A Dusty Field and a Bag of Fries Part 1: Education While Facing Poverty

 

Is it not easy to build walls around ourselves when we see how unfair life is? Do we not question if there are any trustworthy people after a betrayal? But the truth is that if we reach far enough into the depths of our memories, we find the light in them. We find instances, moments, people, and words that strengthened us during our times of deep struggle. I have one such example in mind. This is the story, told in two parts, of a dusty field and a bag of french fries. Stay with me, I promise it will all make sense in the end.

When Poverty Struck
I was born into an upper-middle-class Kenyan family but unfortunately my father, the only breadwinner at the time, abruptly lost his cushy government job when I was six-and-a-half. Our family soon after fell into very hard times. The first indication of things not being normal was that Dad was home all the time, while previously he was always away at his work post. I curiously wondered why his vacation was extended that long and constantly asked my late mother why Dad wasn’t back to work. She would answer, “Dad will be back to work soon,” and for more than a decade that became my hope, that my father would return to work and everything would be 'back to normal.'

A few months later, it dawned on me that my family had become ‘poor.’ I noticed that our family fortunes were no more because, on our seventh birthday, my twin brother and I did not get the big party at home that was usual in our family. Instead, my mother brought to our school two cakes for us to share with our classmates, one for my twin and the other for me. Looking back, I should have shown more appreciation for those cakes, as God only knows how my parents scrapped to get them despite the loss of income. Instead, I showed disappointment, because, in my eyes, those cakes were too simple.

They were cakes that had white icing with one having a blue stripe on its edges (for my brother) and the other a pink stripe on its edges (for myself). On all other birthdays thus far, in addition to the big parties, my twin and I would get elaborate cakes. Those were always of our favorite cartoon characters, such as Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse and such cakes were quite expensive at the time in my hometown. Only one bakery could create such decorative cakes and so they charged a premium. As life would have it, I did not get a birthday cake with icing again, leave alone cartoons, until I was turning 19. This was at my first job out of high school where a common birthday fund ensured every employee got a cake and gifts on their birthday.



Impact on Acquiring Education
The biggest blow of our family’s poverty was our education. In Kenya at the time both public and private schooling was paid for although the former was cheaper than the latter. The school fees charged were mandatory for a child to be able to attend school as this paid teachers, covered running costs, and in some cases provided lunch to the child. In addition, parents also separately bought books, and school uniforms, and paid extra for field trips and activities plus there were other miscellaneous expenses too. This cost was (and is) very steep for most parents who are poor, resulting in thousands of unschooled or under-schooled children.

Relief came in 2003 when a coalition government that had ousted a 24-year regime announced free primary school education. Many children who previously did not attend school could now do so at no cost. Even adults who had never gone to school or had dropped out sprung on this chance. The most profound example is the case of Kimani Maruge, an octagenarian who joined the first year of primary school in 2004 at the age of 84, driven by the desire to learn. A movie, The First Grader was later made to tell his story.


Choosing Between Public and Private School
Unfortunately, the downside of free education was overcrowding in public primary schools. Having started my education pre-2003, my parents were reluctant to send us to public schools when free education was announced because of the lack of teachers in public schools. Their fear was that this would result in us scoring lowly on our end-of-primary national test, the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education Examination (K.C.P.E.). This is the sole test that determines if one proceeds to high school and if so, the kind of high school one is admitted to.

Like many Kenyan parents, they hoped that if we could get selected to a well-ranked high school, we can excel in the end-of-high-school national test, the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Examination (K.C.S.E). Similar to the K.C.P.E., this exam is the sole determinant of whether one can attend university or not. My mother and father also thought a private education would open up the best opportunities for us. There, we could perfect our English and access amenities such as a swimming pool, musical instruments, and computers which barely, if at all there, existed in public schools.

Now, attending a private school while being poor offered up its own set of challenges. It was a constant struggle for my parents to raise the school fees every term and so we had arrears dating back from the first year we enrolled in the school. Sadly this meant we bore the brunt of the tactics the school used to try and pressure our parents to pay the fees. In methods that I now consider to be abusive, the school implemented specific tools that involved shaming, exclusion, and withholding of documents. More about these methods, and the unexpected kindness from a friend while suffering from these policies, in Part 2 of this story.