Kayira was born in Mpale, a village in northern
Nyasaland (now Malawi); the precise date was not recorded. On graduating from this school in 1958 at about the age of 16, he decided that the only way to achieve a college degree was to go to the
US, and he set out on foot to do so. When he reached
Kampala in
Uganda he saw the name of
Skagit Valley College,
Washington state, in a US Information service directory, so he applied and was awarded a place and a scholarship. Kayira then embarked on a journey of more than 3000 kilometres and walked to
Khartoum,
Sudan, where he obtained a visa, and people from Skagit Valley raised the money to bring him over to Washington. He arrived at Skagit Valley two years after setting out. After graduating from Skagit Valley, he went on to study Political Science at the
University of Washington in
Seattle, and then read History at
Cambridge University in the UK. His autobiography,
I Will Try, was on the
New York Times bestseller list for 16 weeks after its publication in 1965. He made his home in England, and died in London on 14 October 2012. In October, 2014, an American charitable organization called "Youth of Malawi" built a primary school in the rural Malawian village of Chimphamba and named it after Legson Kayira. The Legson Kayira Primary School and Community Center is solar-powered, rainwater harvesting, and boasts an outdoor movie projector. On October 13, 2016, Legson's ashes were to be interred in Chimphamba Village, during a memorial ceremony attended by his children. ==Selected writings==