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'Our future is nothing less than shining now thanks to the Evening Standard readers'
David Cohen14 Jul 2008
Seven months after our writer, with photographer Matt Writtle, witnessed the grim conditions in schools in western Kenya, they have returned to see how money raised by the Evening Standard Christmas Appeal has already transformed lives in the region...
The pupils of Opande Primary School dash across the playground leading me towards "the thing" that has changed their lives. They crowd excitedly into a darkened classroom and, as I join them, accompanied by their inspirational headteacher Felix Ouma, they peer expectantly upwards.
The object of their admiration is a bulb that dangles from a cord tied to an exposed roof joist. At Ouma's prompting, a pupil presses the switch on the wall and the bulb blazes, radiating light. There is a soft murmur of what I take to be appreciation, for not one of Opande's 466 pupils has electricity in their homes. Indeed, this solitary 80-watt bulb - powered by four solar panels installed just six weeks ago - is the only electricity for seven kilometres in this remote part of western Kenya.
Its impact has been profound. Every night after dinner, 50 of Opande's most ambitious pupils leave their mud-hut villages and trek back to school to do their homework "under light", after which they bed down on grass mats on the classroom floor, turning Opande into a boarding school. In this destitute area, where one in three households is headed by a child because of the devastation wrought by Aids, one in four children is malnourished, and one in five gets a bursary or can afford to pay for secondary school. Everyone knows education is the only route out.
But the transformation of Opande doesn't end there: it also boasts five new brick and cement classrooms and eight computers, which arrived last week. "By funding all this, Evening Standard readers have ensured that our future is nothing less than shining," beams Ouma, who these days receives weekly delegations from other schools coming to marvel at "this bush school that resembles a city school", or what they are calling the "Opande miracle".
Opande is one of more than a dozen schools - in Kenya, Malawi and Sierra Leone - funded by Evening Standard readers who responded to our Christmas Appeal and donated a staggering £171,000 to Plan UK, the British arm of the global charity Plan International. Our appeal also inspired 10 London schools to join Plan's school-linking programme which aims to twin 65 British schools with schools in Africa.
This week, seven months after first visiting these schools near Kisumu on the shores of Lake Victoria to launch our Christmas Appeal, I've returned to see what progress has been made.
At Arude Primary, where I had seen pupils crowded in depressing mud-hut classrooms with collapsed roofs, the change is dramatic. Where derelict ruins once stood, five new brick classrooms rise impressively in their place - three substantially complete, two just under way, and all set to be finished by the end of August.
The change in mood is palpable. During the pupils' mid-morning break, I watch as eight-year-old Victor Otieno rushes to join the builders, grabbing a spare hoe which he wields with all the force his tiny frame can muster. At just over three foot, his growth stunted by malnutrition, Victor is barely as tall as the hoe itself, but his face is a picture of determination as he swings away before reluctantly passing the hoe to other pupils clamouring to have their turn.
"I am helping to build our new school so it can be finished [as] fast as possible," he says. His teachers describe how the entire community has eagerly pitched in, carrying water from the river and rocks from the mountain to be used for hardcore in the foundations, and even donating land on the perimeter for expansion of the school grounds. All around, the sound of progress - hammers on nails, sawing of cypress wood for the roof trusses, spades mixing concrete - fills the air.
Earlier the entire school - all 242 pupils together with the teachers and school management committee - had formed a human tunnel to greet us, clapping and chanting "Welcome! Welcome!" in unison and giving myself and Matt Writtle, the photographer who has accompanied me on both trips, a spinetingling heroes' welcome. To them we are the faces representing the Evening Standard readers whose generosity - to the tune of £25,000 - has transformed their school and their lives.
In addition to the classrooms, this money has bought them a 24,000-litre water tank providing access to clean water for the first time, eight new VIP (ventilated improved pit) latrines to supplement the single disgusting toilet they had previously, and new desks and chairs for more than 200 children.
