What:

MURUNGARU PRIMARY SCHOOL

Murungaru Primary School was founded in the early 1900s, as an elementary school. It has over 800 students from Grades 1 to 8. It is located in a rural area of Bahati Division, in Nakuru District Rift Valley Province. The school is about 20 KM from Nakuru town. The pupils come from a community comprised largely of peasant subsistence farmers. Many of them are orphans under the guardianship of their grandmothers, having lost their parents to AIDS, which is rampant in Kenya.

When the current government came to power in 2003, they abolished tuition fees which resulted in a drastic rise in enrolment from 60% to nearly 100%. Unfortunately, with this needed change came many challenges including overcrowded classrooms, inadequate textbooks and supplies as well as a shortage of trained teachers.

The area surrounding the school is all farmland, subdivided into small holdings of 5-10 acres where farmers grow Maize (corn), potatoes, beans, and raise cattle, sheep, goats and chicken – mainly for their own food. Their harvests are dependent on the unpredictable rains. A proportion of the farmers are able to sell their produce in the local market in Nakuru for cash.

The school has no electricity and the classrooms have bare brick walls, some without windows. The floors are bare dirt and the walls are not painted.