Kimuka Primary

We headed to Kimuka school on our first full day of visits. We also had a few other stops to make. Our days are very full here. 

Kimuka is a primary school in Maasailand. The kids are almost all Maasai. There are between 300 and 350 kids in the school, which covers preschool through grade 8. Next year, they will also have grade 9. A classroom for this is being built now. 

Tuko Pamoja and Kimuka have a very strong relationship. We sponsor half a dozen kids there. We also sponsor the daily porridge program. In addition, we did a shoe drive at the end of last school year (2024). 

Today our tasks are to serve porridge and deliver the last of the shoes. We arrived just ahead of porridge time. This gave us a chance to sit with Beatrice, the head teacher, and catch up. 

Beatrice has a good vision for the school. She is thinking years ahead and adding when she can. There are plans that include buying buses, finishing a residence for the teachers, setting up a computer lab, and many other projects. They have a library under construction now.

Porridge is the morning snack for the students. Many of the kids aren’t regularly getting food at home. So the food at school is critical. This also takes some pressure off the parents when food at home is limited. The porridge helps the kids to concentrate on their studies. There are some other, less expected, advantages that came up in discussions a few days later that I’ll mention in a later post.

Below, Sean and Claudia are serving porridge. 

Below are the kids enjoying porridge, and getting their pictures taken. The latter is always popular, as well.

Note the boy below in the scouts uniform. Kimuka has a scouts program, as well as a number of other special after-school programs.  

Below is the kitchen. They cook over found wood. In some cases the kids bring wood. The pot on the flames is lunch. The typical lunch is gethiri, which is corn and beans.

We went around to all the classrooms. One activity was to deliver the remaining shoes, and some replacements, that weren’t handed out in October. Our cobbler didn’t have quite all of them made yet.

Below is Francis, sponsored by Tom Anderson and his family.

After leaving Kimuka, we had two home visits to conduct. The first was with Sipha.

Sipha is five years old. Her mother, Naomi, is 22. Sipha is completely vision impaired. As a result, she hasn’t started school yet. Naomi is a single mother. They live with Sipha’s aunt, Alice, who is the sister of Sipha’s father. But the father isn’t in Naomi’s or Sipha’s lives at all. Their home is a single room, separated into three areas by curtains. It is located down an unlit hallway in the former servants’ quarters of a religious compound.

Sipha is a very sweet girl. She is extremely excited about going to school and is pretty independent already. 

We learned about Sipha when she was trampled by a donkey and injured. Ebby, our contact for gender-based violence rescue, brought her to our attention. She has since healed.

Naomi is going to school, studying psychology. 

We had one sponsor waiting for a needy child. Sipha fits the bill. Dan agreed to sponsor her.  

Virginia also located a school for the visually impaired. It is run by the Salvation Army. Naomi had visited, at Virginia’s direction, and got the requirements for admission.

We agreed that the next day, Virginia and Claudia would take Sipha and Naomi shopping for all the supplies Sipha needed for boarding. 

Alice shared that her elder daughter had been sent home for nonpayment of 5,000 Ksh in school fees, or about $40. We gave her the money to get her daughter back in school, plus some extra for food. 

Our final stop was to visit Mary’s home. Mary is the mother of Anne, the university student from the prior post. We also have her daughter, Susan, in the sponsorship program. Claudia has sponsored Susan since 2018.

Mary reached out about her great-nieces. In addition to her own two daughters, Mary has raised two of her nieces, due to the death of her sister. They are both adult now, with children of their own. 

One niece has two children of her own—a 7-year-old daughter, and an infant boy. She also cares for her sister’s 7-year-old girl. The two girls were both sent home from school for nonpayment of fees. In addition, Mary and her niece are not fond of the school. So they were looking for emergency assistance in getting them into a new school. 

We found a good school, but it requires the girls to ride the school bus. So that had to be arranged, as well.

Below are Mary, Zan, Ann, Ann’s son, and Susan.