Past Projects

It’s 7:45 am. Today is Monday. The classrooms at Girgir Primary School, as every other Monday at this time of the day, are empty. The pupils are all gathering in the open space at the center of the school compound, where some stand in their green while others in their white uniforms. Close by there are numerous signs with inspiring messages hanging from the branches of a leafless tree in the center of the yard that infuse inspiration to the students “To lift yourself up you need to lift somebody else with you“, “Peace is always beautiful“, or my favorite “nothing is impossible.” In front of them, every learner has taken its place in a box delimited by small rocks in the sand, starting from the youngest- those who have recently entered the school, aged 5 or 6- to the left all the way to the graduating students- around 17 years old-to the right. Around the school, a general sensation of calm pervades every corner of the landscape. Archers Post, the town where the school is located, is slowly waking up, its villagers willing to make use of the first hours of the day to conduct their business, when the ever present sun is conceding to them a truce from its warmest rays. Lions, cheetahs and leopards, as well as an army of mosquitos, are retreating under the thin shadow of the dry acacia trees in the nearby Samburu National Park after a night of hunting. The mountains, headed by the sacred Ololokwe tower in the horizon with their reassuring but stark rocky presence. This placid, almost suspended atmosphere is suddenly animated by the joyful and warm voice of the 900 students lined up in the school yard, who chant prayers and their national anthem in both Swahili and English- the two national languages. “We are the land of Simba, the children of Kenya” they sing, after they invoke God’s blessings upon them driven by their sincere faith. In the apex of this choir, the national Kenyan flag is solemnly raised, closely followed by the remarks of Josiah Muriithi, the school headmaster, who congratulates the students for their good deeds and sets the goals for the upcoming week. As soon as his speech is concluded, the almost military rigidity and attention of the assembly melts into the cheerful rush to class, accompanied by a vibrant sound of laughter and a thick cloud of dust lifted from the sandy ground of the children’s running. In a matter of minutes, the school yard is clear, and the students are ready for their morning lessons.Subjects such as math, integrated science, physical health, history, swahili and more will be taught throughout the day. My fellow volunteers and I can use this time to visit the compound, accompanied by the headmaster. Since 1963, year of its founding, Girgir Primary School has expanded to include around 900 students and to cover the current 20 acres of land. Across this area, separate one-story concrete blocks constitute the classrooms where students spend most of their day. The majority of them are painted in a worn-off blue, whereas some have been recently repainted in green and white, giving them a new fresh, and much needed, appearance. In fact, despite the staff and children’s tireless effort to keep the classrooms hospitable, the lack of water to secure proper cleaning and the inability to pay for renewal shows a visible degradation of the pupils’ working place. The latest work from the volunteers and recent donation of new furniture for the classes coming from Maisha Marefu, the NGO that has been devoting its efforts to provide humanitarian and technical support to the schools in the area, have reshaped some of the classrooms, for the joy of the students; nevertheless, renovation is still underway and will require more work, and critically more funding, to include the whole compound. After visiting the classes, we move on to the second section of the compound, where we are shown three blocks, the dormitories, where around 330 students reside permanently. From the outside, the buildings look much like the classes, except for their slightly bigger size. Inside, shaky and rusty beds crammed altogether are the only furniture present, with no space for students’ personal belongings but their beds. Once more, donations from Maisha Marefu have resulted in a big impact, as new mattresses have arrived to replace the old broken ones. Despite these dire conditions, living in the school is crucial for boarders. It comes with a higher probability of receiving two meals a day and some water, something that cannot be guaranteed to them at home. It’s around 12:30. We return to the open space at the center of the compound, where the morning assembly took place. It’s lunchtime and students are queuing, with small bowls in their hands, to receive their meal. It normally consists of either rice, maize or ugali, the latter being a typical Kenyan preparation made of wheat flour, usually accompanied with some beans or cabbage as a side. Meat or any sort of variety is a luxury that they cannot afford. As a result, the protein intake for these learners is next to zero. Josiah, the headmaster, explains to us how difficult it is to provide food for all students. Indeed, the government and donors like Maisha Marefu play a crucial role in supplying food, but sometimes it is not enough to counter food shortage and very high prices. Lack of proper nutrition not only endangers the students’ physical health and learning abilities, but it also negatively impacts attendance rates to school, as kids prefer to stay at home in search of something to eat. “There is no learning without food”, the headmaster tells us. Lunchtime quickly ends and two more hours of classes await the students, followed by interactive initiatives like sport games and debates. At around 5 pm, students who do not sleep in the dormitories start walking back- everyone walks here, irrespectively of their age or distance

