Our schools are deathtraps but we say nothing until the next tragedy

The tragedy that befell Kakamega Primary School this Monday is one of the saddest stories of this year so far.

What was supposed to be a much-looked-forward-to home time at 5pm turned to be a tragic event that claimed the lives of 14 pupils.

It is reported that the children were stirred into a commotion and later a stampeded after a teacher started thrashing some of the pupils causing them to run down the stairs.

Some children, it was noted, jumped from as far as third floor while others were crushed by their friends in the chaos.

To say that these were preventable, unnecessary and premature deaths is the understatement of the decade.

What followed was the usual. Leaders, including Deputy President William Ruto, visited the school and assured the parents of being “in our thoughts and prayers”.

Concerned Kenyans tweeted and complained about the state of our schools from their pricey smartphones and laptops before moving on to the next story.

The Ministry of Education closed the school temporarily until Monday to allow for investigations. We have been promised a detailed report on the exact proceedings of that fateful Monday evening.

Most heartbreaking is that 14 families will this weekend be earmarking graves in which they will lay to rest their little ones, whose only crime was to go to school.

By Monday, as a country, we will have moved on to the next big issue, leaving 14 mothers to deal with the inexplicable pain of losing a child.

We will forget about the Kakamega 14, until, of course, another school tragedy strikes and the vicious cycle continues.

We will not follow up on the justice for those poor children in the same way we never cared to follow up on the eight Precious Talent Top School pupils, who died in September last year when a classroom crumbled on them.

We will forget about them, in the same way we rarely remember the Moi Girls dormitory fire that claimed 10 lives of newly admitted Form One students.

This tragedy, of course, will join an alarmingly lengthy list of school tragedies, alongside the 2001 Kyanguli Secondary School fire that killed more than 60 students, the sexual violence meted out on the St Kizito schoolgirls and the many other children who collapse in dormitories and classrooms due to medical negligence from school staff.

What seems to be worrying me — and should worry you too — is the casual nature in which we treat these school tragedies and the normalisation of school deaths in this country.

I understand that human beings hardly pay special attention to a situation until it hits home and becomes personal.

But this issue need not be personal for us to wake up and realise the sheer danger that Kenyan school children encounter on a daily basis.

For instance, why do we allow children as young as six years to leave the house as early as 6am (or earlier) just to wait for a school bus in the biting cold and unsafe neighbourhoods?

Every day we encounter children packed like sardines in rickety, unroadworthy school vans and say nothing.

We know of congested, structurally unsound classrooms that are held together by the prayers of the mothers of those children, yet we allow businessmen and women masquerading as educators to continue with their business as usual.

We know the toxic nature of Kenyan boarding schools: the bullying, hazing, harassment, bad diets and difficult school conditions yet we go about our business.

Last weekend, as the country was crazed about the Building Bridges Initiative rallies, we saw photos of schoolchildren in a muddy classroom. Then there are those in a school in Kandara who have no toilets.

School is not supposed to be a perilous, life-threatening experience. We are not supposed to survive school; we are meant to thrive in school.

Just because we survived through difficult boarding schools and stomached horrible treatment does not mean that the next generation should suffer the same fate.

We can do better with today’s schools, if not demand that children live and learn in dignified environments in which they look forward to school.

Ms Chege is the director of the Innovation Centre at The Aga Khan University’s Graduate School of Media and Communications; The views expressed here are the writer’s own