From childhood, we dream of our future careers – a ballet dancer, an astronaut, a doctor. For Loise Kirore, that dream was clear: she wanted to be a nurse.
Growing up, Loise lived in the East African country of Kenya, in a small village called Gatimu. After walking back home after school, she would often help take care of chores on her family’s farm. Whether that be taking the livestock in and out of the field, milking, or cooking dinner.
When Loise was born, her father was 69 years old; a lot older than most new fathers. When Loise was a young girl of about six or seven years, she would often find ways to take care of her father.
Being that he was well into older age, Loise explained that her father had no teeth. Up until that time, she began looking into balanced diets and the importance of them for health.
“So, our typical meal would be like corn with beans and potatoes. Sometimes we will have some greens, some vegetables,” Loise goes on to say, that her, “dad could not chew corn because it was dry corn. So, I would always try to get the corn, but make sure that he is getting some… spinach in there, some potatoes.”
Loise started playing nurse to help her father’s wellbeing. In her “little girl mind,” she did not understand the concept of death. In her youthful innocence, Loise did not grasp what the “rest of life meant;” she simply wanted to care for her father indefinitely.
From that point on, she decided that she wanted to be a nurse when she grew up. And she did a spectacular job of achieving that dream.
Her brother moved to Wisconsin in 1998 and encouraged Loise to come to Wisconsin to get her education.
Growing up, Loise lacked the opportunity to go into nursing school in Kenya because “there are so many bureaucracies and sometimes you have to bribe to get into a good nursing school.”
Her father encouraged her to go to America. He had told her that America “is the land of opportunity, so make sure you go to school and become what you always wanted to be.”
Arriving in the U.S. in 2000, Loise embarked on her educational journey, initially taking one class at a time due to resource limitations.
She had taken her pre-nursing at Madison College and loved everything about it, including the support for students.
She gradually pursued her nursing studies, earning her associate degree at Southwest Tech in Fennimore, Wis., followed by further education at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wis.
Her educational path was not without challenges, including frequent moves and balancing motherhood with her studies.
Her son, who had been a baby and grew as she went through college, said to her at her graduation, “You are not going back to school again.”
Loise went back to college in 2022 and will be graduating this April in 2024.
Loise’s nursing career has seen her serve in various roles, from lab technician at Madison College, Nurse Supervisor and Staff Nurse Educator at Oak Wood Village, a Long-term and Rehabilitation care facility.
“I really enjoyed just getting to mentor new employees and just teach them new skills and be there to support them,” she said.
Her passion for caring for the elderly stems from her deep love for her father and his well-being in his later years.
Loise was hired back at Madison College in August of 2019, by which point she was already teaching in long-term care programs.
“If you can tell now, I have a passion for geriatric patients because I was born by an older parent,” says Loise.
Another one of the classes she teaches is a multilingual nursing assistant class, through Central Hispano, a Dane County organization.
A thing that Loise prides herself in, is that English is her third language.
One of the beliefs she holds is that whenever the students walk into the class, their fear is already “50 percent gone,” said Loise.
“Because most of them speak two languages, and when they hear English is my third language, their like, ‘oh, if you did it, we can do it.’”
Loise’s native language is Kikuyu, a language of the Bantu ethnic group. The second is the Kenya’s national language, Swahili. And lastly, English.
Some of Loise’s colleagues from Oakwood and Madison College will be joining her on a trip to Kenya in the next coming months.
She is eager to highlight the beauty and riches of her home country Kenya, while also challenging stereotypes about Africa.
“I feel like often times we are showing, you know, the bad things about Africa, but we are never shown the really good things that are happening.”
From her advocacy for equity and inclusion in healthcare to her unwavering commitment to education and community, Loise embodies the values and aspirations of her younger self.
With each accomplishment, she honors the little girl who dreamed of making a difference as a nurse.