The above photo shows another pump repaired, at a combined clinic, school and village pump. We have now repaired more than 1500 broken broken handpumps installed by other charities.
Just after publishing the last newsletter, we found out that our school had performed really well in the national exams, coming 2nd out of about 130 schools in the sub-county. Sixteen of our children went onto the highest performing Kenyan national and extra county secondary schools with the remaining going to county and district schools. The long term aim of this charity and school is to produce well educated children to help lift this area out of poverty. Our exam results show that the school is providing an excellent first step along this journey.
All schools in Kenya had to close for almost a year due to disruptions from Covid. They are now all playing catch-up by reducing the end of term holidays. Twenty five new children, aged 4, joined our school in July and a further 25 will be joining in April this year. We are still trying to find sponsors for the new intake. Perhaps you know someone who can help? More details here – http://www.osiligi.org/sponsor-a-child/
Although our catchment is within 5Km from the school, a daily 10km walk can be a challenge for a 4 year old. Some children club together to share a motorbike ride, the cost is around 14p each way per child. Apart from saving the legs of the younger children, it gives employment to local people.
Following our highly successful exam results, 23 of our pupils now go to high school. These schools are all boarding and can be several hours away from home. Studies start at 04:00 and finish around 21:30, with breaks in-between. Life in the secondary schools can be tough. Often there is little to no water, food is of poor quality and in the letters from the students to their sponsors, the students often mention uncaring teachers.
At Osiligi Primary school, guidance and counselling department is led by teacher Catherine. Here, Catherine is meeting with the female parents of grades 4-8 to talk about FGM, early pregnancy, HIV/AIDs and career advice. Most of our children’s parents are illiterate, having never received an education so these meetings are the best way to keep them involved. Our own girls’ dormitory is bursting at the seams. Two classes of girls stay in our school safe house while they prepare for their exams. They are now young teenagers, an age when many girls leave primary school for early marriage. Pregnancy in schoolgirls is a big problem in Kenya, even more so when schools were closed in lockdown. We now have 32 girls in a dormitory designed for 16 but they share beds without complaint. More girls means more shoes, hence this new shoe rack.
Considering that this is Kenya, there is not much wildlife close to the school so imagine the surprise to find a small herd of elephants walking past the school fence. It is thought that they were taking an old ancestral path. Elephants were common in the area in the 1980 but have since left the area. Unfortunately, when a 4 ton elephant meets a school wire fence, the elephant wins. There was much damage to repair. However, our school got off lightly. Elephants have learnt that there is water inside water-tanks or pipework. Some building close by had their tanks pulled down by the elephants to drink the water.
Many of the sponsors have contributed to a crisis fund. It’s the end of the school year and the start of the long holidays. This means that our children will not have any school lunches for 8 weeks. In previous years, many children have returned from the long holiday much thinner so we decided to use part of the crisis fund for food parcels for each sponsored child.
We know that many readers will have seen the Osiligi Maasai Warriors in their past UK tours. The Warriors have been unable to visit the UK since 2019 due to Covid restrictions. The Covid situation, however, appears to be slowly improving in both Kenya and the UK, so we are hopeful that a tour may be possible in the August/September/October period, this year (2022). More details will appear on the tour website – https://osiligiwarriors.co.uk/
You are welcome to leave a comment below
Thank you Roger and all who support you. I’m touched by several things – all the pumps you’ve repaired must make life so much easier compared to carrying water long distances, and also the thoughtful care of the vulnerable girls to try and keep them from a life of drudgery. Really heart-warming, thank you! And such good educational results; great to know that.
Oh, I’m also happy that the families got extra rations for the holiday period. Well done all!
Thanks for your comments David. We started off as a charity supporting one area with the school but as you say, the pump repair project has really worked well. Eric and his team are looking after this and have done amazingly well over the 5 years. The school project is long term. I’m expecting the area to be transformed in 10-20 years when the educated youngsters start to make real improvements in their community. Time will tell ……
It has been an amazing privilege to sponsor Christine through primary school and to see the very high standard of education that our little school is providing. As for Elephants, if they persist then the answer could be bees! Elephants apparently do not like bees, so a few hives could solve that problem with a side benefit of honey for the community to use and/or sell. Bees have been used to good effect elsewhere in Kenya where Elephants were a problem.
That sounds a great idea – if some people could be trained to look after the bees properly hives might have many benefits, providing of course it is possible to grow flowers for them!
Such tremendous results despite so many problems in the past two years. The preparation the children receive in their early years will set them up for life. Nice to see the elephants; there used to be masses of giraffes in the 50s and 60s!
I am pleased to see that the Charity ad the School are doing well. As far as the repairs to the water pumps is concerned, can l ask if these repairs are done by local people? It concerns me that the secondary school day is from 04.00 to 21.30, this seems a very long day for young children. Is anything being done to resolve this and to improve the attitudes of “uncaring” teachers? It would be a shame if the good work carried out by your school is undone later.
Is there likely to be a campaign by the charity to purchase any school transport for children attending. The motorbike looks a bit precarious!!
Hi Doug. The repairs are done by a team of 6 Kenyan engineers and they always involve the local community with the repairs. We teach the community how to repair the pump and leave them a small kit of spares and tools so that they can initiate a simple repair themselves next time.
As far as secondary schools are concerned, these are all government run secondary schools. Unfortunately we have very little sway over how the Kenyan government runs their secondary schools.
The motorbike transport may look precarious, and it certainly fails Western H&S requirements, but is the norm in Africa. All our children live 5km of less from the school so it is only a tiny number who would need any transport whilst young. Any vehicle with more than 2 wheels would not be able to travel across the African bush. There are few roads in this area.