Edith Barasa was born in 1991 to Mr.Aloyce Barasa and Mrs. Beatrice Barasa of little known Madola village of Busia district Western Province Kenya. The presence of ICS in her school is quite a phenomenon in her life as narrated below...
Upon attaining school going age Edith
joined Madola school for pre -primary education given its proximity to her
home. The school was grossly underdeveloped with almost on existent basic
facilities. There were four incomplete brick walled classrooms housing less
than half of the school population. These had no shutters (doors and windows).
In these parts of the country, pre-primary education is considered less serious
schooling and as such not given priority with regard to distribution of
resources. Thus as expected Edith and her classmates were contented with
learning under a tree shade while seating on the sometimes dump grounds
depending on the weather and writing form their laps. This was the norm even in
neighbouring schools. Although these conditions were harsh making learning an
uphill task, Edith and her peers did not complain. Life went on like that until
Edith was in class three. In the year 2002 ICS identified Edith’s school to
participate in her Child sponsorship Programme. Edith’s school life slowly but
surely begun changing. She was lucky to be recruited as a sponsored child and
was consequently fitted with a school uniform a very valuable piece of cloth in
this region. Edith narrates how on several occasions in her school life, she
had been sent away from school either by the school head teacher or his deputy.
Many times she played hide and seek games with the school authorities to stay
in school and learn as her parents have no formal employment and had difficulty
buying this garment that cost around Ksh.600/= an amount not easy to come
by. Since she understood the situation back at home, the young girl preferred
dodging the authorities to stay at school than to go home and torment her
mother with her presence constantly reminding her of her failure in her duty to
provide for Edith as a mother. While at school, life was not any easier. As a
child, Edith felt inferior to the other children and always avoided getting
into their way lest they mock her for not wearing a school uniform. On few occasions
when the school administration would not tolerate children without the official
school dressing in the school, (Teachers believed that parents only acted on
seeing their kids condemned to staying at home) Edith missed school for a
couple of days before her parents could fit one for her. Thus with the yearly
fitting of school uniform both mother and child were relieved of a big
burden. they only needed to think of food as ICS took care of all Edith’s
school needs that included paying of fees for all sponsored children. To date
Edith has received a total of four uniforms from ICS and has been her friend’s
benefactors of the same too. In the same year, ICS funded the school to
purchase furniture (school banks, tables and chairs) and books. This was when
Edith and her friends got to know the comfort of sitting on school banks. ICS
then funded the school enabling it to purchase school textbooks. This new
development enabled Edith and her friends to be able to borrow textbooks and
carry them home from where they could easily write their homework unlike in the
past where they spent ¾ of their evening games time copying lengthy
exercises at the expense of playing yet too much work without play makes jack a
dull boy
In 2004, ICS put up eight doors of pit
latrines in Madola. These were a replacement of the five dilapidated ones
that had no doors but an entrance with a wall sheltering the users. This denied
Edith and her friends privacy and for that reason she avoided visiting school
latrines. The improved facility has made Edith comfortable to use latrines at
school any time.
In the year 2005 more was in store for
Edith as ICS put up two new classrooms in her school and as fate would have it,
her class was assigned one of the modern classrooms. This improved her school
life a great deal. The new classroom increased her enthusiasm towards attending
school. Having been assigned the new classroom relieved Edith of her
responsibility of carrying cow dung to school every Friday to smear classrooms
earthen floors to reduce dust in a bid to keep jiggers at bay. With the new
classroom all that remained to be done was the less involving sweeping of the
floors on a daily basis and mopping once a week. Whenever there are inter
schools ball games Edith and her friends look forward to the activity as they
are the subject of envy from their colleagues from other schools who are well
aware of Edith’s school new look.
In June 2005 ICS officers were visiting
Madola school to verify the Identities of CSP children eligible for uniform
fitting at when it was discovered that Edith was constantly absent from school.
We learned that her problem had started as a small swelling on her left leg and
burst after a few days becoming a small wound. Unfortunately the wound was
ignored and expected to heal on its own. Regrettably, that was not to be the
case. Instead the wound kept on enlarging from increased infection. Due to
limited resources, Edith’s parents could not afford to take her to hospital but
kept on hoping against hope that a miracle would occur and the wound would just
go away. Her mother, having no better alternative, only gave her painkillers.
All the while, the wound continued to be infected with more bacteria as it was
left unattended. No cleaning was done and the wound became septic. Her
situation got worse and she could not walk out of being in so much pain but she
bravely bore the condition. The teachers at school did not know of her problem
but only noted that she was always absent from school. It was when our officer
asked the school administration for permission to take the girl to hospital
that they saw the wound for the first time and expressed shock at the level of
infection. ICS officers then took the responsibility of carrying Edith to
hospital. On arrival at the hospital, the doctor who attended to her could not
hide his shock on seeing the seriously infected wound. He feared that further
delay to seek treatment would have been fatal.The girl was given first aid
treatment and a culture sensitivity done to identify the bacteria that had
infected the wound. It cost ICS ksh1000/= to treat the girl. Given her
background that was a lot of money for her parents to offset (as they only work
as casual labourers once in a while from where they earn less than ksh 100/= a
day to be spent on food). Edith has since recovered and is happy to attend
school like her peers.
Early this year 2006 ICS has facilitated a
school lunch program for CSP sponsored children and this has assured Edith of
something to bite at school, for in this season of the year food is usually
rare in homes. Many times Edith had gone home for lunch and got back to school
having taken nothing as it was simply unavailable.
Edith is in class seven and hopes to sit
for her end of primary examination next year. She says that the only way to
express her gratitude to ICS is by working hard at school.
Bye, Evelyn Mukanda
