The Tiniest Drop of hope
Posted by Edward Karani , Wednesday, July 28, 2010 7:12 AM
My area has some of the best schools in the country, and if I were not mistaken, I would say it had the largest concentration of top performing public secondary schools in the country. It has only one national school, it’s boy school, one of the most famed school in the country, our house happens to be right next to it and it is a school that I love very much, not because of the boys, don’t get me wrong, back when I was a child rural urban migration had not taken its toll on the city and the school allowed the land owners who were predominantly farmers to farm in the schools expansive land, and keep the produce, I don’t know any of the students and they don’t even know what the area surrounding their school is called, other than the name of the school, I doubt they know any other thing. I have explored the schools a lot, because it has always been open to me and I must say I love it very much.
Also we have two provincial schools, one for the girls, and another for the boys, the former, I would see daily from my primary school, as we were playing. It was never my first choice, I have always hated it, ever felt that a school was so close and yet so far away, physically there but many provinces away. Whenever I walk past the school, the gate is always closed, you can never see a student at any time of the day or night, yet their dormitories are storied and their windows are always open, it’s like a ghost school. They must really study a lot because it is the best girl school I know of.
The other school, though a boy school, I love it terribly, the students are mostly from around and a few from up country, I have interacted with them severally they are full of life and they always make me laugh. There are also several districts schools.
Sadly I am not in any of these schools, I should have been but they have no room for me, some because of my gender others because of my results, and boy didn’t I fail in my KCPE exams, I wasn’t anywhere near the mark that would have afforded the luxury to study in one of these fenced schools, that have a nice K-apple fence and a metal gate that has been boldly written the name of my school which should have been in existence for the last forty years, with a postal address, and a telephone number. A school with ample space and has room for dorms, classrooms, offices and fields where the students could play games or just relax. A school with a watchman at the gate to prevent unwanted visitors from coming in, and teachers that had the necessary qualifications, a school that I would be ashamed of mentioning among my peers, because whenever I do, they laugh at me, or at my school, it is so embarrassing, I prefer to avoid them most of the times or just
smile at their insulting jokes towards my school.
I don’t blame myself for failing my KCPE, it’s not like I had anything to do with the free primary education, the big people just introduced it, they never thought of increasing the classes or the number of teachers, we were a classroom of forty eight student at the City Council school I was in, but when the announcement was made, I realized that area was very over populated, the school ratings dropped from being the top fifty in the whole country to being top nothing, and our hopes for ever joining a good school were drained away. The teachers had no time to follow students who had failed around or make them do extra work as they did in the past. They only had time for those who could pay for the extra tuition, I told my father about it and he insisted that the government had declared that the education was free; he could not and would not pay. So I failed in my exams, there are those who passed under those horrid but I wasn’t among them, guess I
am not one of those naturally clever students.
That’s how I ended up in the River of Hope High School, a school started by the secretary to the National School in my area, the school is constructed on less of a quarter of an acre piece of land, there is only one stream for each form. No offices in the mainly iron sheets school, during break time I prefer to stay inside the classroom because if we were all to go out, there would be no room left for us to move even an arm.
During the mocks chemistry practical the invigilator took pity on us and he would help with the titration, I had no idea what a burette was, or what I was supposed to do with the beaker, or what an indicator was, I could not help but feel frustrated, we had never been to the lab before, it wasn’t even a lab, our classrooms had been converted into a lab, he helped us out, he told us what to do, but even then, it was Greek to me. I still failed in that paper. I don’t blame my chemistry teacher after all he is only eighteen year old school leaver waiting for her KCSE results, he is good I must confess but his pleas for practicals to be included in the lessons and be made mandatory fell on deaf ears.
Teachers come and go as they please, did I see my shop keeper teaching me CRE, or his wife teaching me English, a language she could barely speak herself, I wanted to laugh but I always found myself crying, as for the math’s teacher, we are the ones teaching him most of the time. The other day, I was showing him how to solve a simple simultaneous equation.
The KCSE is only a few weeks away. I don’t dream of becoming a doctor or a nurse, lawyer, engineer and the rest. I want to go to University so that I can learn to be a leader, because there is a lot I want to do for my home area. But I am scared, I am not sure whether the principal has registered us to sit for the exams or it slipped his mind again and used the money to take his wife for a vacation in
I had a B plain in my Mocks, I have been a good student, I only hope that I will be allowed to sit for my exams, and then pass. Am I hoping for too much?
