Bowls of free food keep children in schools

• Lunch-time queues get longer in the wake of biting hunger and ravaging drought

Over 100,000 more children will join the school feeding programme this month, raising their number to 1.2 million as the effects of the country’s worst drought in decades continue to ravage thousands of rural households.

With food prices shooting through the roof and no reprieve in sight, most of these youngsters are faced with a devil of a choice: to go back to school and starve through the lessons, or hit the job market and eke out a living in the worst of degrading situations.

Out of school

According to a report by a lobby group, more than 500,000 children have been forced out of school by hunger, and thousands more risk joining them if nothing is done.

In the Rift Valley, for example, rain failure has forced families to scavenge for food in the most unlikely places, including quarries, and most consider themselves lucky if they have a single meal in a day.

In Eastern and North Eastern provinces, and in pastoral communities in particular, children have abandoned school in droves and left their homes in search of water and pasture for their animals.

The school feeding programme under the World Food Programme, comes just a week after the start of the Third Term, at the end of which pupils sit their national exams.

However, the plan is likely to be strained even further by the millions of households across the country that will rely on food donations until harvests are made from the coming rains.

Estimates indicate that a total of 3.8 million Kenyans will need food assistance in the next six months, a sharp increase from the 2.6 million currently receiving food rations from the WFP.

Ms Rose Ogolla, the WFP public information officer, told the Daily Nation that recorded cases of malnutrition among children have already surpassed the World Health Organisation threshold, and that more than 50 per cent of school-age children risk falling victim to the condition.

“This is alarming,” she said, adding that pre-emptive measures need to be taken to save the situation. During the just-ended August holiday, children in arid and semi-arid areas had to remain in school in order to benefit from the feeding programme.

The government used this as a way of ensuring the children remained hooked to education despite the effects of drought and spiralling food prices.

“Sending them home for the holiday is not tenable right now as this will expose them to hunger and malnutrition, negating the gains we have made in education and nutrition,” said Education minister Sam Ongeri in defence of the stay-at-school programme.

The government allocated Sh1.6 billion to the scheme this financial year, the bulk of which has already been spent.

Programme

Mr Githua Kaburu, the officer in charge of the school feeding programme, said supplies had run out in 82 schools in Turkana Central and Koima districts, where over 60,000 pupils relied on relief rations for survival.

He said that if the supplies were not replenished soon enough, the children were likely to drop out of school and join their parents in the search for a livelihood.

Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka has asked the Ministry of Education to ensure constant supply of relief rations to schools in drought-hit regions, but this is unlikely to happen if the current situation persists.

Mr Musyoka, whose constituency has been badly hit by the drought, said it was sad that, in some areas, students had started dropping out of school, yet the school feeding programme existed.

And it has emerged that more children living in the slums have dropped out of school because of the food crisis that hit the country last year.

A report by Oxfam International released last week said that the number of child labourers has increased by 30 per cent in the last year.

The report says that up to a third of students in the slum areas had dropped out of school to scavenge for food and recyclable waste material which they sell.

Some had dropped out to assist their parents to search for food and water.

The report also noted that the country had registered a 46 per cent drop in school meals, meaning fewer children are being fed in schools or can afford to bring their own lunch from home.

Oxfam attributes this to increasing poverty among the urban poor as the casual jobs they mostly rely on for survival have become scarce and irregular.

The UK charity indicates that another cause for concern is that considerably fewer children are attending the later stages of school in towns than in the rural areas.

The report says that coping under such circumstances, given that the costs of other non-food items such as basic health services, fuel and water have risen, also often involves reducing expenditure on necessities like water, soap, sanitation and education.

The urban crisis has intensified over the past year, with people now earning less but having to pay more to survive.

Household incomes have fallen due to the global economic crisis, with casual and long-term work harder to find as companies downsize operations.

Oxfam says a larger number of children and adults in slums are now engaged in the brewing and selling of illegal brews.