Lifesaving school dinners.

In a very friendly, very pretty, very red village on the edge of Tsavo National Park in Kenya is a sweet and dusty primary school with 134 bright-as-buttons children.

These children are aged between five and fourteen and they recognise the importance of school; it’s their chance for a better life.  Even in the classrooms that have no teachers the children have their heads in books, reading and trying and hoping.  I can’t picture that happening in any of my children’s classrooms.  

Another difference is that you don’t hear any of them complain
about the school dinners because, for many, it’s the only food they’ll get today.

The little school provides a very basic lunch – dried beans and maize soaked in water with some salt.  The children eat this simple meal sitting together under a tree except for the children that aren’t allowed to eat.   These children, some as young as four, sit separately, under a different tree, and watch the others. Their parents can no longer contribute the food donations for the communal pot.  Children that can’t contribute to the pot don’t eat from it and these parents have reached a dreadful moment where they have nothing left to offer. There is no safety net.  There is no support. Their children just don’t eat.

The families here are farmers -good ones - and they usually produce
enough food to feed themselves with surplus to sell but, for four seasons in a row, the rains have failed.  There is nothing left here. This year families haven’t even planted – there’s no point.  Nothing will germinate. They are in a dreadful waiting game for the next rains that are supposed to fall in November – they are unlikely to come - but that’s another story.

The absolute minimum needed to ‘get these kids through to
November alive will be 100g of maize and 40g of beans per child per day’.  For the whole school that works out at £280/month
(at present maize and bean prices).  So a grand total of £1,400 to feed 134 children for five months.  That’s roughly £10 a child for five months of school meals.

I am not convinced that the rains will bring what this community needs but £1400 is what the head teacher and the team at Save the
Elephants* know will get these kids through the next five months.  After that we might need to re think.

Can you help feed a school and take some pressure off desperate families as they wait for rain that may not come?

Thank you. x

*FYI Save the Elephants is an organisation that has worked in and around the village for 14 years and that will get the funds to the school.  All money raised will go to this school’s emergency feeding programme and you’ll be able to see updates here.

Just a little update from Lucy at Save the Elephants today (21st July).