no uncertain terms during a meeting inside his office a day ago at the Antariksh Bhavan Campus at ISRO’s main headquarters. “The Kenyans will have to wait! I don’t care if it’s the Kenyan President himself who is coming fishing for you! Aa kyarey nathi thay!”
And then the online meeting began promptly at 8:40am — which was 6:10am in Nairobi.
Priya was shocked to see who was in the meeting. Besides the President of Kenya, there was Jacklyn Bundotich, now Special Programs Adviser to the President. Then there was the Chairman of ISRO, looking humble. And then there was the Prime Minister of India, looking radiant.
“The President tells me you and he are almost village neighbours!” the Prime Minister joked to Priya. “Well, we can’t stop a parent from taking his child!”
Two minutes later, the Prime Minister and Chairman left the meeting, leaving just the Kenyans going on.
“We know it’s not as exciting as the Mars rover, but we want you to head our new Autonomous Vehicle Program,” the President explained to Priya. “The idea is to create AVs powered by hydrogen fuel cells for transport as a service in our urban centres over the next three years. Anybody, even children or the elderly or blind and disabled people, should be able to afford calling on such a service to go anywhere they need to go within the city or town.”
It was heady stuff. Priya was impressed.
Kapsoya
Priya Asha Mehta was as Kenyan as Kenyans come. Born on October 27th, 2000, at Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, at the turn of the auspicious millennium, she grew up in the gentle, rolling green landscapes of Kapsoya — a mixed middle-class suburb east of Eldoret, where many Asian-Kenyans had settled since the 1950s. She was the second child of Jayant and Nirmal Mehta, both third-generation Kenyans.
Priya’s paternal great-grandfather, Rameshbhai Mehta, had come to Kenya from Gujarat in 1896 as an indentured labourer — the exploited British “coolies” — to work on the Uganda Railway, which would revolutionize transportation in the region and, in the process, accidentally create a new country, Kenya. After construction, he chose to stay, using his small bonus and savings to open a small general shop in Makindu in 1902.
The shop had thrived, with Priya’s paternal grandfather, Mukheesh Mehta, Rameshbhai’s fourth of seven children, opening a branch in Eldoret town in 1957 — the fifth largest town in Kenya by population — six years before her father, Jayant, was born.
Priya, her older brother Ravi and younger twin sisters Kamini and Rina, had grown up around the family legacy — Mehta General Stores on Oloo Street, then run by a great-aunt, her parents and two uncles — specializing in hardware, fabrics, and electronics.
Priya, her siblings, and two generations of relatives grew up on her grandfather’s 10-acre property in evergreen Kapsoya. Priya’s family occupied the original rambling two-storey colonial-style bungalow Mukheesh had built, featuring ten bedrooms and two kitchens. On opposite sides of their house were the smaller homes of three other relatives. The entire property was enclosed by trim kei-apple and euphorbia hedges and lined with Cypress, Pine, and Eucalyptus trees.
Priya’s mother and an aunt cultivated a colourful garden near their house, showcasing prominent Jacaranda and Hibiscus trees. Beyond this, between the family homes on the expansive property, the Mehta children and their many neighborhood friends played football, hockey, and cricket on lush Kikuyu grass, surrounded by natural groves scented by evergreen Grevilliea and the fiery blooms of Nandi flame trees.
Eldoret
Priya’s formal schooling began at Highlands Education Centre Primary School, a private co-ed day-school located in North Eldoret, where she was dropped and picked up from home by a yellow school bus, along with six other cousins.
Thanks to her strict father, she, her sisters and other eight cousins were exempted from Christian Religious Education and instead attended Dharma lessons conducted on weekends at the Shree Swaminarayan Mandir Hindu temple in Eldoret town.
At age 13 in 2013, Priya just mercifully scraped the 380 out of 500 marks needed in the nation-wide Kenya Certificate of Primary Education or KCPE exams to be admitted into the prestigious Moi Girls’ High School boarding school — a whitewashed stone and red-tile-roof colonial-era building established in 1928 for British and Afrikaner settler children, opening its doors to other races after independence in 1963.
