Boarding School
The success of the preschools soon sent more and more students into the Samburu’s two local primary schools each year. Most of the children needed to board at school because their nomadic families live and migrate anywhere from 10 to 60 kilometers away from the two schools. With more children ready to attend primary school, we urgently needed adequate, fully equipped dormitories.
Between 2004 and 2006, we built four new dormitories in each of the two primary schools. Our generous supporters donated enough money to construct all eight buildings, with shower blocks, toilets, and solar lighting. All of the dormitories were also equipped with new bunk beds, mattresses, and sheets.
Along with the dormitories, other areas of infrastructure required improvement to cope with the influx of students. Every year, we bought more desks and school uniforms for the new students. At Ndoyno Wasin, students had been walking 4 kilometers a day to fetch water from an open well in a dry river bed that was polluted by animals at night so we put in a new solar powered well for clean running water. A new kitchen was built to prepare meals for the growing student population. An ambulance and driver were donated to look after the health of the students in both the primary schools and in the surrounding preschools.
In 2008, the people of Lerata asked us to add their school to our program. The inclusion of this primary school completed our coverage of primary education in the northeastern Samburu region.
The new infrastructure and growing preschool presence, achieved what we hoped it would—more children started coming to school. In 2001 there were only 130 students at school. This year we’ll have over 1,300 students at our schools.