The above photo shows two of our nursery children learning how to write.

Whenever we come to Kenya, we are always both humbled and shocked. Humbled by how little the people in this area live and survive on. Shocked at the mismanagement of precious resources whereby one person gains at the expense of so many poor people. The nearest village borehole, relied upon by hundreds of people, is currently not working as someone ran off with the money needed to pay the electric bill.

We visited one of the local girls’ secondary schools. This is a poorly performing government school about 2 miles from our primary school. It’s a new school, built by the Government just before Covid and like all secondary schools, is a boarding school. There are many pictures on the internet showing the face of a smiling MP on the day it was opened. We were shocked. The 250 girls occupied the space more suitable for 100. In the class we visited, there were 75 girls and a further 20 were expected soon. The Government had not provided any text books and the teacher looked no older than some of the students. There were no dormitories for the girls to sleep in, no science labs, or even sufficient classrooms were just not there. We could not see how any of the girls would learn much in the next 4 years of secondary school.

Our school is now officially one of the top performing schools in Kenya, the last two sets of national exams have confirmed this. It’s the same school as a few years ago but since the excellent exam results, now everybody in Kenya wants to send their children here. However, this school is set up to help and support the poorest in the community. Last year, 17 of our leavers went on to the best high schools in Kenya. As one of the parents said “One of our children is now in class sitting next to the Vice-President’s son in the best school in Kenya”. This is an amazing achievement for this poor area and has never happened in the past as the other local primary school exam results have always been too low. With sufficient time, these well educated children should really help to lift this area out of poverty. This has always been the long term aim of the charity – to assist the community by producing well educated youngsters who can transform their own community.

As one class leaves for secondary school in December, another class of 4 years old will commence in January. We need 25 new sponsors to support these children. Normally the Autumn tour by the Osiligi Maasai Warriors helps to find sponsors for these children, but the 2022 tour has been postponed so we are struggling to find new sponsors. If you, or a friend, can spare £20 per month to support a child through education, we would love to hear from you. Tracey has all the details at tracey.osiligi@yahoo.com

Our Primary school is the hub for trying to change some of the outdated cultural practices in the wider community. Our girls are kept safe from early marriage whilst being at our school and whilst being supported in secondary schools. However, many of our children have siblings who are not so lucky. Our school arranges for local speakers (women from the community) to speak to the mothers about the dangers of early marriage and FGM.

There is little employment in this area. Most families rely on owning a few goats and eventually selling these for meat. The rainy season finished early June with no more rain expected until November. This year, the rains have been minimal and a bad drought is happening. Most of the grass has now been eaten or shrivelled. This is made worse as much of the unfenced open African bush is now being fenced – the same number of goats trying to access smaller and smaller amounts of grass. The following is from one of our sponsored pupils who is now in secondary school:

“Drought has been a great challenge for my family. Our livestock is really dying due to lack of water and pasture to eat. It has caused my parents to move from place to place in their search. Our small corn that we have planted it has dried up due to lack of water.”

The borehole at the school is 160m deep (525 feet) and has dried out. This is the first time in its 10 year existence. Many sponsors donated to a crisis fund and we intend to use some of this for food parcels for all the mothers in October.

We are continuing to repair broken hand pumps, week in week out and have now repaired more than 300 this year, or more than 1800 since we started. The team is well used to the challenges of finding, disassembling, repairing and then assembling these hand pumps. Often, more time and money is spent in reaching the broken pumps than the actual repair. We have now broadened our scope to repair broken electric pumps in key locations such as hospitals or large schools. Although the cost is much higher, the number of people served by each pump is much larger.

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Thanks everyone for your support

The Osiligi Team September 2022.