photo/JARED NYATAYA/NATION Isaac Mwangi, a standard eight candidate from Gateway Primary School in Eldoret, Uasin Dishu County and his mother Jane Wamboi, outside their tent at Naka camp on December 27, 2011.
By WANJIRU MACHARIA lwmacharia@ke.nationmedia.com and GERALD ANDAE gandae@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Tuesday, December 27 2011 at 19:47
Posted Tuesday, December 27 2011 at 19:47
Pupils who sat the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education exams at IDP camps are not excited as results are released on Wednesday morning.
This is not just because they do not expect to pass the test they wrote under difficult conditions, but because their guardians may not afford fees for secondary school — leave alone buying the long list of items required of new students.
Those who spoke to the Nation at the densely populated Pipeline IDP Camp in Nakuru were sure to get above the pass mark of 250 out of the 500 marks and like any other child their age, had big expectations.
Some want to be engineers, doctors, nurses and pilots.
One of them even said she would want to be in the battlefront in the army, a profession that is hardly mentioned in the wish-lists of most candidates.
Benson Mwangi Githinji, an orphan who lost his father in the post-election violence and whose mother died several months later while at the Nakuru ASK Showground, says that he is sure of passing the exams, but his grandmother does not have the capacity to take him through secondary education.
Care of grandmother
“My five siblings and I were left in the care of my grandmother. Three of my elders are still in secondary through God’s grace and I wish I could get a sponsor or bursary like them,” he said on Tuesday.
Mwangi said a well-wisher bought him a bicycle which he rides 14 kilometres to Lenana Primary School and another 14 kilometres back in the evening along the Nakuru-Nairobi Highway.
“I have had problems since we were ejected from our home in Molo during the violence. My father was killed during the fighting, while my mum followed him several months later,” he says.
He went on: “I never went for tuition because my grandmother could not pay and neither could I study at home because the environment is not conducive; we are the six of us in a small, poorly lit tent.”
Mwangi says he often went to school without breakfast or after just a cup of porridge, and would not eat again till evening since he had not paid for lunch at the school.
A similar story is told by twins Grace Wanjiku Mwaura and Rahab Wahu Mwaura and their brother, Geoffrey Kimani Mwaura, who all sat the KCPE exams at Nairobi Road Primary School in Nakuru.
Their mother is jobless while their father who lives in Nairobi depends on menial jobs.
“Unlike primary school education, which we know is completely free, secondary school is only subsidised, and I am not sure my parents can afford that,” Wanjiku said.
She and her siblings are also sure that they will pass the exams and would prefer to be absorbed in boarding school to escape the poor living conditions at the camps.
Wanjiku, who wants to join the army, adds that unlike at the camps where they are not able to study, at the boarding school the environment would be conducive to learning and that they would be able to compete at the same level with their colleagues from middle-class families.
In Uasin Gishu District, Lilian Wanjiru and two of her classmates sat in pensive mood under a tree yesterday, listening to the 1 o’clock news at the Naka Camp for IDPs.
They do not usually converge for the news, but yesterday, they were expecting any updates on the results of KCPE expected on Wednesday morning.
“I have to be kept abreast of all the updates about the results that they will be releasing tomorrow,” Lilian said.
The former pupil of Gateway Primary School, Uasin Gishu, is among the 750,000 pupils who sat for KCPE last year.
Though Lilian sat for same examination as other Kenyan pupils, she was taught in a difficult learning environment.
Lilian had to wake up everyday from the inconveniences that come with the life in the tent as opposed to her counterparts who had to wake up from the comforts of their bed.
“The government needs to come up with a perfect criterion that will work in our favour because there was no equity between pupils who woke up from tents and those who came from their homes,” she said.But the irony of it all, as Lilian explained to the Nation, is that the same cut-off mark will be used to determine the secondary school that they will be allowed to join.
Lilian, 14, says that the cut-off mark for internally displaced people should be lowered owing to the hard studying conditions they encountered in the camps.
Lilian selected Moi Girls High School as her first choice and believes that though she might not raise the required marks to join the prestigious North Rift giant school, if the government intervenes and lowers the cut-off point, then her dreams might come true.
She expects to score 350 marks and above and notes that if she were studying in a good environment, she would have expected to score even higher.
Camp problems, she notes, include lack of space in the tent to carry out studies. Increased price of kerosene, she added, also dealt a blow to her efforts to study.
Sell relief food
Another candidate, Grace Murugi, said that the problems they faced in the IDP camp were enormous, and that the government needed to intervene during the selection of schools to reduce the cut-off point of pupils.
“I expect to score 300 marks and above, but the government should not lock me out of a national school given the condition that we studied under,” Grace says.
Her mother, Ms Anna Gakenia, says that she had to sell relief food given to them by donors to raise the exam registration fee for her daughter.
“I would opt that we stay hungry rather than see my daughter stay home owing to lack of school fees,” Ms Gakenia said.
Isaac Mwangi also sat the KCPE exams at Gateway Primary School this year, and like two of his colleagues, also stays in the camp.
Isaac had to go for manual work to raise the money required at the school, and missed many classes.
“My mum has no work and we needed to raise money for exam registration and tuition.
“I was not left with an alternative other than manual work,” he says. Isaac expects to score at least 300 marks.
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