The New Primary School at Esupetai Located 17 miles from Norok town, Kenya, Africa

Scroll down for updated progress!


These are pictures of an Elementary school for 160 children ages from 3 to 7. It is located 17 miles from the nearest town called, Narok, Kenya. The two teachers have to teach two school shifts a day.... 80 children in the morning....... and the remaining 80 in the afternoon...... with 40 students in each of the two classrooms at a time.

During the rainy season there is no school, or have serious interruption to schedules, as the grass" floor" is mud....and of course, during the rest of the school year, during the equator type heat...... there is no air conditioning! There is no water and the "bath rooms" are situated about an eight of a mile away in another broken down shed.

These children will graduate to a middle school (primary school) that is three miles away. The middle school (primary school) has over 560 children in facilities big enough for 250, and again, there are two school shifts a day to cater for so many children. About 50% or more of these middle school (primary school) students walk distances of over five/seven miles a day in the morning and return the same distance when school is out for the day.

There are elephants, lions and cheetahs in the area, and over recent years, a number of children were attacked and killed, and some parents were also killed defending the children against the attacks. The person who helps us in Kenya, Dickson, last September rescued a 7-year-old boy who was about 300 yards away from an elephant. It was walking slowly in the boy's direction and would have attacked him if their paths met. Dickson picked him up in his truck and drove him the rest of the way to school. 

To cut down the danger for children who travel the longest they have a later start time of 11 in the morning because most of the animals hunt early, as the early morning sun has less heat. From about noon onwards the animals look for shade from the sweltering heat. In high animal seasonal movement, as the animals are in transit, the local Maasai warriors escort the children to school with spears, bows and arrows to defend from any possible attacks.

Depending on local knowledge of animal activity, and sometimes rumor, the children who have long distances to walk to school are kept away from school by their parents for days and days. This, of course, causes havoc to the school schedule and the teachers have to add extra learning time to make up for the loss.

What we are going to do to help is to build a new primary school that will take more than half of the children out of the current primary school and these children no longer will have to walk the long and dangerous distances. We now think the longest distance for the children to walk will not be more than a mile....a huge safety improvement.

Currently final discussions are almost finished with the contractors, teachers, parents and we plan to begin building in March. The parents and the local communities have signed about 50 acres over to us to build the school and have guaranteed they will provide 24 hour security for all the materials and will also provide water for the contractor.

They will begin to fill and store small tanks of water starting 4 weeks before the work begins and will form a water squad that will daily deliver water in small cans/buckets when the contractor is on site. The new primary school is expected to take 12 weeks to finish.

School progress update (March 2007):

Great news! We have begun! The new school has started three weeks ahead of the plan. Here are some of the photos showing the first two days. Work had to stop twice for about a total time of an hour while elephants walked through the site and they also hang around at night. The villagers are organizing watch duties. The elephants will drift away as more people and truck activity build up.Please enjoy the photos below!