Priya was a struggling child in her early teens, lost in a swirling household of relatives, parents too busy with the shop to give her more than cursory attention — just an average child in a sea of children more or less left to their own devices.
Her older brother Ravi had been shipped off to Canada at an early age to live with another branch of the family after his grades had similarly suffered. There was talk of doing the same for Priya when an unlikely relative stepped in to fill the void in her life.
Chandrikaben Banerjee was to Priya and her generation fondly named Fua-Baa or great-aunt. At age 82, she was deceased grandfather Mukheesh’s younger sister. Long widowed, she had left her place in Nairobi in 2014 and come to live where it was most serene and peaceful for her End-Stage Refractory Heart Failure, given less than a year to live by her doctors.
But, instead of dying on schedule, her heart had rallied in the cool, temperate, therapeutic atmosphere of the Uasin Gishu highlands, and she became the spiritual and moral cornerstone of the family. Her Ayurvedic and scriptural knowledge — a living library of Tulsi Ramayan, Bhagavatam, and Patanjali’s Yoga Sustras — was like an endless fountain of wisdom that Priya could not drink enough of.
Suddenly, there was new meaning as Priya, at home on holidays, went about lighting diya oil lamps in the shrine room at the crack of dawn with her sisters and cousins, surrounded by murtis of Ganesh, Lakshmi, and Khodiyar Maa — the Kuladevata or ancestral tutelary deity of the family.
During holidays, Priya and a clutch of other relatives would sit on the grass beside Fua-Baa, herself seated on a wooden bench, under the shade of a particularly giant Nandi flame tree not far from the house.
One day, Fua-Baa, who was particularly fond of Priya and followed up on her performance in school, wearing her small round reading glasses, careworn face radiant with an enigmatic smile, read from her well-thumbed Gujarati copy of the Gita, to Priya.
“Tame kaam karo, man thi, satya thi — not for prize, not for praise. You do your dharma. The fruit is not your burden. Bhagwan will take care of that.”
It was a profound lesson Fua-Baa-style from a shloka from the Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 2, Verse 47:
You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.
Priya memorized and carried the verse in her head thenceforward. To her, it meant that she had to give the best of herself in everything she did, not expecting any reward, not worrying what others thought.
That is how an average 15-year-old student scoring Bs and Cs and performing in the middle of her class applied herself anew and in less than two years turned herself into a straight-A student at the top of her class, including in the subject of Kiswahili, which she had been especially struggling.
As a baby and toddler Priya had always preferred toy cars and lego blocks — considered boys’ toys, rather than dolls and cooking sets. She had been more comfortable tinkering on radios and computers, than playing “house” with other girls and sewing with needles and threads.
So it came rather naturally to her when a sharp, slightly eccentric teacher in her mid-forties, Ms. Rhoda Awiti — Priya’s physics teacher in school — infused Priya with a new love for robotics that began to give her life a new direction and meaning.
Teacher Rhoda gifted Priya with a second-hand, worn copy of Richard Feynman’s classic teaser book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character, that Priya read over and over again, almost memorizing it by heart like her precious Fua-Baa’s potent verses.
It was also teacher Rhoda who encouraged and helped Priya start a Robotics Science Club in school, which began to meet every Friday afternoon after school in the science lab.
At first it only attracted two people: Priya and her best friend, Susan Chepkemoi — “As thick as thieves!” the Principal described them wryly.
But, as they got down to business, cobbling parts from broken DVD players, old computer towers donated by well-wishers, discarded motors and batteries from solar kits leftovers from geography experiments, and persistently built their first fumbling robot — a wildly whirring and twitching Frankenstein affair built with wire hangars, plastic spoons, bottle caps, with flashing bulbs for eyes — the club began to attract more curious students.
At home on holidays, all day and after the aarti ritual of offering flowers to the deities in the shrine, Priya would disappear into the storehouse near the main house and re-immerse herself programming in C++ and tinkering on her Arduino Uno R3 microcontroller board — a birthday present from her engineer Uncle Rishi in Canada — only pausing to eat her favourite Moong dai khichdi, a lentil-based savory cake and some dhokla with green chutney made by her mother, brought to her by Rina, who adored her.
