This American life “Fancy.”

That is how Diana Monyancha describes her first American home, a small apartment near Abrams and I-635. To Diana, electricity and running water equaled luxury.

“You flush the toilet and see it fill back up with water — that’s a sense of hope.”

She had seen a shower before, but never one that worked. And flowing hot water? It was a miracle. Her gratitude is immeasurable. She appreciates how close she came to not receiving an education, not having a teacher who would, for free, work with her after school on math, her toughest subject.

To this day, she eyes with wonder and skepticism freely offered bottles of spring water.

She is determined to take advantage of this unlikely opportunity — a life in America.

As a child, Diana lived in Kibera, a sprawling slum in Nairobi, Kenya where clean water, electricity, education and general safety — not to mention opportunity and hope — were scarce. “When it got dark, you needed to be inside,” Diana says. “If you had a job, you made sure no one knew your salary day.”

Diana and her brother Timothy attended Kenyan school, but logistics were debilitating. “We had to use public transportation, and a lot of the time the bus drivers didn’t want to pick up kids, because we could not pay. Sometimes they would just pick us up on their last route, so we would get to school late.” The teachers often chastised them for their tardiness, Diana recalls.

After-school tutoring was for paying clients. Diana went to extraordinary lengths in her quest for a decent education, and she recalls promising teachers that her parents would pay for math tutoring, knowing they could not. “Then when I could not pay, it was so embarrassing, and I felt guilty.” Homework also was problematic. “We had to get it done before the sun went down, because we had no lights.”

Recounting the day she found out that her family had been selected for the United States government’s Diversity Immigrant Visa Program chokes her up. She looks at the ceiling and a tear trickles down her cheek. “I was so happy, so scared something would go wrong.” After 14 years of abject poverty, relentless fear and strife, she would have a new life.