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The local village school in Mara Rianda, located in Mara North Conservancy, is both a private school and a boarding school. After having expanded with new class rooms, writing tools, furniture and water tanks for clean drinking water from donations by Soroptimists in Helsinge and Lone & Kim Roslev, the numbers of students have increased.
The school in Mara Rianda is a privatly driven school and has more than 300 students from 1st to 6th class. Some of the students have to walk long distances to come to the school and they have to cross he savannah, which can be quite dangerous. You have to bear in mind, that the school is located on the savannah with all the known wild animals like lions, leopards, hippos and elephants and this situation the young students face every day. Even though the kids have been told in details, how to behave in a dangerous situation, by their parents, and that it rarely happens, that children are beeing attacked by animals, it is a fact, that the risk is present every day.
The wild animals on the savannah prefer to stay at a distance from humans, and it is always the case, that if the animals come to you, they are just curious, but when we come close to them a penetrate their comfort zone, it is a intirely differnet situation. They will feel threatned and probably attack you. Especially if they have cubs to protect.
The Masai people have been more and more focused on getting their children to school to get an education, so they are more prepared for the future, but the problem still exists, that mostly young boys are beeing kept home, so they can assist in helping looking after the cattle.
The School system in Kenya is based on a 6-6-6 system, where the kids go to lower primary school for 6 years, 6 years in upper primary school and 6 years on university. Besides that, there are 2 years in kindergarten. There are both private and public schools and both schools have options for day- and bording school.
Public School as day school: Beeing paid by the Ministry Of Education and here the parents have to pay for uniforms and some times for school tools.
Public School as bording school: Bording fees are paid by the parents and the price can be different from school to school, but the average level is between 60 USD to around 150 USD per term.
Private Schools: Everything is paid by the parents, both day school and bording school. Also here the prices are different from school to school in regards to performance and standard and they are much better than the public schools academically and even in terms of infrastructures, though they are more expensive. The fees can range between 100 USD to even 400 USD per term and it’s the same with high schools.
The Village School in Mara Rianda, which intirely is a private School, is very dependent of donations from turists and other private donors, in order to maintain the big amount of pupils. In the nearby masai village, the turists are paying a fee to get a guided tour, and a part of this amount goes to the village schol.
Donations have played a important role in raising the school to where it is today and it will keep on growing in the future, thaks to a lot of generous and helpfull people, who wants to make a difference. In the 6 years we have been suporting the school, it has grown to allmost the double amount of pupils and have turned into both a day school and a bording school.
The need for clean drinking water, which is a matter of course in our part of the world, is huge and the lack of it is a direct reason for many diseases among the native pubulation. This is why a lot of help from outside the country is focused on this issue especially with new drillings and new water tanks.
In the village school we have collected enough money to have two new water tanks installed, so employees and pupils have access to clean drinking water every day.
After the school became a bording school with resident pupils, the need for a bigger kitchen became important. DIfferent donations from private people made it possible to make a bigger kitchen area, where it is possible to cook for many pupils. The food, that is served is primary beans, rice and corn.
With these big improvements, the school is now capable of securing a safe and health-wise daily schooling for a lot of local kids in the Mara North area. And hopefully this development will spred out to other ares in Kenya with te same needs as the village school in Mara Rianda.
In 2017 & 2018 the school got two new class rooms and new school desks. All the money were collected from activities like sales of post cards with our animal motives from Kenya. Totally collected is an amount of 18.000 USD, which have been delievered directly to the school through a joint venture with Karen Blixen Camp Trust. The school desks are made by local craftsmen from the area.
The collection of money for the school and the local community continues with The Soroptimists in Helsinge and Roslevphoto.com, founded by Lone & Kim Roslev.
Here Lone Roslev from The Soroptimists in Helsinge, is placing one of the stones for the first new class room.
In 2019 the school got a new dining room and a dormitory for the bording pupils. These two buildings were donate by private donors.
The Masai people are living in the East African countries Tanzania and Kenya and they known as a very colourfull people. In our modern time, everything has to move as fast as possible and words like "development" and ”innovation” has been become a daily term. But this is not how it is for the Masai people. Their way of living hasn`t changed that much for the last hundreds years and their lives is determined by the rising and setting sun and the change in seasons. Healthy cattle are everything for the Masai, as they use the milk and blood for drinking, their dung for building material and the meat for eating. And when it occatioanally happens, that cattle is slaughtered, every part of the animal is used. Of course the meat is for food, hove and bones is used for decoration, while the skin is used for shoes, clothes, blankets and rope - nothing is wasted.
We have, during all our travels to Kenya, been plessed with a unique opportunity to get to know a masai family in the small village Mara Rianda, which is located in Mara North Conservancy. And we have been so lucky to have the father of this family, Peter Sasiet, visiting us in Demark.
