Report from our school -
November 2021

Natasha addressing colleagues during school debate time for our upper primary children

It has been a compacted school academic Calendar Year beyond the Corona pandemic for all school going children in our country, Kenya. All our children are back in class for their second term. All our children are very happy to be fully back in class after the almost one year of school closure during the pandemic. We currently have 44 children in Grade 5 and 40 children in Grade 4. From the beginning of this second term which started in July 2021, all our upper Primary School children in Grade 4 and 5 come to school from Monday to Saturday. This is to help us get more time with our children in class to enable us complete our academic school calendar syllabus. All our children and staff are all very happy with this arrangement.

As a school we are still continuing observing all health protocols given by our Government’s Health Ministry to ensure that all our children and staff are safe from the virus which is still ravaging many parts of the world. So far none of our children or staff has caught the virus and we thank God for that.

Positive and Negative developments around the school:

Floor Tiles on new classroom floor

We are very happy to report that due to immense financial support from Nafasi Sawa Kinderstiftung we managed to put floor tiles in one of our new classrooms for our Grade 6 children. The tiled floors in 3 classrooms built for us by Nafasi Sawa Kinderstiftung enable our children to learn in dust free classrooms. All our children and staff are very happy to learn and teach in these modern classrooms.

Nothing feels better.

We are happy to report that we managed to buy the earmarked piece of land reported in our last report. The owner agreed to sell the piece of land to us. At the moment what is remaining is the official transfer of the land to our school. It usually take time to complete the official government transfer but it will eventually be transferred to us. Many thanks to Nafasi Sawa Kinderstiftung for their support of kshs. 1,250,000. We are all very grateful since this gives us enough land for future expansion especially for building Junior Secondary School.

Challenges for the school management:

The biggest challenge we have at the moment is our Government’s retraining plan for all government trained P1 teachers who were unemployed but working in Private schools all over the country while awaiting government employment in Public Primary Schools. The government has recalled almost all unemployed teachers to go back to college for one year to get retrained (Diploma) to be able to teach the new education curriculum CBC in Junior Secondary Schools beginning in January 2023. This directive has hit almost all Private schools all over the country hard. We have also been affected. Three of our
teachers: Prisca, Bethseba and Ivonne plus Emmanuella(Volunteer teacher) are going back to college.

We have called for new job applicants to fill up the gaps left by the three. We are hopeful we shall be able to fill the vacancies before the end of this week in order to ensure learning continuity in the school.

Another recurrent challenge to us every year is the cost of living getting more expensive every year. It’s not only here but the world over especially post corona pandemic. We are all very grateful to all our Swiss friends who’ve been very understanding whenever we ask for more financial support whenever we are faced with such challenges.

General News from the country:

On 20th October 2021 our President reopened the Country for normal operations after having been in lockdown to curb the spread of Corona virus since March 2020. Our economy suffered during the lockdown which came with a lot of restrictions. This made our lives very expensive since the economy was doing very badly. Almost all restrictions were vacated from that day by the President and life is getting back to normal. This is a big relief to all of us.

Our General Elections are earmarked to take place in August 2022 next year. Our country is already in an election mood. Politicians are already going round the country talking to the electorate. Some violence is already being experienced in some parts of the country which is a big worry since we are so many months away from the General Elections.

OUR CURRENT ACTIVITIES:

We are currently participating in Kenya Music Festival Competitions. We are usually very happy participating in such extra curriculum activities. The children get the opportunity to meet with other children from other schools and also get exposure to inter school competitions.

We are also working on a Theatre piece (Drama) as a school for our donors. We are still working on it.
Expect more updates in our next bulletins.

SPECIAL THANKS:

We wish to pass our hearty thanks to the Nafasi Sawa Kinderstiftung Board for all their invaluable continuous financial support to our beloved school. We wish to thank them again for agreeing to buy us a new piece of land for our future expansion (Junior Secondary School). It’s because of your big hearts that we have managed to reach this far with our beloved school’s infrastructures and other forms of growth. We also wish to thank Albert Schweitzer Verein for their continued support as well to our beloved school. BIG THANK YOU to both of YOU.