Then, back in school, after about six months of building impressive simple line-following robots, basic obstacle avoiders, and solar-powered water sensors for the school’s model farm, teacher Rhoda upped the ante by challenging the club to take on a more ambitious and productive project.
It was dubbed “AgriBot” — to build a solar-powered mini irrigation robot that could detect dry soil using sensors, navigate to the location, and release small amounts of water from a mounted reservoir. Priya thought the club could pull it off in three months. It ended up taking one-and-a-half years, at average four hours of five days a week and Saturdays. “One-and-a-half years of the most exciting time of my life,” Priya would later say about the project.
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When Priya and her odd half a dozen student club members sat to think about it, they broke down the project into five logical sections: sensor integration, power systems, mobility, control logic, and environmental relevance.
Their first experiments involved upgrading one of their line-following bots using Light-Dependent-Resistors or LDRs and DC motors — more gifts from engineer Uncle Rishi and teacher Rhoda’s uncanny ability to divert a small chunk of the school’s science lab budget to their project. “It will benefit the school’s farm,” she told the Principal, seriously.
The Project was not without its critics and Negative Nancys and Downer Dans, led by Jane Doukas, a half-Greek half-Kikuyu popular tomboy who sneered at the club’s nerd-heads, “You’re wasting your time trying to build a robot that can irrigate a shamba! It’s impossible! Get a life!”
After weeks of watching the club struggling with basics like breadboarding and soldering, teacher Rhoda drew them aside and told them with a knowing smile, “Einstein said ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.’” With that, she showered the club with books, bought from her own pocket from Amazon, with part of the school’s science budget covering delivery.
There was Make: Electronics by Charles Platt, covering circuits, sensors, and soldering.
There was Arduino Workshop: A Hands-On Introduction with 65 Projects by John Boxall, a clear, project-based guide to understanding microcontrollers. It became Priya’s favourite ‘bedtime story’ while other girls were reading Jane Austen and Agatha Christie and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie — sometimes working on its simple projects alone in the lab passed 3am, when her eyes could no longer remain open.
There was Robot Builder’s Bonanza by Gordon McComb, a practical, low-budget robot building guide with everyday materials.
There was Programming Arduino: Getting Started with Sketches by Simon Monk, an excellent guide for learning C/C++ with Arduino Integrated Development Environment or IDE.
And there was The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill, a treasure trove of complex electronic integration.
Priya and the other club members resorted to drawing lots to decide who would read which and photocopying whole chapters at personal expense if one could not wait in line.
Priya, Susan, and a Ugandan student named Lamaro Oyella, worked on sensor integration. Lama, as the latter was fondly nicknamed, worked out the science based on the fact that water conducts electricity, especially if it contains dissolved salts under cultivated soil. So, the sensor would work on the simple principle that dry soil = poor conductor, whereas wet soil = good conductor.
Thus the first experiments were simply inserting two copper wires into soil samples a short distance apart. A resistor in series with the probe wires formed an analogue voltage divider, which the girls then connected to an analogue input pin on Priya’s Arduino. After more than a hundred experiments, including field trials using a movable arm with a sharp, weighted, knife-like edge to cut into the soil, constructed by another team in the club, the sensor worked like a charm!
Then it was on to solving mobility, which took many months as the girls experimented with different wheeled chassis, finally settling on one salvaged from a broken RC car — generously donated by a fascinated parent well-wisher.
The challenge was more mathematical than sensory. The robot would just need to execute a raster scan pattern across the cultivated field, with a one-foot lateral displacement at the terminus of each linear traversal, then back again after the end of the field, to-and-fro, following pre-programmed coordinates, which Lama studiously worked out.
In the final phase the club dealt with power and autonomy, mounting a 6V mini solar panel on the chassis, connected to a rechargeable Lithium ion battery pack, powering an Arduino Nano and motor driver board, all generously donated by Uncle Rishi in Toronto — the club’s number two fan after teacher Rhoda.
