Elderly Nairobi women troop back to school

Hannah Njoki (left) and Nancy Nyambura study during an adult learning class session at Cornerstone School in Ngando, Dagoretti South. [PHOTO:JONAH ONYANGO/STANDARD]

A new breed of learners is emerging in Nairobi’s classrooms. They have never stepped inside a formal classroom all their life, or if they did, they dropped out so many years ago that they cannot remember what one plus one equals to.

Struggling to pronounce vowels and solve basic arithmetic problems, they are now determined to sharpen their mathematics and English skills.

Magret Wambui, 63, is one of them. A few years ago, she explains, she lost money to a man she approached to assist her withdraw her savings from a bank account.

“He withdrew all my money and gave me half of it. I realised this when I visited the bank later only to be told that I had no money left in my account,”she says. Instead of heading to a police station to report the incident, she headed to the classroom.

Today, she can not only write her name but also memorise her MPESA secret code and load airtime to her phone.

HOMEWORK

She attends school twice a week, and her grandson is her evening class teacher. “My grandchildren are happy with me, they assist me in doing homework,” she says.

Her teacher, Mariam Benjamen describes her as a dedicated and hard-working student who is eager to learn. “She has never missed classes and is passionate about  education,” she says.

According to Mary Adhiambo, the coordinator of the adult literacy programme, majority of the elderly learners are traders who want to acquire basic arithmetic and writing skills.

Others want more than that. “We had 12 candidates who sat for their Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) last year. The best scored 280 marks,” she says.

According to Nairobi Woman Representative Rachael Shebesh, who initiated the programme, 930 women have gone through the programme since its inception two years ago in four centres: Dagoretti, Roysambu, Kibera and Kangemi.