AMREF UK Projects - Oloyiankalani Primary School

On our arrival at Oloyiankalani Primary School we were welcomed by smiling and inquisitive faces. AMREF has provided funding to the school and also helped in the building of a shallow well within the school grounds, used to provide drinking water, as well as other necessary amenities and also supply valuable education to the students.

The children are taught both Swahili and English and so we were able to communicate with us. Our Swahili was limited to the few words we had learned on the mountain so we kept to the English language. The teachers at the school were all extremely friendly and were very happy to talk about their methods of teaching and the children seemed happy to see us and talk about their ways of living in more depth.

Whilst driving to the school I wondered just where these children live as I could see no obvious signs of homes nearby. I asked one of the children how far some of them have to travel and was very surprised to hear that a three and a half hour walk to school was not uncommon. This equates to waking up at 4am, leaving for school at 5am and arriving at 8.30am for the first lesson to begin at 9. School finishes at 4pm and so they would then arrive back home at 7.30 to help out around home. This then all starts over the next day and continues throughout the year. Could you really see any child in the UK walking that far to school? Children that live further than half a mile from school are usually ferried in by their parents 4X4 which causes further congestion and pollution to the cites in which we reside.

There was also entertainment provided by the children. Firstly a poem about the relationship the school has with AMREF and then two traditional Maasai songs complete with dancing. This was a beautiful site to see the children perform what comes very naturally to them.

Many of the pupils come from Maasai families and so the teaching methods have to work in harmony with the traditional ways in which these communities live and work. After visiting the school we were fortunate enough to be invited into one such community where the AMREF way of teaching has helped progress the way they live but not to interfere with their customs and beliefs. It was hard to imagine that a family that could consist of 2 adults and four children could still live in a traditional mud hut but that they did. When twelve, yes twelve, of us were invited into one such hut I could not believe that we’d all be able to fit into a 6ft X 10ft home that was no higher than my shoulder but one after one we all squeezed in dodging pet kittens on the way in. Living in such close proximity to your family would be hard for any British teenager to comprehend.

We were then shown how, with the aid of teaching, you could keep a similar set-up but increase the size of the living quarters and start to include such things as a hard roof to protect them from the elements.

There were further advances with the introduction of a house made predominantly from corrugated iron. This showed us that, what the children were taught at school really helped to bring progression to the way in which they live.

It would have been great to stay even longer at the school to see how a typical day is made up but unfortunately time was not on our side, once again, and we had to make a premature end to fascinating day.