Easter Report (Mar 08)
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We do not have a television, but we
understand that anyone who does must have witnessed the most
horrifying scenes of violence in the wake of last December’s
disputed election in Kenya. It so happened that, while
reports were coming in of the carnage in Kenya, we were
reading Magnus Magnusson’s Scotland: The Story of a
Nation. The violence in Scotland that pitted clan
against clan and Catholic against Protestant was quite as
deadly and went on for centuries before a stable country,
linked in union with England, eventually emerged. Hopefully
the new nation of Kenya will not take as long as Scotland
did to grow into a peaceful, stable and prosperous country!
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Those of you who have been helping the Got
Matar Community to build its new Secondary School will be
relieved to hear that the area it serves remained quiet
although tense in January and February.
The school began its second year of classes two weeks late,
towards the end of January, but is
now operating normally. The second block of classrooms and
the library had been completed
and furnished with desks before Christmas. Enrolment for the
new Form One has been better than expected, considering the
unrest and the related rise in the prices of basic goods: at
the beginning of March 2008, 143 of the 150 new places had
already been filled. |
What this means is the school is developing
in line with the goal set by the community in October 2006
to increase its capacity by 150 places per year. They now
have space for 300 students and so are half way to the
target of 600 children set for the beginning of 2010. The
priority for this year is to build a third block of general
purpose classrooms, but, if we can raise sufficient
resources, it would be enormously helpful to complete a
science laboratory and a practical skills training workshop.
The Community is also keen to construct a small girl’s
hostel to enable girls from outlying communities to stay
overnight on weekdays and avoid walking to and from the
school in the danger of darkness. |
Many people in Europe and North America
express serious doubts about supporting a project such as
this because they believe that their money will go astray
and nothing will be achieved. I hope that they will now look
again at what has been done by the Got Matar Community over
the past 18 months. The speed and efficiency with which they
have moved to get the school operating and already up to
half of its planned capacity, with very limited funds, is
impressive by any standards.
Perhaps the education provided by a school such as this will
contribute in its own small way to a peaceful future for
Kenya – and our shared world in general!
Andrew
MacMillan
Easter Day 2008
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