Transformation of Sweetwaters Primary School

I sit down and drift back seventeen years; life was difficult at the primary level. Can you imagine running to school barefoot very early in the morning almost 8 kilometers to attend lessons with your legs brushing the morning dew and mist and fog hitting you all the way to class only to find you are late for class with a span of five minutes and the teacher on duty is eagerly waiting for you with a huge cane to slash your back?

This was the life of a student at Sweetwaters Primary School, one of the PA-MOJA sponsored schools. Students would run all the way to school just to get some education in a class made of timber earthen floors with leaking roofs. The hardest part of this came during winter. The only difference between winter in Canada and Kenya is that in Kenya there is no snow but it is extremely cold.

Some students came to school early in the morning without warm clothing, but this has changed in a big way with the intervention of PA-MOJA. Sweetwaters Primary now has a well furbished classroom with a capacity of more than 50 students and a 2500 liter tank.

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The school enrollment has greatly improved since 2012 and in fact they were ranked 6 out of 23 schools in the district as compared to last year’s position 10.

With the intervention of other donors and in conjunction with Ol Pejeta, the school is growing in number of students. As you can see in the photos, jericans with holes cut in them are used by students to wash their hands once they visit the loos. They step on the wood that is below the jerican and the water flows enabling the pupils to wash their hands. Thus, the precious water the children have used to wash their hands is not wasted; a small garden has been planted just beneath the water, so that the waste water is immediately recycled.

Students at Sweetwaters take part in a feeding program and students will do anything just to stay in school. A question comes to mind: “Would you make it in school with only one meal in a day just like most primary schools students in Kenya do?” The students assist in the planting of food in their garden to try to eradicate the culture of carrying food from their homes just like most remote primary schools do. Thank you, PA-MOJA.

And now the pupils are comfortably learning in a warm classroom thanks to PA-MOJA and the Ol Pejeta Conservancy. Below are the class eight pupils in their new classroom comfortably taking part in their lesson and using the desks donated to them by Mrs. Penner’s Grade 3’s at Langley Fine Arts School, a PA-MOJA sister school. Mrs. Penner’s students collected and recycled pop cans throughout the year to raise money for the desks. Sweetwaters pupils and their teachers promise to put extra efforts in their performance and their aim is to be one of the best performing primary schools in the region as a way of appreciation to their donors.

And here is the outside view of the class