Governor & Education Tidbits

Hello Friends and Family J

It’s nearing the end of October and I thought I ought to update you all. The biggest news at my school was the governor’s visit 2 weekends ago. It was all the teachers could talk about it seemed-about getting ready, doing the planning and what exactly would happen when he came. The kids had to help in the school beautification. This meant they moved a lot of rocks, and when I say a lot I mean more than a Kenyan elephant load worth of rocks. They outlined every path, and then the teachers thought the rocks weren’t big enough so bigger rocks were found to substitute. Though that wasn’t the end of it. They then had to rearrange the rocks and move them out to dig a narrow ditch so that the rocks were more in place. After this was all done and a few more paths were added, the rocks were good to go. It did look pretty good at the end and we got a nice ramp/stair set built leading to the staff room for visitors so it was good even if it seemed a bit ridiculous to me at the time. 

The First Governor of Laikpia County (Kenya only recently decided to have governors and such since the newest constitution came out in 2010) came on Sunday with an entourage of people and our school was nicely packed. He told us he’d arrive at 2 p.m after church but since this is Kenya and time is much more fluid, he arrived at 4. They got a tour of the school, officially opened the boys dormitory and planted an indigenous tree in front of it to begin the afternoon. After the tree planting, everyone moved to the big tent and our students provided the entertainment. 5 of the lower primary students signed ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’, our Class 6 & 7 preformed a dance and song and the scouts did a march sort of performance. They did really well and it was fun to watch them in center stage! We received some money from the event and raised awareness of our school so I’d say overall, the event was great.

The event also helped us raise some money to improve the student’s meals and yesterday they saw the beginning of that with a special meal. It was decided we’d give them one special meal and then improve upon their lunches the rest of the term with a change of foods some days. They will now be eating lentils, rice and more cabbage I think to substitute with their beans, rice and ugali. Their special lunch was very exciting for them all. They ate potatoes, rice, goat, chapatti and I think cabbage and loved it! That was all they could focus on in the morning as the smells came into the classrooms and they knew it was coming! It was quite funny and so my KSL and English lessons that morning revolved around spelling food names and telling stories using food vocabulary J

Next, I want to share an article that was in the Daily Nation newspaper last Thursday. It sheds some light on education in Kenya. I think it’s pretty interesting and if you want to know more about the history of education in Kenya, it is a good place to start. You can read the article for the full story but here are just a few points that stood out to me:

• Kenya has the largest education system in East Africa with 28,000 primary schools, 7,000 secondary schools & 60 universities/colleges
• Enrolment in 1963 had 892,000 pupils in primary schools-now there are 9.5 million & in ’63 there were 30,000 pupils in secondary schools but now there are 1.8 million
• Free Primary Education (FPE) came into action in 2003
• There are still almost 2 million school-age students not in school and who can’t access basic education
• The quality of basic and even higher education is very low compared to other countries with the same or lower GDP per capita as Kenya. 
• The teacher-pupil ratio at primary school is about 1:80 instead of the required 1:40 in a developing country like Kenya
• Most teachers are demotivated and remain in the classrooms just because there is no better alternative

http://www.nation.co.ke/kenya50/education/-/2032870/2035180/-/cmnrnp/-/index.html

Speaking of school, I had a crazy realization this week as my kids asked about when they get to go home and realized that we only have a few more weeks of Term 3 left! As of today we have 3 weeks left because we end on 13^th December (Wednesday)! I can’t believe how fast time is flying by!!

And a fun fact to leave you all with…I recently learned that Kenya only had one radio station up until 2002! They could only tune into KBC (Kenya Broadcasting). Now they have stations galore!

I wish you all a very merry Halloween and hope to see some pictures of super awesome costumes! If any of you have punny/clever/outrageous costume ideas, please do tell J Hope you all get some delicious candy and are having a happy autumn!

Lots of kisses,

Lizabeth