My work for and with children has taken places! When a Manager from APDK reached out to me to join him for a cross country exchange on parental care and establishing of a child protection network in Nepal, I didn’t know what to expect. Nepal is in the first month of 2080! I had no idea that I was going to the oldest kingdom in Asia – Gorkha Kingdom! I had no idea that I will witness with my own eyes the effect of climate change – monsoon rains of 2020 whose water moved rocks and boulders from the Himalayan Mountains displacing 350,000 people, crushing down 25 bridges of Melamchi River! I had no idea that I would set feet at the foot of Helambu Rural Municipality – a four and half hour’s road trip only suitable for 4-wheeled vehicles, that brings your heart to your mouth as you climb up and roll down on hills that you can’t keep count. I had no idea that one day I will see with my own eyes the Himalayan Mountains that borders Nepal and Tibet! I had no idea that I would celebrate Boudha’s birthday at Boudha Stupa! I had no idea that I would visit a Tibetan Doctor whose stethoscope is his hands! I had no idea I would see the future – 2080: 57 years ahead. Listening to Rita – an Irish very knowledgeable lady gives the history of Nepal, makes one shudder at this “chicken neck-like” country sandwiched between India and China. The kingdom reign ended in 2006 when war broke out in the family of the King whose son killed his entire family. For ten years, the country was at war. Peace was only restored when a constitution was put in place six years ago.  What sticks out in this Gorkha Kingdom, is the caste system that is alive and real! Shiva says – “It is in the bone”. Marrying across the castes is frowned at. The Brahmins (Priests), Kshartriya/Chhetri (Kings), Vaishya (merchants, land owners), Sudra (commoners, peasants, servants), Dalits -Untouchables, outcasts (street sweepers, latrine cleaners). Armed with information, we test the waters during a workshop at Just Nepal Foundation! We meet a jovial lady who tells us how she was vegetarian for 20 years but has now started eating meat and her daughter loves meat! I ask what happened? She says she got married in a family that was not vegetarian so it was difficult when she was in family functions where they always ate meat. I tease her, “You are a Brahmin” She smiles and agrees, “Yes, but I don’t like talking about it”. End of the story – she does not want to talk about it. Later that day at dinner, she opens up about challenges of marrying across castes. She tells us what befell a friend of hers from higher caste who defied her parents and got married in a lower caste: Her father never talked to her for 8 years!!! Rita makes it even more dramatic! If a girl got married in a lower caste, the parents went to police to report that their daughter has been kidnapped and demand arrest of the boy (husband). But if a girl from a lower caste got married in a higher caste, they will talk in low tones that she has gotten good life! We later learn that all the persons we met at the two workshops at CWISH and JNF were all Brahmins save for one person! Issues of castes affect children in deeper ways! We went to Nepal to learn how to prevent children from being separated from their families! So how does the caste system affect children? We get to know that many Nepali who are trained as teachers are from the Brahmin caste! So many were trained as teachers and posted to the hilly areas of Nepal occupied by lower caste! The teachers saw this as a punishment! Due to caste system, they cannot interact with the children they are teaching. They can’t touch what the lower caste persons have touched. So how did they mark books of children from the lower caste? The children put the books at an agreed place, then teachers take them, mark and return there!!! Wonders never cease. Many children have been taken to boarding schools! It is fashionable but an old practice that has been modified! Especially in religious sense! Traditionally, the Buddhist used to dedicate their children the Monastery! Every second son was sent to the Monastery while one out of 3 girls was sent to a Nunnery! Nepal has Monasteries everywhere! Tokyi Guest House, where we lived was surrounded by monasteries! We passed through one and I saw very small children some as young as seven year! My child instinct could not keep me calm, so I asked why are these children here? I was told that it is a big thing to get children from Tibet into the Monasteries, from there, they find their citizenship to America!  So, what’s happening? Many Nepali children are flogging into Monasteries in the name of them being from Tibet! So boarding schools are a passport to a good life! And here we are on a cross-country exchange learning how keep children away from separation with their families!!! The show stopper was walking on the rocks of the river bed of Melamchi River as we watched the tractors open up the river for the expected Monsoon rains. As we stood at what used to be JNF office, Gopal narrates what happened in 2022. A radio presenter for a local station in Helambu was busy doing what he was trained to do, entertaining the masses in the locality when his phone rang severally but since has was on air he ignored the call which was from his boss! When he caught some breathe, he called back his boss who told him to alert the people to move to higher ground! Disaster! Disaster! Destruction! Destruction! was coming down from

