EDUCATION-KENYA: The Death Of School Children Remains A Mystery

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Judith Achieng'

NAIROBI, Mar 27 2001 (IPS) - The latest fire disaster in a Kenyan school has raised serious questions about the safety of children in boarding schools, which majority of parents often prefer as a better environment for study.

About 68 boys died and 28 others seriously injured in an early Monday morning fire that gutted a dormitory in the Kyanguli secondary school, in Machakos district, some 50 kilometres from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

The cause of fire is still unknown, but police suspect an arson attack.

Police spokesperson Peter Kimanthi said the fire which started around midnight, spread quickly through the overcrowded dormitory, in which about 130 boys were sleeping and that there were traces of gasoline fuel that could have been used in starting the fire.

The dormitory had only 96 beds, a common phenomenon in most boarding schools where some students sleep rough on the floor.

One of the two doors in the dormitories was locked, as 15 of the dead students were found piled at one doorway, apparently in a bid to force it open before the fire caught up with them. Others reportedly died in their beds.

A number of the injured were taken to the Machakos district hospital and others were rushed to the Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi.

The tragedy, the worst in Kenya history, has stunned the public. A shocked President Daniel arap Moi arrived with a contingent of government officials to console bereaved parents and relatives.

The Kenyan media has been quick to place the blame on the ministry of education for failing in its duty to standardise boarding school facilities and ensure appropriate measure of emergency preparedness.

The school also appears to have problems with ex-students. Many students who sat last year’s Ordinary level examinations were disqualified for cheating. Only 11 out of the more than a hundred have received their results. The school reportedly took back only 30 of the disqualified students to re-sit their examination this year, leaving the rest bitter and frustrated.

“Most of us think that our children are safer and are able to concentrate in their studies. But look what is happening to them,” wonders Monica Odhiambo, who has two daughters in boarding schools. “Who can we trust to take care of our children, if they can just burn in their beds like that?”

Cases of fires have become frequent in Kenyan secondary schools, where disputes between students and school administrations have been reported. Disputes usually range from the quality of food, to alleged mismanagement of school funds to unfair punishment.

A similar fire killed 25 students at Bombolulu Girls Secondary School, near the Indian Ocean Port of Mombasa in March 1998. The girls had been locked inside their dormitory by the school management to prevent them from “sneaking” out in the night. The cause of the inferno was never confirmed, although school authorities attributed it to an electric fault.

In 1999, a group of boys in Nyeri High School in Central Kenya doused four of their sleeping colleagues in kerosene and set them on fire. The four, who were prefects, were unpopular among other students.

In 1992, 19 girls died in a stampede in the dormitory during a night attack by their male colleagues. The school head said the boys had not meant any harm, “they had only wanted to rape”.

Experts have attributed the rising cases of riots in Kenyan schools to a sharp decline in quality of education and a gigantic expansion of the number of institutions, many headed by untrained professionals.

“This does not reflect malice of evil, but ignorance and the lack of efficiency,” notes Geoffrey Griffin, who runs the Starehe Boys National School in Nairobi. “You can’t blame the kids. The children become what we have made them. You send them to a bad school, something ferments, and may be explodes,” he told IPS.