This is a letter that Patricia received from a primary school teacher. Not for the weak of heart... I have left the names blank as I have not asked permission to publish this letter. I thought it was important to share though.
Hello,
My name is -----. I have been the headteacher of ----- Primary School for the last 8 years and I have recently moved to ----- Primary School which is about three kilometers from -----. This School is one of the schools in the Maseno North Diocese of Anglican Church.
I am so sorry that all the teachers were caught up with issues that we could not attend the one day workshop that was at Ekwanda last week on Saturday. We had wished at least to have two representatives unfortunately we had previously arranged for a community meeting at school on that day, prior to receiveing your invitation.
I am interested to share with you the situation at ----- Primary School and invite you for a visit any time that you may have the chance to do so.
The school is right on the boundary of Western Province and Nyanza Province. We have an enrolment of 237 pupils from STD 1-8. Unfortunately this is a school that is facing very many crises that it is in deed crying for support. The drop out rate is very high in this school. Maybe because most people who were students in this school through the time have not been going to secondary school. Most children do not see the need to complete even their primary school education alone.
Girls becoming pregnant seems to be a norm. the STD 8 class of last year had 24 pupils in total. By the time of KCPE exam in November 4 girls had already given birth and two others were very pregnant. I am told that the joke was that they were bringing forth several "Obamas." The STD 8 of this year has two girls who carried out abortions last year. One small girl in STD 7 dropped out last week because she was pregnant.
In last year's KCPE examination virtually all the pupils failed the exam. In ranking of the schools in Emuhaya District we are among the last six schools in the same exam. Out of the 24 pupils only three have gone to secondary school. The community seem to be contented with the fate of the rest.
As for the boys the trend is that once they are registered for the KCPE exam they mostly drop out or start coming to school when they want and keep off when they do not want to be in school.
The facilities in the school are so dillapidated and my findings indicate that the poverty index in this community is extremely high. Mostly because not investing their future in education. We have only 9 classrooms. Fortunately the CDF gave us a grant of KSH 200,000 which we are using to renovate 4 classrooms. The rest have cracking walls or are falling apart. We have 3 pit latrines for all the girls and another 3 for all the boys. The latrines are equally in deplorable state.
We are all new teachers in this school and our main target at the moment is to restore hope in everyone. The response seems to be very good as there is a very strong goodwill from the community.
It is at this point that I wish to invite you to help us in the process of restoring the hope and the future of the community. My feeling would be that even by you meeting the pupils or the parents or by mounting workshops in this school can open it up and make the people here know that they belong to the larger community where people are responsible of each other.
Thank you so much for your patience in reading this mail and we hope to read from you soon.
Bye.
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