Journey to the future has just begun

• New Form One girls determined to trudge on amid confusion and home-sickness

Barely a week after 14-year-old Immaculate Wanjeri reported to Form One, she wants to return home.

The girl, known to friends as Imma, reported to Mary Hill Girls High School near Thika, last week but she is already feeling home sick. “I miss home,” she says.

Mary Hill principal Imelda Barasa understands only too well why Immaculate has the feeling, a short time after reporting.

“It’s normal. Especially for girls from day schools, it is their first time in a boarding school,” she says.

“But we have a system of taking care of the situation and she will be quite comfortable in class in a few days,” she says.

The long trip

That is now becoming the other side of a story she started on Tuesday last week as she prepared to make the long trip to the national school.

That night, she packed her tin box, ready to take the first bus out of Nyahururu Town, to Nairobi, more than 200km away.

There she picked another vehicle to take her to Mary Hill, 50km from Nairobi.

The last time she travelled such a long distance, Immaculate was seven years old, on a school trip to Nairobi. But this time, the journey was longer. Unlike the one-day school trip, Immaculate was setting off on a four-year trip through high school.

And on reaching the gates of Mary Hill, her excitement changed to anxiety. The school was big, she says, many times bigger than her former school, Mt Angels Primary in Nyahururu. Everything around her was new; the teachers, students and even the school routine.

At Mary Hill, the alarm goes off at 4.30am, and the new student is still getting used to the loud ring, and the girls’ mad scramble to get ready for mandatory morning preps at 5.10am.

“It is so confusing; I was used to waking up later and walking to school,” she told the Daily Nation team.

But the new school routine is not as hard to get used to as the new sense of responsibility growing on the young student’s shoulders.

She is among thousands of new students reporting to Form One.

Immaculate, the lastborn in a family of three, was the top pupil in her school with 398 marks out of 500 in last year’s KCPE.

Her single mother, Ms Mary Muthoni, is a hawker in Nyahururu Town, after being retrenched by the Ministry of Livestock Development eight years ago.

Her elder brother dropped out at class eight for lack of school fees, while her sister is struggling through college, largely with the support of well-wishers.

To underscore her financial problems, it was not until late last month that Immaculate’s dream of reporting to school before today’s deadline was guaranteed.

Lady luck smiled at her in the name of Equity Bank, which offered to pay her school fees. Although her mother carried the heavy tin box for her, a heavier burden hang on Immaculate’s small shoulders — the burden of great expectations.

Her mother says she expects no less than an A grade at Mary Hill. And since she was the best at her primary school, teachers and the community back home expect nothing short of university qualification.

The first day

And on the first day at Mary Hill, the school principal, Ms Barasa, laid down what she expected of her: in four years, she must produce an A.

“On admission, I calculate the entry behaviour for each student, and I personally sit down with them, and tell them what I expect at the end of four years,’ Ms Barasa said.

“Those who came in with an A must produce the same grade at Form Four.”

And although she made the young student aware of what is expected of her both in performance and school behaviour, Ms Barasa’s 17-years experience as a school principal tells her to watch out for signs of burnout in new students.

This, and peer pressure, she says, can easily blight the young girl’s future. The first three days in school were hectic.

First there were a series of orientation meetings with various heads of departments. And on the second day, Immaculate was taken through career options.

On the third day, she had to rush to Upper Hill, Nairobi, where her sponsor, Equity Bank, held a workshop for its beneficiaries.