CROSSING CONTINENTS - Kenya

NARRATOR:
It's nearly seven o'clock in the morning, but 
Daniel's already been up for over an hour.  He's 
said his prayers, done his chores and been helping 
his mother looking after some of his six brothers 
and sisters.  

Daniel's fourteen but he's small for his age.  He 
looks more like a ten year old, and I'm watching 
him as he does up the buttons to his short-sleeved 
light blue shirt, and even though it's falling 
apart, he does up each button with pride and a 
smile on his face.  Daniel is getting ready to go 
to school for the first time in many years. 

He lives with his mother and his siblings in a 
shack that I'm standing in right now, and to 
describe it goes almost beyond words.  This is no 
wallpaper and paint job.  There are old pieces of 
material, torn up, hung around that represent the 
walls but Daniel is rushing me because he needs to 
leave and make his way through the streets and go 
off to school.  So I'm just going to step outside. 
 Daniel, just come over here for one second and 
let's have a chat before you go off to school.

Just describe to me why it's important for you to 
go to school.

DANIEL [translated]:
So that I can be clever and be able to read well.

NARRATOR:
How do you feel because your friends are so much 
younger than you and smaller than you, because 
you're in Class 1?

DANIEL [translated]:
I feel bad because all the other children are 
younger and I'm older.  They say I'm too old and 
I'm in Class 1.

NARRATOR:
What do you hope to be in the future then?

DANIEL [translated]:
I want to be an aeroplane driver, pilot actually.

NARRATOR:
What do you normally eat before you leave your 
house and start school?

DANIEL [translated]:
I take tea and if there is ugali, I eat ugali.  
Ugali is made of maize, it's kind of semolina.

NARRATOR:
Did you have ugali this morning?

DANIEL [translated]:
No.  I'll eat it at home when I come from school.

NARRATOR:
So how hungry do you get during the day, because 
you won't have eaten all day long?

DANIEL [translated]:
I feel hungry, but I have to bear it because school 
is more important to me.

NARRATOR:
We're going to let you go and make your way.  We're 
going to make you late, don't want to get into 
trouble from your teacher.

DANIEL [translated]:
Yes.

NARRATOR:
In this week's Crossing Continents, change in Kenya 
is what we'll be exploring.  In our first story, 
I'll be travelling to two of the most dangerous 
slums in Kenya to find out how schools are coping 
with the thousands of children who flock to their 
gates, hungry to fulfil the promise of free primary 
education.  For them, this is much more than a 
chance to learn to read and write: it means 
escaping crippling poverty and a chance to dream 
about a different future.

Here we are at the Dagoretti Muslim Primary school. 
 Daniel's anxious to get to class so he's pushing 
me out of the way.  I'm just about to open the 
gates.

I'm standing in the middle of a gaggle of school 
children, singing a local song by a local rap 
artist called Issa who sadly died in a car crash 
not too long ago, something - given the roads in 
Kenya and certainly the roads in Kawangware - isn't 
too surprising I suspect.

I've just walked into Daniel's classroom and 
underneath my feet in the classroom there's a sort 
of red earth and just behind me is the blackboard 
where, at the age of fourteen, he's in a class with 
six year olds but he's excited to be here. And the 
sorts of things he's learning, just on the board 
they've got written down words like bag, boy, hen, 
pen, dress, house and funnily enough just outside 
the classroom, in the playground, we're joined by 
an entire audience of school children who are very 
excited and wondering who these visitors are from 
another place and another country.  I'm first of 
all going to have a chat with Daniel's teacher 
who's going to introduce herself for me.

RACHEL:
I'm Rachel Nyokabideritu. I am Daniel's teacher.  
He is in Class 1 and he's fourteen years, actually 
he has been out of school because of the problems 
that has been there of payments but as a result of 
the free education, he's been able to come back to 
school and he's doing well.  He's a good boy.  

NARRATOR:
Is it difficult teaching him because he's fourteen 
and the others are so young, the others are only 
six?

RACHEL:
No, it is not because he seems to be very eager so 
he has no problem with being there because he wants 
to learn.

NARRATOR:
Do you remember the first day when he first walked 
in and all the little ones saw him, how they 
responded and how they reacted?

RACHEL:
Well, at first they looked at him whether he 
belonged here but with the time they got used of 
him and he treats them just as if they are sisters 
and brothers.

NARRATOR:
So, Daniel's doing well at school, but are the 
resources there to make the new government's free 
primary education policy really work?  One good 
place to test this is the Olympic Primary School. 
It's got a reputation for excellence and sits just 
on the edge of Kibera, the largest slum in east and 
central Africa.  Because of its reputation and the 
free schooling policy, the Olympic has had to take 
on hundreds more children than it's used to.  Now a 
morning and afternoon shift system operates in the 
classrooms, just to be able to get through the huge 
numbers of pupils.

