Born Free

Category: Born Free, Born Free Kenya | Date: Jul 03 2009 | By: bornfree

A growing number of Born Free’s projects place the community at the very heart of the project.  Many of these projects stem from Born Free’s Global Friends programme which has identified schools and communities located near Born Free’s wildlife projects, and provided yearly support for infrastructure and resources.  Global Friends works closely with the local schools to encourage further community support of our wildlife projects, address local issues (e.g. access to clean water, tackling human-wildlife conflicts) and create a positive learning environment for children by providing uniforms, stationery and infrastructures. The programme also provides training opportunities to members of the school staff and increase local employment through use of local materials. Currently there are six Global friends schools in Kenya.

Our Visit
Last month, Born Free Kenya team together with a group of its supporters from the UK visited the Global Friends Schools in the Amboseli catchment area. The supporters were on their routine tour of Kenya and they brought various educational toys and learning material, which were distributed to the school children.  In total they visited four schools: Ol moti, Lenkisem, Amboseli and Enkongu Narok where they were ushered with breathtaking traditional maasai dances and poems.  

As we drove through the dry bushes and on dusty roads to each of the schools, there was something unusually notable in all the areas. Most of the manyattas were deserted, there were few people on the way and countless carcasses of livestock scattered all over. This was quite visible in the Ol moti area. Unlike our previous visits, there were no community members in the school, around the boreholes and in manyattas. The number of children in school had dropped from 280 to about 200. 

All these changes have been attributed to the prolonged drought that has engulfed the entire Kajiado south. For the second year running the district has registered a ‘zero’ harvest making people rely on minimal relief food. Farms have turned into open dry fields full of dust. Livestock keeping is no longer a viable option as the community have lost most of their livestock. We were told that a bull that used to cost Ksh 20,000 now fetches as little as Ksh 1000.
 
Most of the community members have moved in search of green pastures and water. Some have moved together with their children as far as Tsavo and Kitengela areas-about 200 kilometres away. This has resulted to reduced enrolment especially at boarding schools.
Ol moti school, which was primarily revived to help less fortunate children whose parents are traditionally nomadic, continues to survive by defying the harsh condition in the area. Even with only 300kg of food left for the entire term, the head teacher Mr. Koringo was still opportunistic and hopeful that situation will go back to normal. He also believes that changing his school registration to a low cost boarding school will be finalized in time to start benefiting from the Home-grown school-feeding programme.

The District Education Board (D.E.B) has already appealed to the government to supplement food to primary schools in the district. The D.E.B chairman who is the District Commissioner (DC) of Loitokitok district said that only boarding secondary schools were on the government-feeding programme.

The DC is concerned with the current harsh situation and has vowed to help hasten the appeal to ensure all primary schools also benefit from the current secondary schools feeding programme.

And as an emergency measure the DC donated about 450kg of maize to Ol moti school to keep them going. This was in addition to about 900kg of food pledged by the BFF supporters and a significant amount of food provided by Born Free Foundation itself. 

Born Free has also been providing for the wildlife affected by this drought, including the hippos in Mzima Springs which have been suffering terribly.

As we left the Amboseli region, we were left contemplating on how soon the rains will come back to rescue the situation.

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Thank you for reading,

Manoa, Born Free Kenya