In all, the AgriBot project used locally sourced and/or salvaged RC car frame and DC motors; spoons, bottle caps for wheels and brackets; soil probes from copper wires; plastic tubing from IV drips generously donated by Rhoda’s husband who was a clinician in Kisumu; analogue multimeter on loan from the school’s science lab.
In addition, Uncle Rishi had gifted his adored niece’s club the 6V solar panel with diode, Arduino Nano board, L298N Motor Driver, Li-Ion Battery Pack plus charge controller, 6V mini water pump, USB cables, resistors, jumper wires, and a set of LEDs.
The club girls dubbed their proud creation ‘Ol Mother after an elderly woman, Chebii Kiplimo, who worked on the school’s farm and eyed their contraption with suspicion and frowning disapproval — the unholy work of the devil, she no doubt thought.
On the day of ‘Ol Mother’s first public dress rehearsal, none of the girls could sleep a wink, filled as they were with excitement and anticipation. The Project had attracted fans beyond the school and was initially planned for entry into the 2017 Young Scientists Kenya Expo in Nairobi in August. Unfortunately, they had missed the deadline to participate in this prestigious event due to the sheer unanticipated complexity involved.
Now Priya and all but two of the members were facing final school exams in preparation to sit for their Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education or KCSE exam.
Priya, all the club members, and many others besides, would never forget what happened next.
Early on a Saturday morning, Susan and Lama went to get ‘Ol Mother from her perch in one of the secure stores of the science lab, so that her rechargeable battery pack could be fully charged in the morning sunshine before the public exhibition to all students later in the day.
Lo and behold! They found the store door wide open, padlock in place but open, and their precious ‘Ol Mother gone! Priya had been the last one in the lab and had put away the robot — but she could never, for the life of her, remember if she had forgotten to lock the padlock, since it was after 2am and she had been thoroughly exhausted.
The Principal was livid, teacher Rhoda incredulous, and the club members inconsolable. All the school’s security personnel were called in. The local police were called in. A thorough search throughout the school premises and neighbourhood yielded nothing! ‘Ol Mother, as if answering grumpy Chebii’s prayers, or perhaps being public shy, had seemingly disappeared into thin air — presumably taking wings on her autonomous construction!
Despite the unnerving loss of one-and-a-half-year’s of dedication and rigorous work, Priya performed well in her KCSE exam, graduating second in her school, not surprisingly to anyone after bestie Susan, whom she studied with. She scored Grade As in all but two subjects, English and Kiswahili, where she earned an A- in each.
Nairobi
Thus Priya sailed into the prestigious School of Engineering at the University of Nairobi, where she began her BSc in Mechanical Engineering in 2018 — living in another rambunctious Mehta household, this one in Parklands, walking the odd 3 kilometres to and fro the campus.
It was at the university that Priya — now blossoming into womanhood as an intelligent and self-confident, sensuous dark beauty — had her first serious relationship and also her first serious heartbreak, and somewhere along the way lost her virginity.
His name was Mamadou Niang, an intense but taciturn Senegalese postdoc in Biomechatronics, five years her senior, at the university through an AU-funded Africa mobility fellowship promoting Pan-African research exchange. Priya had had several boyfriends before, mostly black African boys to her parents’ dismay, but nothing had prepared her for tall and handsome Mamadou!
Lodwar
They met in July 2019 while volunteering as interns for an Oxfam International humanitarian project. This collaborative effort between the University of Nairobi and Oxford University was based in Turkana, northern Kenya — one of the driest and harshest regions in the Horn of Africa. The project, dubbed AquaBot: Autonomous Solar-Powered Rover for Subsurface Water Detection, aimed to deploy dozens of autonomous buggies across the rugged terrain to locate underground water catchments.
Mamadou’s research focus was on adaptive locomotion in low-energy robots for unstructured terrain. Priya’s was in robotic engineering. It was a match made in heaven — almost.
