Today most Maasai parents send their children to school, an opportunity many of them did not have just a generation ago.
Kenya’s capital of Nairobi, hosts some of East Africa’s premier Universities. Yet, just 30 km (20 miles) away in the Rift Valley community of Namuncha, the first primary school was not built until the 1990s. A great number of adults never went to school. In Kenya, that is in large part because school was not declared free until recently.
If one was fortunate enough to have a parent that could afford to pay school fees, the chances that they would graduate was slim. Often times boys were pulled from school so they could attend to the family’s cattle or to go through an initaition into warriorhood. On the other hand, girls were most often pulled from school when they were teenagers and forced into arranged marriages.
Meeting under a tree in 2003.
Maasai Community Connection founders helped start an adult literacy program where adults can take the initiative to get the education long denied them. Students first began meeting under a tree in 2003. Classes were so popular that two years later Maasai Community Connection worked with community leaders to construct the first
adult literacy center in the area, capable of holding the growing class sizes.
Adult Literacy Center in Namuncha, Kenya in 2010.
Classes are free and open to all who desire to attend no matter their age, ethnicity or sex. The students help develop the curriculum to meet both government standards and their own needs.
Through the adult literacy program students learn how to read, write, do basic arithmetic and learn life skills such as the importance of preventive health. Students are able to improve the health and well being of their families through the education they have received and learning skills that present them with new opportunities.
As a child, Ene Loonkishu says, “I was marginalized and told to look after the home.” Married at a young age, she never had the opportunity to attend school. Just one year after beginning classes at the Namuncha Adult Literacy Center she knew enough arithmetic and writing to start her own small shop.
“Now I can read for myself,” she says. “I can read for my husband. Now I can go to cities. Before I didn’t know how to read the street signs. Now I can go alone.”
Ene Loonkishu, a student and board member at Namuncha ALC.
Like Ene Loonkishu, many young women in her community missed out on school because of forced marriages. The adult literacy program is open to anyone seeking a second chance at an education.
Many of our students have gone on to run their own businesses and start their own community organizations. The Namuncha Adult Literacy Center gives students a second chance at gaining the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in the 21st century.
If you would like to assist the Maasai in improving their access education and health care please consider making a donation to the Maasai Community Connection.