Yeaning for Role Models; Society full of Wrong Models I have interacted and worked with children, – persons who are 0-18 years as defined in Constitution of Kenya (COK) 2010, for over 20 years. The other day, I was challenged to put on paper the many interesting stories I have collected in my work with children and share them as open conversations of untold episodes of these – now adults. The episodes will range from what they remember from childhood, what makes and breaks children, dreams and aspirations, socio-political acts and geopolitical events that influence their growth political, their experiences in the education system, what parents do or don’t do that impacts on children, when role models become scarce among other thorny issues.  Dr. Seuss noted that Adults are just outdated children, that adults are obsolete children. Let’s see what childhood meant for them.   In this piece, I want to share with you what we discussed with “Empowered Children (EC)” who shared their biggest yearn – Role Models. Society is proliferated with uncountable number of WRONG MODELS! A Role Model is a person you look up to and would like to be like them at one time in life. For children, the first role models they have are their parents – mother and father. These are the first people they relay on from conception to adulthood for food, protection, care and their growth. From birth when children can move their limbs, the parents and not just the mother are everything to a child. Where the biological parents abscond their role and abandon children, the foster or adoptive parents play the same role of being a model for all children who survive. When adults conveniently choose to forget they are role models, the problems of children set in. Like any other mammal, the children are forced to look up to other persons or things to model after them. In most cases, given their small size and cognitive thinking, they take on whatever is near them in their environment. If the environment is proliferated with liquor and drunkards, the child taking to drinking, if the environment is known for using dangerous drugs, that’s the model the child will take on. If the environment is made up of class of high profile friends who convert residential houses into mini-bars sipping expensive liquor, that’s what the child fills him and herself with. On the other hand, if the environment is filled with praises, prayers and preaching, that is what the child takes to.   This explains why when you ask lower primary school children what careers they would like to get into when they grow up, they will tell you what they see. At class one, all children want to be teachers! That is the most intelligent person they first see apart from their parents. At the same time, when the parents given children a reason not to trust them when lie to them, the teacher comes in every handy and every thing the teacher says is gospel truth. There was a time when every child wanted to be a doctor, because when they got sick they went to hospital and a doctor treated them, there was a time when being a pilot was the in being because children have either had a chance of flying in a plane or the schools have organized trips to airports and children have seen a plan through the fence and they were told it is usually “driven” by a pilot. In the last decade, every child is dying to become a lawyer! Lawyers have been seen as the stars urging cases, leading process of constitutional making, making a killing from everyone including those who have killed in cold blood but they have come to their defense! Adults confuse children, when they turn out to be the opposite of what children thought they should be. Parents are usually the first culprits. Good or bad behavior of any child starts from home. The homes make or a break a child. When a parent lies to the child i.e. a five-year old child asks a simple question like, “where did I come from? And the adult’s answer is, “we bought you from the supermarket”. Then later turns abusive be it emotional, physical and the worst is sexual – the child is completely thrown to an empty space.  If the only safe environment a child knows has become very unsafe place for the helpless child, where else can they turn to? To the first thing or person that come the child’s way and that may determine what the child becomes. Parents thought the y are being clever by passing the buck to the teachers to help answer the many unresolved questions from their children – forgetting that parents are the first and last teachers of their children. No matter how educated or wealthy one may be, they cannot be greater than their parents! By the time a child starts schooling, what has been inscribed on his or her mind makes who the child turns out to be. So teachers usually get spoiled child and teachers are usually involved in repair work! That explains why teaching is the only profession that is described as a NOBLE Profession. Making a child who could not write or even speak a different language, walking with the child as they develop their cognitive thinking to a level where the child can stand on their own and either drive a bus, captain a plane, treat a sick person and also start teaching other children is no mean achievement! A good teacher is one who makes another great teacher. But when the teachers turn into abusive animals breaking arms and legs of children because they did not know the answer to what is one plus one? Or they turn the children into sexual objects and potential wives and husbands – the children get double confused. Confusion at home and confusion at school makes the two primary