As the giddy romance took off inflamed no less by the hot desert climate of Lodwar, Priya and Mamadou both came under the exceptional tutelage of world-famous scientists.
They worked directly under 51-year-old Ingmar Nyman, a Senior Research Fellow in Robotics and AI, from the Department of Engineering Science at Oxford. She would become Priya’s most influential mentor — later helping her secure the critical Rhodes scholarship for her masters program at Oxford.
Leading the Energy and Power Group was Malcom McCulloch, Associate Professor in Engineering Science, a specialist in sustainable off-grid energy access.
Then there was the leader of the project, 74-year-old David Macdonald, Professor of Groundwater Hydrology, School of Geography and the Environment, with 22 years of experience and expertise in Turkana’s unique geology.
Priya and Mamadou were living in separate air-conditioned eco-tents in the Oxfam field compound many feet apart. But, a lot could happen at night when folks were supposedly sleeping and dreaming!
It was a close-knit community of odd sixty-five scientists — so everyone knew about the “Monkey business!” — as Professor Macdonald phrased it delicately — going on between them!
Their lab was a 20-foot converted shipping container with 1.5–2 kW capacity solar panels on the roof, a 5–10 kWh lithium-ion battery storage bank, DC/AC inverter, LED lighting, and a low-energy cooling fan. There was a small portable satellite link for periodic data upload, and fold-out canopies for outdoor testing shade.
Indeed for Priya the Oxfam project was like AgriBot 3.0 on steroids! Only this time they weren’t working with salvaged hand-me-downs and repurposed second-hand materials, but the real deal built and used by experts around the world.
Instead of only one sensor for detecting soil moisture like ‘Ol Mother had, each rover was armed with four more: Ground-Penetrating Radar or GPR, Capacitive Moisture Sensors or CMS for measuring the dielectric constant of the soil, which changes with water content; Thermal Imaging infra-red sensors for measuring cooler spots indicative of moisture below the surface; and Spectroscopic LIDAR — Light Detection and Ranging — tuned to detect mineral composition related to water presence.
Her upgraded tools and instruments now included a Portable CNC Mill or 3D Printer for replacement parts; Micro-drill and Dremel tools for mechanical adjustments; Anti-static mats to protect boards from dust and static build-up in the dry air.
Then Arduino Mega with extensive connections and data handling, and compact Nano for simpler applications; Raspberry Pi 4 Quad Core 64 Bit with passive cooling; Teensy 4.1 USB-based microcontroller for high-speed sensor processing; NVIDIA Jetson Nano/Xavier for lightweight machine vision and AI model inference; and LoRA modules for low-power, long-range telemetry.
Priya and three other fellow interns from the UoN worked on assembly of the Ground-Penetrating Radar or GPR sensors — a briefcase-size black box encased in a composite plastic shell designed to send radar pulses into the ground and read reflected signals to detect changes in subsurface layers, including potential water pockets.
They also worked on putting together Soil Resistivity Sensors — probes with 4 metal spikes made of copper for measuring how resistant the soil is to electric current.
In addition to keeping touch with her large family using a satellite phone, Priya periodically kept Susan, who was then at Harvard, and Lama, then at Makerere, and teacher Rhoda, then teaching in South Africa, informed about all the exciting stuff going on in remotest Africa. She really missed her old team and the science club dearly.
But it was only Susan she told about the flaming romance in the desert. “He’s so hard and long down there!” she confided shyly one night.
“Girl, I hope you’re using protection!” Susan warned her. “The way you two are going on like rabbits you’ll soon have a new science project — yeah, growing inside you! And twins — going by your family history!”
After Christmas break in 2019, everything was going swell, the Project was starting to launch its first probes into the wilderness — and then boom! The COVID-19 virus pulled the rug from under the world, literally! By March the rising death toll was alarming. Talk of locking down entire regions and cities — like China had already—was no longer incredible.
“We’re suspending the Project and evacuating everybody,” Professor Macdonald announced grimly one morning, after the first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Lodwar.