"Almost every day, new pupils come to our school to register because they've heard about the amazing changes that are happening here," says Juma Johnkotieno, 55, Arude's headteacher. "Our roll had fallen to 190 because children did not want to come to a school with such pathetic learning conditions, but in the past six months our roll has shot up to 242 and next year we expect another 100 to join. The water tank means the children are healthier and stronger and new latrines mean they have the privacy they need. I didn't believe I would ever see investment like this in my lifetime. Now, when the children meet pupils from other schools, they feel they are from somewhere."
The teachers, too, feel infused with newfound energy. Samson Nyambegga, 45, Arude's English teacher, says: "From the moment I arrived at this school in 2003, I immediately requested a transfer and same again every year thereafter. But now," he grins broadly, "I want to stay and be part of the Arude revolution."
A 30-minute drive away at Alungo Primary, I come face to face with a bright young orphan whose tragic personal story perhaps epitomised the desperate plight of these children and generated a huge response from our readers. Jane Awino, 14, had lost both her parents to Aids by the age of eight and had been looking after her sister Rose, two years her junior, and her emaciated grandmother Wilfrida while trying to pursue her education. The first time we met she was meek, listless and dangerously thin, her ragged school uniform all but falling off her.
But today Jane is a girl transformed. She smiles radiantly in her new school uniform: red pleated skirt, maroon jumper, white socks and black leather shoes. "My sister and I both have three!" she exclaims, when I complement her on how smart she looks. She also carries a new school bag and invites me back to her mud hut where she shows me the family's new mattresses and bedding, and proudly points out her thriving maize plantation and new chickens. Plan bought her maize seeds, which she planted, and they're about to deliver her three cows and a chicken coup (with nine hens and a cockerel) so that she can become economically self-sufficient.
Jane is one of 100 Kenyan orphans who are being similarly helped by Plan with Evening Standard money: more than £36,000 has been spent on providing them and their siblings with secondary school fees, medical treatment and selfhelp schemes to enable them to feed themselves and earn money through bee-keeping and chicken farming.
But perhaps the most profound change is in Jane's self-confidence. "You have quite literally saved her life," says Laban Obonyo, 43, Alungo's deputy headteacher. "As an orphan she was vulnerable to the fishermen who come from the beaches of Lake Victoria offering favours. At first they don't ask for sex, they just say, 'Would you like some new shoes? Would you like some food?' Jane is a sensible girl who knows how to stay safe, but when somebody is poor, you worry. But now Jane can resist them because she can say, 'Thank you, but I have my own shoes, thank you but I have my own food'.
"Everybody here looks to Jane as a role model. To her friends at school, she is admired as a trendsetter and they all want to look like her - with white socks pulled almost to the knees and real leather shoes - and be clever like her. I've noticed a big change in Jane. She has energy and never misses a day, whereas before she'd be dull from hunger and would miss classes maybe twice a week. You have given her back her childhood."
Both Alungo and Opande are part of Plan's school-linking programme, the latter being linked to Marlborough Primary School in Chelsea. Arude and a fast-improving fourth school we visit, Magwako Primary, whose teachers have been trained with £2,500 of Evening Standard funds, are waiting to be twinned, along with 28 other schools in the Kisumu area. Masudi Rasi, 46, who heads up the Plan office in Kisumu, says the school-linking programme, piloted in the Kisumu area, is proving such a success that "soon we will be rolling it out to Nairobi, Mombasa and the Rift Valley".
Jane Awino says that one day, when she has qualified "as a doctor or a teacher", she will come to London. "I am happy and no longer fearing my future," she says. "When I met you, you asked me whether I would go to secondary school and I said, 'Who will pay? For that I will need a miracle.' Now my prayers have been answered.
"I talk with my friends all the time about going to the best secondary school. When people want to know how come my life changed, I tell them it's because two white men came from London and I was bold enough to step forward and narrate my story, which they put in the newspaper, and people read it and sent money and God blessed us."
In Tuesday's Evening Standard: how London schools are joining Plan's school-linking programme which aims to twin 65 British schools with schools in Africa.
