Tacked up on my bulletin board next to my desk is a black-and-white photograph clipped from the New York Times of an 84-year-old Kenyan man crouched down inside his mud hut residence, reading from his Bible using his index finger as a cursor.

The lanky, gray-bearded man, Kimani Nganga Maruge, has on a white dress shirt and blue suitcoat with matching trousers he's purposefully cut off above the knee to resemble the school uniforms worn by schoolchildren across his native country.

A cutline quote from him reads, "Let them who want to make fun of me do it. I will continue to learn."

The A-section feature profile on Maruge, saved in my files from April 2004, tells of a cane-carrying widower and great-grandfather who never spent a day in school as a youth, instead being directed by his father to mind the family's herd of livestock.

When the government of Kenya announced two years ago that it would offer free primary school education through grade 8, though, Maruge, to the shock of school officials, stood in line among a large group of six-year-olds at a neighborhood campus for enrollment in the first grade.

"There were those in his village who thought Mr. Maruge had gone mad when he began going off to school every morning dressed like a youngster," writes Marc Lacey in the Times piece. "But he had his defenders as well. 'He's not a madman,' said Chacha Abdala Juma, 74, a village elder and friend who himself finished second grade. 'I know him. He's not senile.' "

According to the article, Maruge's desire to learn to read was "to help him determine whether the preacher at his church is actually following the Bible." He wanted basic math skills to "allow him to better keep track of his money."

"At Kapkenduiywa Primary, Mr. Maruge is now a fixture," the article confirms. "He is frequently the first student to arrive in the morning, sometimes an hour early. During the school day, he plays the role of both student and teacher. He feels free to give advice to his classmates, reminding them frequently to study hard and listen to their parents. And he also regales the teachers, most of whom are half his age, with stories about Kenya's earlier days. 'We learn a lot from him,' said Mr. Chemworem, his teacher. 'He's like a history book.' "

At the end of each school day, Maruge walks back to the home he shares with his sister to tend to his small herd of sheep and his goats and chickens. "Later, he pulls out his books to study a bit before dinner," says the article. "He is the only student at the school who asks his teacher for homework."