For years it has been the wish of the Loita elders to construct a secondary school in the area. The reason seems obvious: every year primary school leavers number between two and three hundred. Until recently these girls and boys had to rely on schools that were sometimes hundreds of miles away. That was if they could find a vacancy at all.
It added enormous extra costs to the parents and the community who are already strained financially to educate their children.
In Kenya, a country the size of France, a minimum of 40 different languages are spoken and although Kiswahili is now the common language, cultural and social differences between the tribal areas are still large.
A pupil from Loita hills would therefore not only have to deal with the school’s curriculum but also, at times, be confronted by a completely different culture!
A school with an Edge’
The Loita leadership wanted their new school, as well as teaching the national curriculum, to address particularly pressing issues such as:
-equality of the sexes with the emphasis on girls and women’s rights
-exploitation and protection, and conservation of local resources and the environment
The school is therefore now tackling the following issues:
- teaching the secondary school curriculum
- the building of a Cultural Resource Centre
- the construction of a farm
The school has been built in the village of Entasekera.
Apart from a small shopping and market place, it is also the government administrative centre for the whole of Loita.
Apart from the secondary school there is also a nursery, a primary school and a well-equipped health centre with a European doctor. This centre serves the whole of Loita and part of Purko, a neighbouring subset of the Maasai community. Entasekera is also the centre of the Catholic Church with a church and two resident priests.
In 2003 both the Loita leadership and the diocese of Ngong, led by bishop Cornelius Schilder, decided that with limited financial resources only one man could tackle the supervision of the building programme: Jan Voshaar, the same man that in 1969 started the Ilkerin Integral Development Project with the Loita people.
Work bagan on the 1st of July 2003.
The School
The school opened on the 20th February 2006.
Despite many financial problems and set backs, Jan Voshaar and his team have welcomed the initial seventeen students to their school.
At that moment they proudly were able to offer a beautiful group of buildings, far exceeding the normal artistic and utilitarian standards of the average rural secondary or high school.
The school at present has an administrative building, two classrooms, a dormitory, shower and toilet areas and a building for communal gatherings.
At present six of the seventeen students are girls. It is the schools aim to maintain and improve this figure.
The Farm
The ILIDC has been promoting community work groups in the five locations to embark on subsistence agriculture as a way to secure local food supplies. In this programme the Maasai pastoralists are taught various aspects of land management and agriculture.
The school farm has several aims including:
- to teach the pupils agriculture both practically and theoretically
- to be a source of income for funding the school
At present the farm has nine healthy heifers and a Sahiwal bull from the Ilkerin farm. Several acres of land were ploughed and maize, beans and potatoes were planted. The harvest is expected to be poor this year and it will take time before all the improvements bear fruit.
The Culture and Resource Centre
The centre has two aspects: ‘cultural’ and ‘didactic’.
The cultural part is that this centre, figuratively speaking, stands between the school and the local community.
It has three ‘entrances’. One is for the students, one for the elders and parents of the community, and one for visitors from near and afar seeking information about the Maasai culture.
In this way a stream of communication will start to flow between the tradition of the elders, the students who represent the future of the community and outsiders with an interest in local culture and resources.
Thus the traditions of Maasai culture will be kept alive: their ceremonies, age group structures, the pastoral tradition, natural medicine, cultural artefacts andstory telling.
The centre will serve as a mediation point between young and the old, between elders and students, and outsiders will be welcome.
The ‘didactic’side will consist of:
- data base for the school, the community and for visitors
- collections of didactic material
- a Study Centre for students, the community and visitors on cultural safaris
High on the agenda is the issue of equal rights and opportunities for women and girls.
Again, we emphasise that the project is opposed to enforced sex, enforced circumcision and enforced marriage. And that it is resolutely in favour of equal rights and opportunities.
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