“I have to return home to Senegal,” Mamadou told Priya frankly, as they were packing to return to Nairobi on a special chartered flight. “I want you to come with me.”
There was no question in Priya’s mind. “Yes, I’ll come with you!” She had decided that Mamadou was the man she wanted to marry and spend the rest of her life with.
Before leaving, Ingmar drew Priya aside. “It’s sad, isn’t it? A simple virus causing all this mayhem? Anyway, I want you to finish your undergrad and then I’ll help you come over to Oxford. We’ll get you on a Rhodes scholarship. It’ll help to write up all the projects you’ve done and publish a paper.”
But, Priya didn’t want to go to Oxford. She didn’t want a Rhodes scholarship. She didn’t want to publish any papers. Despite Susan’s carping and Ingmar’s nudging, she only wanted to have Mamadou’s babies!
Nairobi
It was a timely family intervention that saved Priya from herself.
In Eldoret, Jayant and Nirmal were aghast when they heard about their daughter’s latest plans. They called Priya, now back in Nairobi with her relatives in Parklands. “Tane akal nathe? Tu Dakar javu che? Aa covid to fariy phailayo che, aney tu studies pan interrupt karvani? Are bhai!”
“But, Bapuji, my studies are already interrupted by covid. They want to start online studies, which I can do online in Dakar!”
Nirmal came on the cell phone. “Beta, it’s a boy, no? Pramila told Rina you have a Senegalese boy now, no?”
Priya paused uneasily. Lying to her parents was not something she liked. On the other hand, admitting her relationship with Mamadou would be the end of the conversation. “Mammi, it’s not! I have a friend from school who — ”
“Bas kar jhooth bolvanu, dikri!” Jayant shot back angrily. “Tu have moti thai gayi che — thodu samajh ne, grow up!” But he might as well have been swearing and shouting at a rock.
Nirmal, more in control of her emotions and correctly sensing how serious the situation was, told Priya gently, “Come home, beta! Come and talk with Fua-Baa!” Nirmal full well understood that Priya’s fond great-aunt was now probably the only person in the world who could bring her back to her senses. “She’s not well, you know?”
“They don’t understand!” Priya cried to Susan, that evening. “Nobody does!”
“So, what are you going to do?” Susan asked.
“Mamadou is leaving tomorrow morning on Ethiopian Airways. He’s got my ticket. I’m going with him. They’ll understand once I’m in Dakar.”
Coincidentally, where Susan was, playing in the background was Gladys Knight’s and the Pips’ famous song Midnight Train to Georgia.
“But, how, girl? You don’t have a passport!”
Priya shrugged. “That’s taken care of! We went to the Senegalese consulate earlier today. Mamadou’s uncle works as a diplomat in London. He got me a diplomatic passport I can use.” Where there’s a will, there’s always a way.
And I’ll be with him (I know you will)
On that midnight train to Georgia
(Leaving on a midnight train to Georgia)
I’d rather live in his world (live in his world)
Than live without him in mine (world, world)
(It’s his, his and hers alone)
And that was how Susan passed on the information to Rina, who passed it on to her parents and a plan was quickly hatched.
The following morning, after the prabhata or morning rituals, bath and a light breakfast of masala chai and upma — roasted semolina, mustard seeds, curry leaves, peas, and a squeeze of lime — Priya packed her laptop in usual carry-bag and called an Uber. “I’m going to the university,” Priya told her cousin, Pramila simply. “They’ve opened a new online portal for studies and want to instruct us how to use it. I’ve called a cab.”
“This early? Aren’t you walking there?” Pramila asked incuriously, knowing what was going on. It was 6:04am.
Priya mumbled something inaudible under her breath and just ignored her cousin and went about her business, leaving through the back door through the kitchen.
The Uber’s destination was Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. It was just about to arrive at the main entrance when Priya suddenly saw Uncle Didi’s green Toyota Prado appear and cut into its lane, forcing it to a hair-raising emergency stop. Before she could blink twice, Uncle Didi, cousin Ishaan and cousin Yug jumped out and came to the Uber. Before the stupefied Uber driver could open his mouth to protest, Priya was already in the air on her way to the open Prado, kicking and screaming wildly.
