Home Again, Kasigau Schools, & How You Can Help

HOME AGAIN

Now we have been home in Bellingham for a week and are over jet lag and slowly re-entering our lives and work here. I'm still dreaming of Kenya every night and wake up thinking of the life and people there. There is certainly something about the simple life style of Kasigau that agrees with me. I was telling my mother last night that never once did I miss the TV or any of the usual food, pasttimes, or conveniences. It's hot there so cool showers and open air buildings are just fine. Eating pretty much the same food every day was also just fine. Maybe the visual and social aspects of life in Kasigau are so rich that it is easy to settle in and just coast from day to day. And there is a deep connection to the land and the place. The colorful flowers and unfamiliar variety of plants and trees, the ever present mountain making its own weather in the background, and just knowing that there are such wonderful animals so close out in the bush (of which a small herd of elephants charged Ken & the students, resulting in the demise of our little car - I'll let him tell that story).

KASIGAU PRIMARY SCHOOLS

I wanted to write a bit more about the schools where we worked, because that was the main purpose of the trip. Each of the five villages has a primary school that includes grades 1-8, and a preschool with two classes on each campus. There is one class and one teacher at each grade level, no matter how many students are enrolled. The largest class we saw was a class 1 with 61 students!

Students are required to wear uniforms, and each school has their own colors. There is a complex system of handing down uniforms within and between families, because they constitute an additional expense. As a result, uniforms are in various states of repair/disrepair depending on how many older siblings a student has, and sometimes girls can be seen wearing shorts instead of the usual skirts/jumpers. And sometimes students are attending schools in Kasigau without uniforms, although this is technically not allowed.

There is a critical shortage of teachers in Kenya in the government supported primary schools, and seldom was the day we were at a school when all teachers were present. Headmasters (principals) are also teachers full time, and there is no system of substitute teachers in Kasigau. When teachers are absent, other teachers cover the class for short periods, but mostly the students sit in the classroom and copy work off the board, read from texts that they share two or three to a book, and help one another. Attendance is good even when teachers are absent because schools always provide a corn porridge lunch.

There are a number of new school buildings in Kasigau of late, including libraries, but still a shortage of basic school supplies, text books, and teaching aids. Our interns made everything they used to teach, and the boys in the photo here are sharpening pencils with double-edged razor blades. There is electricity in three of the five towns, but schools are being wired classroom by classroom starting with upper primary grades. In the vast majority of classrooms, teaching and learning is accomplished without benefit of electricity, and dominated by teacher questions and choral response. The students who have the answers lead the response and it is often difficult to tell who is not getting the content being covered. All instruction except Swahili language is in English, so everyone is teaching and learning in their third language. There are no special education services, and little capacity for individualized attention or remediation if students are struggling. In a very few days, our 6 interns taught new skills to those students at each grade level who were performing lowest in math, reading & writing English, and showed impressive gains in end of term exam scores. Most students with more significant cognitive delays or hearing/vision loss stop going to school, although we did meet teachers who were studying special education topics, mainly emotional disturbance (which struck us as odd since we saw very few instances of even mild misbehavior).

In Kasigau there are many barriers to quality education, but attendance is valued by parents and teachers alike. Schools seem to be the central location for community initiatives related to health, sports, arts, and conservation, as well as academics. One current project sponored by donors in Kasigau schools is to provide porridge and shoes for all the preschoolers so they can begin school with full tummies and without contacting the many parasites that live in the ground.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Our host Abs (right in the photo below) has a goal that students from each village in Kasigau will go forward into secondary school, and on to university. He works tirelessly with coordinators in each school to manage a number of separate projects, including the shoes and porridge, incentives for high scores on term exams, sports events, and high school sponsorships. If you have read this far on the page you won't be surprised to find that I'm ending with an appeal for financial support. Anyone willing to contribute can tell me where you would like your donation to go, and I'll make sure it gets there. Even a one time donation of $5 will provide pencils and sharpeners for the early primary students, or pens for teachers, or incentives for IMPROVEMENT in exam scores (as opposed to highest scores). Larger amounts will be combined to support our three young men to continue at university to become doctors & engineers, or to support new secondary school students, or to provide additional training for teachers, or to wire classrooms for electricity, or sponsor a system of substitute teachers. The need is great and the opportunity equally great for small amounts of funds to go a very long way toward changing lives and building a more sustainable educational system in Kasigau.

Thanks from Kris & Ken, shown here en route to supervising interns in Kasigau.