It is on a Wednesday morning, the 28th day of January. It is 8 am as we leave our Gede office. We are visiting ASSETS schools to establish a list of the pupils who scored atleast 320 marks in the final exam; Kenya Certificate of Primary Education(KCPE). Our Maruti crawls through a dusty road and before long , we arrive at Mijomboni Primary School.We issue the head teacher with an A Rocha Kenya newsletter before the Wild Life Club patron hands us the names of the pupils who, out of the 500 marks, were able to garner 320 or more. We have bursary application forms that we give to the patron, the pupils are to get them from him.This is what we are going to do in each of the other schools we are yet to visit.
The next school on our list is Girimacha and we drive along a dusty route winding on the edge of Arabuko Sokoke Forest. From here, we drive to Malanga and our car has to pass through an eroded path full of potholes and sometimes confine its wheels between gulleys. At around 11 am we arrive at Bogamachuko Primary School. The patron, here, gives us the list of the top perfomers and dares to inform the head teacher, who is in a meeting with parents, that ASSETS team has arrived. The head teacher comes out promptly. I see it on her face that she is very happy that we are here. 12 pupils. That is the number we get here, the largest so far.We leave Boga ( this is how they proudly abbreviate the name of their school here) and drive to Kahingoni, then Nyari, Mzizima, Mida and back to Gede in the evening. What a round!
We look at the list.We have 45 pupils with atleast 320 marks. Then we remember that our budget is not as fat and we will have to recruit only 30 of them to the bursary scheme this year. We would later do assessment which involves collecting the application forms and visiting the pupils in their homes to interview them. One of the decisive criteria in this assessment is living close to Arabuko Sokoke Forest or to Mida Creek atleast 3 years before sitting the exam.
At some point I remember what Peter and Miranda Harris, the A Rocha founding couple, said," [E]very A Rocha family that we visit around the world, we tell them how ASSETS has brought hope to the young generation and is progressively changing people`s perceptions and attitudes towards conservation" This reminds me of Boga, the best ASSETS school this year. I have taken one photo of a few pupils standing in front of their school`s sign board and realised that some other pupils in a room, that is worthy quite a trouble of upgrade, were staring at me and I can not quite tell the speed with which I captured them too, when their teacher said," These are visitors from A Rocha Kenya. We need help and I know that they can help us" Faces of pupils yearning for hope.
Here at A Rocha Kenya, we are glad that our readers, supporters and donors do not disappoint. They are a generous lot that progressively are making ASSETS be a story of hope.
