Ilmerijo Primary
Today we returned to Ilmerijo school. I’ve been coming to this school for about 5 years and have seen incredible development. It originally had 5 classrooms. Both pre-primary classes were in one room. Fourth grade was in a metal shack with a dirt floor and no windows. They are now to the place where the classes go through grade 9 and they have extra rooms for special purposes. The government has helped to build all of this.
The head teacher, Margaret, said there have been a few instances where people have come in thinking this was a private school, which typically have better facilities than the government schools.
But before we went to Ilmerijo, we had another errand. We had arranged the prior day to enroll Zana and Susan in school at Gethsemane. We met Mary, Ann, and the girls at school early in the morning. The girls were excited to go. Susan and Zana, below.
We had to pay the school fees and deal with about 50 other things for the girls to get them in. One was transportation, meaning the school bus fee. The regular fee was about $65 per kid per term (3 terms in a school year). We convinced the school that the girls were tiny enough that we should only pay one fee, instead of two. The schools will often cut a deal for charities paying the fees.
Below is the school building.
The school comes populated with sleepy livestock. Below, one of the inhabitants decided Thomas’s tire on the sunny side of the truck was the perfect spot to hang out.
And speaking of Thomas, he has agreed to drive us this trip and we are making arrangements for the next one too. Thomas is a safari driver, first. We met him in that role. He took us on a few safaris.
Last trip, on the way to safari, we needed to stop at Natamuse school, where we also have a porridge program. Thomas joined us for the meal they served. Then he observed while Wangari and I taught a self-defense class for the girls. He came up to me afterwards, saying he had no idea that we were doing this kind of work and was impressed.
Then he started driving us to all the schools this trip and saw us working with Sipha, the visually impaired learner we are enrolling in school. He’s hooked as part of the Tuko Pamoja team now.
We will be training him as another self-defense teacher.
With the girls thoroughly enrolled in school, we headed on to Ilmerijo. We made it in time to serve porridge. As usual Wangari, a quintessential humble leader, jumped in to serve. Cedric was along as well, as we have a self-defense class scheduled. Below, Wangari serves and Cedric brings a refill bucket.
The second shot is from the external hall of the new building.
Below, some of the kids enjoying porridge.
Below, Claudia is performing one of the most difficult jobs, She is manually weighing one of the kids (and old friend) to see if she ate enough porridge.
Below that, Claudia with another old friend. Claudia has been working at this school for several years and has many relationships with the kids.
After porridge, the school had an assembly. They started with some songs the whole school sang. Then we presented them with some chess sets we donated. They currently don’t have any place for physical games or athletics, so they are trying to build up some indoor activities they can do. One teacher is fond of chess, and wants to teach all the kids.
The shot below is all the kids gathered, in the scorching sun, for the assembly. You can see a few stripping off sweaters.
After that two girls recited an original poem to honor Tuko Pamoja for our role in supporting the school. It was incredibly sweet.
We then adjourned to Head Teacher Margaret’s office for a conversation.
Margaret spoke at length about the effect of Tuko Pamoja’s porridge program on the school. She loves the whole-school aspect of our support. What we are doing at the school helps all the kids at once. She prefers it to child sponsoring.
I think the best option includes both. It doesn’t have to be either/or. The school support programs can raise the whole school up, while the individual child/family sponsorship can raise the neediest ones, if the families are selected appropriately. We have some families that clearly need outside intervention for the well-being of the family. This can help to provide equality in the community, while the school programs push towards equality more globally.
We then moved on to a self-defense class. I haven’t taught the girls at Ilmerijo since my first visit in 2019. We only had time to teach one class. So we included grades 6, 7, and 8, which was about 45 girls. This was an easily manageable group with the team we had available to teach.
Below a nice young woman tries to break my finger. While smiling.
Sean agreed to help out with the classes. He quickly learned what the rest of my team already knew. Being my example attacker demonstrates a true commitment to teaching the girls. It hurts!
But the friendship with the girls afterwards is worth it.
The girls, and their teachers, really appreciate the classes.
We also had two teachers participate in the class. They will almost always post a teacher in the room. But if the teachers participate in the class it takes it to a new level for the girls. They are more engaged, since they see their teacher is in there learning with them. I always encourage this.