Educating street children in the Mathare slums

KENYAN ELECTIONS RUINED MY EDUCATION! My name is Edward, I live in Kibera which is the largest slum in Kenya. I only live with my mother and 5 siblings. Life is not easy since my mother does not have a stable job. She relies on casual jobs such as doing laundry for neighboring communities and sometimes cooking French fries along the road. She does this to be able to feed us. The laundry business does not pay well as most times she is overworked and paid poorly. Usually due to her poor pay, we can only afford one meal a day and there are days when we would go without food. This is a norm for us. I am the first born in my family. Am 17 years old and in form 2. My mother cannot afford to pay for my school fees and am lucky to have been sponsored by Mathare Children Fund Panairobi. I am able to go to school and my siblings are in Primary school. They go to government primary schools where education is free. They are also offered porridge at 10:00am when in school. This is usually an incentive for children to attend school since most of us have nothing to eat at home. This year 2022 was an election year in Kenya. Elections were carried out on the 9th of August 2022. All schools had to remain closed for a period of 10 days because the government uses public schools as polling stations. This meant no porridge for my siblings since they were at home. I was at home too and my mother’s casual job was not doing well. We had several days when we went to bed without food. During the election week there is a lot of fear in the slums and most businesses remain closed for fear of them being looted and things stolen. Everyone has to remain alert in case of any incidences. A huge number of people relocate to the countryside due to fear. My mother wanted us to relocate but she did not have enough cash to use as transport so we had to remain in the slums. Life became tougher as days went by. Most of the slum dwellers support the opposition party, however my mother supported the ruling party and she was firm about it though she avoided talking about politics. During elections 90% of the slum dwellers voted for the opposition. My mother and some few friends voted for the ruling party and went silently home. The elections results were announced 5 days later and luckily for my mother the ruling party won the presidential seat. The slums where we lived were unhappy with the results. They barricaded the roads and caused great chaos and violence on the streets. They shouted all day on how badly the elections were conducted. The slum people refused to accept that they had lost. In the night, they came and put our house and those who voted in the ruling party on fire. We were not asleep since we suspected something of the sort would happen. We ran outside as soon as we could and sat outside in the cold as we watched the fire consume everything we owned. We could not save anything as that meant risking our lives. Our house was a small single room made of timber and iron sheet roofing. They used petrol and gasoline to burn the houses and such fires are huge, strong and spread fast. We were unable to save anything. We stayed outside the burned house till morning. It was cold and we had to stick close to each other to try create some warmth. I was in deep thought and wondered how we would be able to start all over again. My mother did not have a single cent. We were hungry, tired, sleepy and cold. I called Richard from MCFP and he came and brought us some little help to last for a few days. He also paid our transport to facilitate us travel to the country side which would be good for us and enable us heal from all that we had gone through. The sad thing is that the people (relatives)we knew in the countryside were old and died some years back. We were never able to visit our roots back in the countryside due to lack of money to travel there. My mother is not even sure she can remember the exact area we should relocate to but we have decided to travel and start life afresh. It is the only choice we have. Remaining in the slums can be risky since they could burn our house again. Following the burning of our house, my mother begun getting sick and not able to get medical attention. She does not go to work and she wakes up looking sickly, weak and stressed. This worries me a lot. It is not easy; this is why am writing to you to seek your assistance. Please help me and my siblings get back to school. All our books were burnt when our house caught fire. MCFP might pay tuition fees for me but not for my siblings. We will also require other school requirements such as stationery and other class requirements which I do not know how I will get them. My dream is to study hard and smart to be able to support my mother and be a role model to my siblings. A total of 900 dollars will enable me finish my secondary education successfully. Please make my dream a reality. I do not wish for me and my siblings to end up in the streets and later become street children. Thank you and God bless you!