‘From poverty to possibility – why I’m helping to build a school in a small village in Kenya’

POTENTIAL: ‘These kids could be doctors, engineers, people who do great things for the world, but without a school to get them started how will we ever find out?’ Pictures by Paul Knott

The Accidental Diplomat, a column by Paul Knott

How education can make such a difference to a small community in rural Kenya

On hearing that I have spent my adult life living and working in a range of different countries around the world, people often ask what I have learnt from the experience. My usual answer is a simple one: that people everywhere are far more alike than they are different. Most of all, we share the same basic desires to be safe, healthy, able to provide for our families and for our children to have a decent education that gives them opportunities in life.

This applies equally from the world’s most affluent big cities to its poorest rural areas, like the village of Ngao in Kenya, where my family and I are helping the people to build a school and improve their kids’ prospects.

We were motivated to get involved partly because my family has lived experience of how crucial education can be in changing lives. My late and much-loved father-in-law also started his life as shoeless young lad in a poor, rural village. His own hard work and the help he was given by others to gain access to education enabled him to become a university professor.

COMMUNITY: ‘The people of Ngao have everything they need to build a school, except money.’

Later on, as the director of a regional development agency he helped numerous people to build better lives. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law dedicated her working life to helping poor communities escape poverty, not least through school-building, during her decades of development work.

Their children (including my wife) then worked their way up to study at leading universities, becoming successful lawyers, doctors, business executives and aid organisation leaders. Which is quite a transformation through education in just two generations.

This is just one example of why so many Kenyans believe in the power of education to change the lives of the poor from poverty to possibility. Kids being educated and going on to secure steady jobs, let alone something more exalted, combines with the ingrained culture of giving back to support your extended family. This creates a virtuous circle in which more people are reliably fed and more kids are supported to go to school, improving an ever-growing number of lives in a way that can be sustained for generations.

TOIL: Daily life is tough for many Kenyans

Our connection to Ngao arose through it being the home village of Bwana Gonzi, who has worked for my mother-in-law’s organisation as a driver for many years and is a popular character around the family. He had been pressing us to help his community build a school for some time.

Ngao is small, rural and remote, despite being situated just a few hundred metres from the main road between Kenya’s capital Nairobi and its second city and main port, Mombasa. Most travellers on that major highway have no idea that the village exists out there to the side in the scrubby brushland. There is no formal road to it and no sign indicating its presence. This may be because there is no obvious reason for any outsider to go there. Ngao boasts no tourist attractions or entertainment venues. It has no shops, business premises or commercial farms. The very notion of such things seems utterly disconnected from the reality of a place which has no power supply or running water.

But what this village does have now amongst its collection of small, mostly mud-walled and corrugated iron-roofed houses is a primary school, in the form of two rudimentary classrooms. And the reason it now has that primary school is because the remarkable and resilient people of Ngao decided to build one themselves.

This undertaking was an astonishingly bold move for such a community. Most of its members have little more than the clothes they stand up in and struggle to eke out enough to eat from the village’s small patch of communal land. There are few jobs available nearby either. Obtaining, at best, low-paid and insecure work involves leaving your family behind and taking your chances in one of the distant towns that lay hours away down the highway.

Despite their circumstances of severe poverty, the people of Ngao were determined to build their own school because even their four- and five-year-old children had to walk ten kilometres a day to the nearest available one, some without shoes, over rough terrain and often in baking heat. Although the Kenyan government strives to provide free primary education to all of the nation’s children, demand still far outstrips this developing country’s available resources and it is unable to put a school everywhere that needs one.

Or maybe it is more accurate to say that the people of Ngao decided to build their own school because of their circumstances of severe poverty.

BUSTLE: A street scene in Mombasa

On our most recent visit there, one of the local elders reinforced to me the reason for poorer Kenyans’ faith in education. As we watched the kids playing joyously on the rough field in front of us, he said: “There could be engineers, doctors and people who could do great things for the world amongst these kids. But without education and a school to get them started, how will we ever find out?”

Meeting the kids confirms his judgement. They are bright, inquisitive and utterly loveable bundles of potential who have yet to be beaten down by life. One group of youngsters is already showing remarkable engineering skills and creativity by building toy cars with fully functioning steering systems out of stray sticks, discarded bits of wire and wheels made from fragments of old flip-flop soles.

The people in Ngao have pretty much everything required to undertake this substantial task, except money. Determination. Organisation. A work ethic and a common purpose. All of these assets fuel their efforts to improve the lot of their kids by physically building the school themselves, one basic stone-walled, tin-roofed classroom at a time.

They do this with only the most basic hand tools too, starting by digging foundations into the hard, rocky ground in invariably adverse weather conditions, with men and women of all ages sharing the workload. Their plan is to build a new classroom every year until the school is complete. This work rate is necessary because as each existing class group moves up a year, a new one of the smallest children starts at the beginning.

The one element they are missing is where we come in – by raising the funds for them to buy the building materials and basic classroom equipment. I am proud of my kids for taking the lead in this family project. In particular, my daughter who has formed a club at school that is being well-supported by her schoolmates in its fundraising activities for their counterparts born into less fortunate circumstances.

These days, we can all often feel powerless in the face of the big issues troubling our world. But this is a situation on which it is possible to have a real, direct impact. It feels good to make a difference. And supporting the efforts of the people of Ngao will help to transform lives and give some wonderful children a chance to fulfil their potential, which ultimately benefits us all.

• You can help support the efforts to build a school Ngao via the JustGiving page here