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Please note: while I in Africa, I am experiencing difficulty in sending my newsletter as usual. This might be the second copy you have received. If so, please accept my apologies. I am sending this in three parts. To read the latest newsletter at the website, please visit www.patriciacrossley.com.

Greetings in February

It has been a while since I sent a newsletter because we have been so busy since Christmas, plus I had a few computer problems that had to be sorted out. I shall be sending this is two parts and Part2 will have news of my contest beginning shortly

Just before Christmas I was taken to visit some primary schools close to Kakamega in my role as Diocesan Education Secretary. At about the same time, we found and purchased an Isuzu Big Horn (four wheel drive) vehicle, and after the holiday I began to visit more schools.

I should maybe explain what a Diocesan Education Secretary does. Before Independence, all schools were largely supported by missionary societies. When the British left, the teacher salaries were assumed by the government, on a ‘cost sharing’ basis with parents. This meant that parents had to pay uniforms, books, upkeep, furniture, ancillary staff and explains why most families in this area were unable to afford to send children to school. The churches maintained a role in pastoral care for their schools and can appoint a Diocesan Education Secretary to assist the teachers.

Last year the new government made primary education ‘free’ and over a million children swarmed into the schools.

The Anglican Church sponsors about 60 primary schools in this diocese and I have visited 29 of them. Someone accompanied me and I covered over one thousand kilometers (about 600 miles) during the three weeks of January. Most schools are situated outside villages, often up steep grades, along trails that are impassable in the wet season. Many tracks resemble stream beds, steep, rocky and riddled with gullies. I had to use my four wheel drive three times, but even in two wheel at no time did I shift out of second gear. It’s very hard on the vehicle and on the driver. When I arrived (usually in the company of one of the local clergy) there was always great excitement. A vehicle is a rare site. Plus a priest! Plus a white woman driving!! Almost too much to take in!

A school is typically built on a large plot, which explains why they are rarely situated in a village. The buildings can be concrete, but are often made of mud. In only one that I visited were children spreading fresh cow dung on the floors of two classrooms. The other floors are cement even if the walls are mud and the roof of thatch. One school had lost its roof during a wind storm and had to suspend classes, because there was no protection for the children from the afternoon sun.

The children do most of the maintenance around the compound, collecting leaves (brushing with dry twigs and branches) fetching water, sweeping the classrooms. With the new government program of ‘free’ education, some money for text books and supplies has been allocated. But there is as yet little or no money for capital expenses and maintenance, and parents are no longer expected to pay. In addition, the government has been mired in the long-winded Kenyan bureaucracy for hiring teachers, many of whom were trained over the last few years, but never found jobs. So schools are seriously understaffed often with only eight or nine teachers for 4-500 students.

So what do the schools do with the million children I mentioned?

To be continued in Part 2