Kapsoya
It took Priya more than six months to get over Mamadou, whom she never heard from again. And she never spoke to Susan for another six.
Before her death in April 2020, Fua-Baa called Priya to her deathbed upstairs and told her haltingly, “Focus on your studies, my child. You have a chance now to go to Oxford University — the best university in the whole world! You’ll be the first one in our family to achieve such great thing! Don’t waste it. As for love, it will come, my child. Don’t be in a hurry.”
And that’s exacty what Priya did — focus on her studies, channelling all her burning, frustrated energy back into her passion, science. I’ll never love another man, Priya vowed to herself bitterly.
Despite using it as a cover, the University of Nairobi did indeed accelerate learning through online modules and flexible coursework, in part over-compensating for the disruption caused by COVID-19. Priya was able to graduate in February 2022 with First-Class Honours — cutting almost two years from the normal academic programme.
By that time, with Ingmar’s help, her papers on AgriBot and AquaBot were published in the prestigious Acta Astronautica — the premier international journal for space research and technology. And, as Ingmar had promised, this helped smooth Priya’s way into postgraduate study at Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship, joining the DPhil in Engineering Science programme.
Oxford
Priya’s chosen speciality in Robotics and Advanced Sensor Integration for Extraordinary Terrain, plus her prestigious publications, began to draw attention from NASA, ISRO, and the European Space Agency or ESA.
And when in early 2023, with Ingmar’s help, she published an academic paper in the esteemed journal Nature on a radical modular sensing system using AI-driven calibration, recruiters from all three agencies, and new ones besides, at last began to beat a path to her door in Oxfordshire with tantalizing offers.
As her programme supervisor, Ingmar successfuly nudged Priya towards a secondment with ISRO URSC, which had opened up international research collaboration for its forthcoming Mars Mission II, now including a rover component.
Bengaluru — Oxford
From July 2023 to December, Priya was embedded with ISRO engineers, integrating her novel sensor technology into rover prototypes designed for Martian regolith and thermal extremes.
Her research focus, and what became the title of her thesis, was Multi-Modal Sensor Integration for Autonomous Rover Mobility in Martian Environments.
In January 2024, Priya was back at Oxford, where she began writing her thesis, including fieldwork data, integration results from ISRO, and simulated performance testing. She submitted the remarkable 714-page scientific odyssey in September.
After passing her viva voce with distinction, the Board of Examiners formally approved her DPhil in November, with minor corrections.
Not surprisingly, the first person to congratulate “Dr” Priya Asha Mehta was the Chairman of ISRO himself, offering her a permanent job.
END.
Acknowledgements
The history of DARPA’s three driverless-car challenges is covered in Lawrence D. Burns, Christopher Shulgan: Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car — and How it will Reshape Our World.
Robotics is a big topic with many specialized aspects. Key research included: Stuart Russel, Peter Norvig: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Kevin M. Lynch, Frank C. Park: Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control. John J. Craig: Introduction to Robotics: Mechanics and Control. Gordon McComb: Robot Builder’s Bonanza.
The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) is covered by Gubir Singh: The Indian Space Program: India’s Incredible Journey from the Third World towards the First. R. Aravamudan: ISRO: A Personal History.
Other essential research has come from online resources: On Moi Girls’ High School: http://moigirlseldoret.ac.ke/. Highlands Education Centre Primary School: https://primaryschool.co.ke/uasin-gishu/soy/eldoret-north/highland-education-centre-09021/. Eldoret: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldoret. Naivasha: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naivasha.
I must also admit that I could not have written this instalment without the “co-authorship” no-less of ChatGPT 4o (including language translations) and also Gemini 2.0 Flash (mostly grammar corrections). We welcome and embrace this new digital species of humanity’s continuing evolution :-)
Finally, I’d like to thank my wife Milly, children Nick and Njambi, grandson Kyro, and brother Chris, for enabling and tolerating my writing excursions.
