Mathare North Primary: Where foetus dot school, drug addicts roam freely

Fancy a school where strangers peddle drugs and consume all manner of drinks in the full view of pupils and teachers?

That and more happens at Mathare North Primary School in Nairobi.

Hawkers are to be found inside the school compound selling their wares that include foodstuffs to the children.

“We have complained to the local chief in vain,” says headmaster Jackson Munaya who has been at the helm of the school for 10 years.

With virtually no fence, the school, with a population of 1,500 is a free for all in a slum location.

Besides drug peddlers and addicts, drunkards from alcohol dens in the vicinity stagger in at will, shouting their hearts out as learning goes on in the classrooms.

Others dose away their inebriation to the innocent amusement of children who tag and poke fun at them. What a shame!

Not to be left out among the unwanted guests at the school compound is a mentally unstable man known as Maroko.

But Maroko’s naked apparitions are nothing compared to the ugly and smelly dump mound that has taken over part of the school compound.

Abandoned

The dump was fast spreading towards the classrooms before attempts to clear it were started a few days ago, thanks to prompt action by the County Executive in charge of education Janet Ouko. She took action when Saturday Standard drew her attention to the problem.

“I am warning those who have been using the school compound as a dumping ground to desist from the habit because doing so in future risks prosecution” she cautions.

Mrs Ouko voiced a Nairobi City County commitment to complete the fencing of the school by the end of the year to address the problems once and for all.

Mr Munaya reported that Mathare North ward MCA Jared Okoth was spearheading collection of the garbage. ”The exercise involves two trucks and a tractor and with time we will completely clear the mess,” he says, adding that the former area MCA Oscar Lore used to ensure the garbage was collected every two weeks.

The headmaster says children and teachers have stumbled on abandoned new born babies and aborted foetus at the dump site that has become a magnet for vultures and pigs.

”We have young children who see the dumpsite as a playing ground whenever they are away from the scrutiny of teachers. It is a health hazard for the children,” he laments.

Referring to a bizarre episode that left the school community miffed, Munaya says they recently interrupted a burial of an infant at the dump, brazenly being conducted in broad day light, with a pastor leading the ceremony.

“The daring strangers, all of them women, had dug a shallow grave and interred the infant’s body, and fled into the sprawling estate when they saw us coming. The body was half buried, its hand sticking out of the refuse. We called the police who exhumed it and took it to the mortuary,” recounts Munaya, his face a study in distress. 

Sarah Mwadime, a committee member of the school board recalls how one morning she found children milling around the body of an infant wrapped in rags.

“It was a baby girl probably aborted and dumped at night. The children would playfully peel off the wraps to have a closer look at the foetus. As a mother, I was traumatised,” she says.

But at times, it is the early morning sight of bodies of adults next to the classrooms that Munaya says shakes children and teachers to the core.

“The killings happen mainly at night. Many of the victims are criminals who run into the school compound for refuge only to be cornered by the police and shot dead. Others are people killed elsewhere and their bodies dumped in the school compound. I have lost count of these macabre incidents that leave a dark blot on our children’s minds just because the school has no fence,” says Munaya.

The school’s open grounds have attracted land grabbers who in the process have threatened the headmaster with death. “They hived off and subdivided four acres that included the dumpsite. They threatened to come for my head when we thwarted their plan,” he narrates.

So rife is insecurity in the school compound that a teacher once had her hand bag snatched by a stranger while she was in class teaching.

“I was teaching science when a man entered and walked towards me. I thought he was a parent but instead of talking to me, he whipped out a panga and in the twinkle of an eye grabbed my bag and ran to the door. Children ran after him amid shouts of “thief”  “thief “as he made for the slum,” recalls Mathematics and Science teacher Margaret Machage.

She says the man dropped the bag as crowd including children closed in on him. “I recovered the bag with everything in it, but have always felt unsettled in the classroom ever since,” Mrs Machage says.

Of note is that the school has surmounted the odds to post good results especially so after intervention by Women Educational Researchers of Kenya (WERK), a professional association of researchers in education funded by UNICEF. A total of 52 out of 213 candidates scored more than 300 points in last year’s KCPE exams with the top candidate scoring 375 points to secure admission to Precious Blood High School, Riruta in Nairobi.

WERK’s Executive Officer Sophia Yiege says their intervention includes rehabilitation of 52 dilapidated and unusable toilets and four classrooms at a cost of Sh632,259. “We also support over 200 out of school children,” says Ms Yiege.