TEACHER:
Is this morning or afternoon?

CHILDREN:
Afternoon, teacher!

TEACHER:
I am the teacher, they are the visitors.  Can you 
say good afternoon, visitors?

CHILDREN:
Good afternoon, visitors!

TEACHER:
Everybody!

CHILDREN:
Good afternoon, visitors!

TEACHER:
Good afternoon, sit down now.  

RUTH:
My name is Ruth Namulundu.  I am the deputy 
headmistress of Olympic Primary School

NARRATOR:
What I'm trying to get a sense of is how much more 
difficult is it to manage because there are so many 
more children?  So in total how many extra students 
do you have?

RUTH:
540 extra pupils in Strands 1 up to 3, and I am 
sure something will come out, out of this mess, 
some order will come out.

NARRATOR:
It is a mess then?

RUTH:
For now it's a mess.  It's a mess.

NARRATOR:
Let me just have a quick word with the teacher.  
Can you just introduce yourself for me?

TEACHER:
I'm Mrs Iro.  

NARRATOR:
And so how has your day changed with the free 
education policy?

TEACHER:
A long time ago we used to have one class in the 
morning and the same children would come in the 
afternoon for remedial work but now you see they 
cannot come in the afternoon for the remedial work, 
they give way for these children.  So really they 
are not doing enough work.

NARRATOR:
And how difficult is it for you as their teacher?

TEACHER:
It's so difficult in that after teaching the 
morning session, you really get tired in the 
afternoon, and also reaching the children and 
knowing their names, sixty-five in the morning, now 
sixty-two in the afternoon.  It's not easy.  Also 
we cannot prepare.  Now I am in class throughout.  
I just teach continuously, no lesson notes and it's 
really not good.

NARRATOR:
So you're not getting a break now during the whole 
day?

TEACHER:
At times you go for pee!  But only the pee, that is 
when you get the break otherwise there is no break.

NARRATOR:
OK, I've just found a quiet spot on some mustard-
coloured earth to talk to the headteacher. 

ANNA:
OK, my name is Mrs Anna Nganga, the head teacher of 
Olympic Primary School.

NARRATOR:
How difficult did it get for you personally as a 
headmistress when flocks of parents turned up at 
your gate saying my child can now be educated, let 
her or him in?

ANNA:
The pressure was too much that I had to run away.  
Actually I stayed away for two weeks.

NARRATOR:
How many parents do you think ended up at the gates 
trying to get their children into this school?

ANNA:
We had about three thousand five hundred.

NARRATOR:
Three thousand five hundred!

ANNA:
But we took only six hundred. But when they entered 
the gate they went everywhere.  You could find them 
everywhere.  They remained here for two weeks.

NARRATOR:
And they just wouldn't leave?  They were like 
squatters.

ANNA:
Yes, they didn't leave.  

NARRATOR:
So you left instead?

ANNA:
I left instead.  I left instead, till I got enough 
security because you know they couldn't understand 
that there is not enough facilities or enough 
teachers, so they decided to be wild.  They even 
decided to take their children to the class 
themselves.

NARRATOR:
So they picked their children up and marched them 
to the actual classroom and sat them down, and said 
teach my child?

ANNA:
Yes yes, I am telling you.  It was hot.

NARRATOR:
Hot?

ANNA:
It was hot.

NARRATOR:
Steaming hot?  Steaming hot?

ANNA:
Yeah, it was very hot.  And I had to have even the 
police force here and the director of city 
education, even the minister of education had to 
intervene.

NARRATOR:
So the Olympic has an amazing reputation and that 
reputation has been built by you personally to some 
degree.  How worried are you about the quality of 
education for these children now that there are so 
many other kids to teach?

ANNA:
One major problem that we are having is that we 
added ten classes or ten streams and therefore we 
needed ten extra teachers, and up to now we don't 
have those teachers.  If we have to go throughout 
the year without teachers, the standard will 
definitely go down.

NARRATOR:
And is it a price worth paying, to give children 
who have never had a chance to go to school some 
kind of education?

ANNA:
It is very very good because I support that fully, 
we all support that fully because there are some 
children who might have never gone to school at all 
and now they are learning.

NARRATOR:
And if things don't change, what do you think is 
the future for Olympic Primary School?

ANNA:
I believe it will change.  I don't want to think of 
the bad things, negative things.  I want to believe 
that there will be change but if there is no 
change, we will not be able to excel the way we 
have been doing.  

