We, Kenyans, sometimes have no choice but sympathise with some of our compatriots suffering due to poverty. A good example was seen in Tiaty, Baringo County.
Despite the heavy rains being experienced in most other places, thousands of learners in remote arid and semi-arid areas of the county have been drawn from schools by floods and hunger. This is mainly due to poverty and high illiteracy levels in their households.
Indeed, in far-flung villages in Tiaty, the land, with the erratic rains, cannot sustain farming. That has caused perennial food scarcity with locals depending on aid and head teachers in drought-stricken areas crying that the flour supplied to schools for porridge was used up even before the end of the term.
Many pupils, especially those who walk long distances to school, have been forced to stay at home. School feeding programmes keep children in school.
But with the poverty index very high, to an extent that most families in remote villages in Tiaty live on less than a dollar a day, it’s not surprising that, two weeks after reopening, over half of the learners had dropped out.
Most of the affected learners are in pre-primary and cannot endure walking long distances on an empty stomach. Besides, the households have not received food aid for six months.
That has caused malnutrition among children, who depend on porridge alone or even go hungry for days on end.
Many pupils dropped out as their families migrated to Kerio Valley and Masol in neighbouring West Pokot in search of pasture and water for their livestock.
The government must quickly provide sufficient relief food to these children to enable them to remain in school and, hence, continue with their education.
What all this boils down to is that we need our children to be helped when it comes to their pursuit of the must-needed formal education despite where they come from. BY DAILY NATION