Volume 1, Issue 5-6 / May-June 2009
Re-Opening of the Camp Schools: About Local Demonstration.
Schools operating in Kakuma refugee resumed on 2nd June 2009 after an abrupt closure due to turmoil that entered the host community residents protest.
The seventeen schools which include ten primary schools, one secondary school and six pre-schools closed their doors after announcement from education officers.
The officers relayed message to all heads commencing the closure of all education activities ‘until further notice’.
Student had to roam in their community for two weeks without clear reason why they were sent home and when schools could reopen.
This followed a turbulence that started from Kakuma town host with repercussion to the refugee fraternity after the locals went for demonstration to the UNHCR and NGO’s offices demanding their ‘rights’
After a period suspense, students remained frustrated as the activities close unceremoniously.
According to a secondary school teacher, the information was blurred and did leave him confusions because there was no formal briefing about what was happening.
‘we do not know when we are going back to school and now it is boring staying at home without knowing when this will end’, a form one student at kakuma refugee secondary school said.
This however was manifested when a few students from the secondary school took the street to manifest their anxiety following the suspense with banner that read ‘we need peace in the camp’ we want our schools reopened’, they matched towards LWF Offices, the agency that provides free education service to the refugees, so as to request the reopening of the schools.
Parents too were not spared in that confusion. ‘I decided to take my daughter to Luma (a private school). Now I will be compelled to pay for the days she spends there’ a parent commented.
The move to reopen schools came to effect after dialogue between the locals, NGO’s and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reached a settlement.