NARRATOR:
The government has put a little more money into 
books and school equipment, and the British 
government has helped too.  It's far from enough, 
say the critics, and then there's still a freeze on 
teacher recruitment.  On top of that, there's now a 
very real prospect of existing teachers going on 
strike unless the government honours its promise to 
give them the pay rises which were agreed - but 
never brought in - way back in 1997.

But for Daniel, and millions of children like him, 
free schooling is great news.  For his mother 
Teresia, who leaves home at six each morning to 
look for menial work like washing other people's 
clothes, it's a real blessing.

TERESIA [translated]:
It's important for Daniel to go to school because 
then he gets to interact with people, gets to know 
how to speak English and he has a brighter future, 
and god willing, he will have the best in the 
future.

NARRATOR:
We're standing in your home which is a tiny tiny 
shack and my head is pretty much touching the 
ceiling.  It feels like the walls are crowding in 
on us already.  What does it mean for you that your 
son is going to school?  Does it mean that you can 
live a different life, maybe move out of this 
particular home and have a different kind of life 
for you and your children?

TERESIA [translated]:
I wouldn't know of Daniel's future because we have 
separate lives.  Everybody has his own gifts and he 
has a different gift from me.  Because gift, it 
come from god.

NARRATOR:
Don't you hope though that because Daniel is going 
to school, maybe this will help all of your 
children and not just him?

TERESIA [translated]:
Yes, god could use him to help this household and 
all the members of this household.  I am so happy 
about the free education but because initially when 
I took Daniel to school, there was a problem of the 
fees and because I'm out and in of jobs, I could 
not really sustain Daniel going to school but now I 
thank god for the free education.  I am so happy 
and I hope that Daniel continues going to school.

NARRATOR:
Walking away from Teresia and her rundown shack, as 
she leaves to look for work, she's one of millions 
of Kenyans who haven't just got education on her 
mind.  Tune into any local radio station, flick 
through the newspapers or walk through the slums of 
Kibera, and there's another subject on the lips of 
every Kenyan: corruption.  The new government 
stormed into power on an anti-corruption ticket.  
They pledged to make fighting it their number one 
priority, but they had inherited a country where a 
culture of bribery had seeped into the very soul of 
Kenyan society, in the government, hospitals, 
schools, literally everywhere.  So they encouraged 
ordinary Kenyans to take up arms in this new war. 

So I've come here to Naboco School, where two 
teachers are part of the International Anti-
Corruption Theatrical Movement, and are using 
theatre as their particular weapon.

I'm with Stephen Kariuki and Florence Maingey, from 
the International Anti-Corruption Theatrical 
Movement.  Just tell me what the play was about?

STEPHEN:
The verse was about the transition of the old 
government and the new government.  We were seeing 
what it was that the old government was doing to 
our country, and how the new, after the general 
election, how the new government came in and they 
started rectifying the mess that had been done by 
the old government.

NARRATOR:
Everyone is talking about corruption.  Just 
describe to me some of the things that have 
happened during the old guard and the Arap Moi 
regime.

FLORENCE:
Kind of in Kenya during the former regime, we were 
subjected to a lot of fear and tension.  It had 
become like kind of our tradition.  It used to be 
like that, you know, when maybe a certain minister 
comes to your area and then you feel although 
you're very poor, down to the ground, you feel you 
have to prepare some gold, some money, some 
presents for him but you are very poor. So it kind 
of had become like we were very subjected to that 
kind of regime and we were also very submissive.  
Almost everything, every area within our country 
had gone wrong.

STEPHEN:
Probably you come to basic things like health, 
yeah?  Health is very basic.  Some money has been 
allocated to the health ministry, so the hospitals 
are supposed to have drugs but when you go to these 
hospitals you cannot be given these particular 
drugs unless you give something small even to the 
doctors, you see?  So corruption had completely 
eaten into the fabric of our society but now 
immediately when the new government took over, you 
go to the hospitals, the medicine is there but it 
never used to be there.  And this has happened only 
within a span of two months, so what is going to 
happen after a span of probably five years?  So we 
expect a lot of changes in this country.

NARRATOR:
So the government has a pretty packed agenda, what 
with education and corruption.  And even though 
it's very early days, it's already turned its 
attention to the death penalty.  My next stop is 
Nairobi City Hall.

I'm just about to step into the lift on my way up 
to see Rumba Kinuthia, the human rights activist 
and lawyer, who has waged his own personal battle 
against corruption in the legal system.  He 
represented some of the twenty-eight prisoners who 
were released by the new government in February 
from death row, from the notorious Kamite maximum 
security prison.

