Build a school in a deprived area of Mombasa

As I explained in my last report, our first group of children, many of whom were the first to join us, took their KCPE (Kenyan Certificate of Education). We have a complete cross section of ability as they are chosen by poverty not ability and the cohort includes children with special needs, however the mean score was B-. Absolutely brilliant. Even better news was the fact that two of our poorest but most able girls, Patience and Everline, got a donor to enable them to go to one of the best secondary school. Neither of these girls would have gone to any sort of secondary school which made it even better news. Both mothers, single parents, were completely overwhelmed by the news. Patience' father was killed in a road traffic accident when she was seven years leaving her mother with no money and four children. Patience' mum gave her heartfelt appreciation and said 'I thought my daughter's primary education would just be the final but now there is an unexpected green light which will change my daughter's life.' So heartwarming to see what the quality education we are providing is achieving. 

As you know we really hope to be able to build six classrooms on the upper storey of our building this year so that all the children can be in the same building enabling us to save £4,000 a year. We have raised the money for the first classroom and have two further fundraising events later in the year which should together raise enough for three classrooms. If determination alone is enough then we shall also raise the other £30,000. Everything counts towards our goal of course and I was so touched yesterday when my eight year old granddaughter arrived with £5.71. She has been to Kenya twice to see our school and was so moved by what she saw that she decided to fundraise herself by selling chocolates she received at Christmas for 50p each. Her mum paid 71p for hers!

The other thing arising from our last visit before Christmas was our discovery that so many of our children would actually starve during the nine week long school holidays. We managed to get some emergency funding from two donors which fed twenty families during those holidays but of course that is just putting a very important plaster on a wound but we could not heal it. However, for three of those families life is now improving. We needed to employ another cook and another cleaner which helped two families and a donor very kindly gave a donation to a third to enable them to set up a business again which had failed when they had an enormous medical bill. They are also getting practical support from our school secretary who is doing a part-time business degree, paid for by Mustard Seed Project. We just hope that this will help to alleviate the problem for next time for at least a few.

And a big thank you to all of you for your support which is very much appreciated. You are making a big difference to all the families involved with our school. 

Links:

• Facebook page

Such a lot to report after five weeks in Kenya. It was so great to see everyone enjoying the new facilities. The cooks with their lovely kitchen and the children continue to be thrilled with their new toilets! The teachers are still doing a fantastic job and this time we have our first set of candidates. This is the name given to the children who take their Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE). We just have to hope that they do as well as we are hoping. I know for certain that they will all be offered a school, you need 40% for that, but it would be great if some of them got the marks to go to the highest level of secondary school which requires in excess of 75%. The government moves the goal post on that one as there are only so many places. Unfortunately, whatever their grades most of them will end up in the local secondary school because they will be not be able to afford the fees at the others. Such a pity. Irene, our headteacher and I went to visit that secondary school and there were 80+ in a class, not enough seats or desks and they taught to the highest achievers. Fortunately, our brightest girl, from a single parent family, has a donor to enable her to go to one of the better secondary schools.

As usual we have our gripe about the Kenyan government and this time it opened a whole can of worms. The government decreed that all primary schools, including private schools, (which ours is), to close on 26th October until 2nd January. A disaster academically but an even worse disaster nutritionally. We knew that many of our children only ate the food they received in our school and we knew that children lost weight during the holidays but we hadn't taken the further step of thinking that nine weeks holiday could spell disaster. Then, emaciated parents started coming to Irene (the head teacher) in desperation to see if we could help. A donor gave us £250 to help with this problem but once we started investigating we realised that those we had first seen were just the tip of the iceberg. I try not to get closely involved with individual families because we need to be focussed and build the school but I was there when one of the fathers came. An educated man speaking very good English whose business had collapsed. He was so grateful for the food we were giving, not in a gushing way, more a relieved way, but I just wanted to give him a hug. I could barely stop the tears. 

But on a more positive note our family came out to Kenya for a couple of weeks in the middle the stay and all volunteered their services at the school including my young grandchildren. Some did creative activities whilst others helped improve the teacher’s and children’s Lego skills. Four teachers were taught how to follow a plan for one of the kits and found it quite challenging but ultimately rewarding. The young adults also had a great time playing with the children at playtime. There would be a photograph but the camera went missing!

The teachers then had a week with no children and no me. I had set homework for them and they did it brilliantly. The teachers of children from 3 - 9 years now have the new Kenyan curriculum. Very wordy and understandably they were hoping we would just pay for new curriculum text  books to save them the effort of working it all out. However, they worked in pairs on one subject per pair and did a brilliant job and were very clear about what was needed. It would appear that the curriculum really is now very similar to the British curriculum at this level, which is what we thought. The exception being Swahili and not just for the obvious reason. They will definitely need curriculum books for Kiswahili because they now realise that the Swahili they had been teaching was a language cobbled together from English, Arabic, tribal languages and Swahili.

Then another problem arose. Apparently cooks cannot clean in Kenya. It does not matter if they wear separate aprons or do the work at a different time you simply cannot employ the same person to cook and clean. Our cooks were both cooks and cleaners so we have had to resolve the situation. When all the children are in the same building it will not be a problem but at present it is not possible for one cook to cook alone and so we need four cooks and two cleaners. Two new staff to pay for. 

This all reinforced quite how desperately we need to build six classrooms on the upper storey to bring all the children under the same roof. It will save the salary of two cooks and a night-watchman plus rent, utilities etc and save us more than £4,000 a year! This will make us so much closer to sustainability. We have lots of fund-raising activities coming up as we so hope that next year, in our tenth anniversary, we shall be able to make this happen. Do keep an eye out for news of how you can help.

Thank you so much all of you who have helped us to reach this stage. We could not have done it without you.