Kinyinjere Primary School needs a lunch feeding program

Kinyinjere Primary School, Kiirua, Kenya

By Teresa Mellish

Feb 2, 2007

The Kinyinjere Primary School in Kiirua, Kenya is twinned with the Tracadie Cross School in Prince Edward Island. I visited the school yesterday to see the water storage tank and the books that had been purchased with funds donated from PEI.

The 4600 litre water storage tank was purchased with the combined donation of the Elliot River School in Cornwall and the funds donated for twinning by the Rotary Club of Charlottetown Royalty. The school text books were purchased as a result of a Christmas gift from the Park Royal United Church Sunday School Class shown on the opening page of our website.

This school has 166 children in classes from Primary (Kindergarten) to Standard (Grade) 8. Each of the 9 classrooms has an earthen floor and a hole in the wall for windows. Each class has wooden benches for the students to sit at- they need more benches in the lower grades because they have more students than benches.

We talked to some of the students to find out more about them. The photo with this blog is four students in Class 3 and the classroom photo is their classroom. The children are holding a coloured marker we gave to each of them. Kenyan school children wear uniforms to school.

When we asked them what they did with their free time, they told us that they all work at home on their farms. This includes carrying water from the kiosk which is piped from the top of Mount Kenya. Other chores are carrying firewood, digging in the shamba or caring for the cows as well as washing dishes and clothes. On their farms they usually grow maize (corn), beans and potatoes. Some of them had a cow or two.

They find it difficult to study at home, where there is no electricity for light. One boy told me that there was only one lamp which was kept in the kitchen. Another told me there was no paraffin for the lamp the previous evening. Instead they do their homework right after school when it is still light ( it gets dark here at 6:30 pm) or they come to school early to do their homework before school.

Many of them brush their teeth with a branch as they walk to school in the morning. They break a branch off a certain tree and it makes a good tooth brush.

When we asked about their health they all said they sometimes miss school because of malaria. Two girls had headaches and needed eye glasses- but their families could not afford them One child was HIV+ and looked healthy because she was taking drugs for it every day. Another child is an orphan and lives with her aunt w ho is bed-ridden so she does the laundry and the dishes every day. Quite a few children were coughing.

Several of the children we talked to live with a single parent. Most children had between 4 -6 brothers and sisters.

They walk everywhere.

We found out that some students have only black tea for breakfast; others have tea with milk and a few have bread with the tea. They carry their lunches when they walk to school each day; they live between one and 5 kilometres from the school. Lunch may include ugali (corn porridge) or potatoes and vegetables. Supper is often githeri ( a mixture of beans, maize and potatoes). Their food is all grown on their shambas (farms).

The school is providing porridge (made with finger millet and sorghum with some maize and beans added) at 10 am to the students in primary classes and up to class 3. They would like to be able to feed all of the students at lunch time and they have asked the parents to provide 50 kg of maize each for the program. There is an excellent maize crop here and it will be harvested in late February, so the school hopes to start a lunch feeding program in March. However they need better cooking facilities to cook the food. Now they have an open fire between two stones in an out building.

We talked to three groups (total of 10 students) – each with three or four students. Boys and girls were included and the students were from Standards 3, 7 and 8.

All wore school uniforms- which usually needed to be washed and mended- except for one older boy whose uniform was clean and in good repair. The students in Standards 7 and 8 all had shoes . Only one student in Standards 3 had shoes; the other three were barefoot and their feet looked worn and dirty.

All seemed to have good teeth which they told us they brushed one/day usuallywith a tree branch; except for two students. One girl had several teeth growing in on top of others and a boy was missing several teeth. The girl said she had been to the dentist but her family could not afford the work required. The boy was small, he did not look well and he complained of watery eyes, headaches and a cough.

The children told us that they all had missed school because of malaria- which they described included headaches and abdominal pains. They do not have mosquito bed nets in their homes. One student complained of a skin rash that was itchy.

Most of the children had bright eyes; a couple did not.

They were mostly shy but answered our questions. The Standard 7 and 8 students answered our questions in English; the Standard 3 students were not fluent in English so most of their answers were spoken in Kimeru and were translated into English for my notes.