RUMBA:
The whole system was ... only the people who didn't 
have money were convicted in most of these cases.  
If you had money you would more or less be able to 
buy your way out, even from very serious offences.

NARRATOR:
So just talk to me about the situation with death 
row.  I understand that twenty-eight prisoners were 
released from death row a couple of months ago, and 
others had their sentences commuted to life.  Just 
explain to me what happened in that situation.

RUMBA:
A good number of prominent people or well-known 
people have been murdered in the past mysteriously 
and what used to happen is that, due to the 
pressure of the government to come up with who the 
culprits were, they would pick at random some 
fellows who have been known to have a criminal 
record and then the fellow would be convicted to 
appease the mood of the people.  These are some of 
the people who are released recently from death 
row.  I know of at least three to four who are 
absolutely innocent but have been there for the 
last twenty years because somebody had to be 
convicted and they became the scapegoats.

NARRATOR:
The last time Gibson kissed his youngest daughter 
she was just four years old.  He closed the front 
door, waved goodbye to the rest of his family and 
went off to work to his job as a sales assistant in 
the Banana Hills area, twenty kilometres outside 
Nairobi.  He never came home that night.  Picked up 
by the police, he was accused, arrested, charged 
and convicted of murder and spent the next sixteen 
years and eight months languishing on death row.  
On February 25th he was joined by twenty-eight 
prisoners and walked out of prison a free man, 
thanks to the new Kenyan government. 

I'm standing in his front garden, in the Banana 
Hills area, where he now lives with his brother, 
just getting ready to have a chat with him about 
his experiences in prison and what it feels like to 
be a free man and to feel the sun on his skin.

GIBSON [translated]:
He says he went through a lot of stress not knowing 
what the morning was waiting for because every time 
that he woke up he felt that he was going to the 
gallows, and again come evening he would feel happy 
but again the following morning the sorrow would 
return.

Those of us who are on death row would sometimes be 
beaten thoroughly by warders at the flimsiest 
excuse.  They would beat us with their batons, 
their official batons which they used and the 
beating would be so thorough.

NARRATOR:
And what sort of hospital treatment would you get 
after a beating like that?

GIBSON [translated]:
They didn't bother whether you were injured or not, 
nobody would bother to take you to hospital unless 
your relatives came and brought you medicine.

NARRATOR:
You lost sixteen years of your life in that prison. 
 Are you bitter about that experience?

GIBSON [translated]:
I have very bitter memories of that because I was 
convicted but I was innocent.  I do not even know 
anything about the assistant minister I was accused 
of having murdered.  It is very very bitter.

NARRATOR:
Tell me about the actual day when you walked out of 
the prison.

GIBSON [translated]:
That morning we were counted as usual but after 
that, we were surprised to see a number of warders 
coming to us.  They told us have no fear.  If you 
hear your name, please walk out of this place.  If 
you hear your name being called, please walk out.  
There was pandemonium.  We were totally confused.  
It was unbelievable but generally I felt so happy, 
I felt like I have been given a new lease of life. 
 

We were given prison vans to escort us to our 
various destinations.  I personally did not like 
the prison van and three more of my colleagues in 
jail followed me.  We decided to take public 
transport and when I actually alighted from the 
taxi - we call them matatus - when I alighted from 
the matatu, I felt like I was in a different world 
because Nairobi had changed.  I thought I was in 
London, I didn't believe it.  A lot of buildings 
had come up.

NARRATOR:
What was the most surprising thing for you when you 
started walking around the streets of Nairobi 
again?

GIBSON [translated]:
I found so many cars on the streets, very clean 
people, very healthy people, a lot of buildings and 
the people I would see around were looking as if 
all of them were white men.  They did not look as 
blacks so when I saw that kind of development, I 
felt like now these are whites, these are not 
Africans.  

NARRATOR:
What's happened to the rest of your family, your 
children and your wife?

GIBSON [translated]:
While I was in prison, my wife developed breast 
cancer and subsequently died.  When I got the 
information, I asked my brother whether he could 
take care of my children.  At that time my brother 
didn't have a job so I advised him to send the 
children to Uganda where my auntie lives because 
life in Uganda is relatively cheap considering that 
there's a lot of food there.

NARRATOR:
I'm walking through the Karura forest, ten 
kilometres outside Nairobi.  I've left behind city 
streets, the dust, the dirt, and the pollution, 
traffic and noise.  Instead I'm surrounded by the 
rainbow green of the forest.  Above me I can just 
see snatches of cloud coming through the trees' 
branches and monkeys making their way from tree to 
tree.  I've come here to meet the legendary 
Professor Wangari Maathai, a staunch activist and 
environmentalist, and the founder of the Kenyan 
Greenbelt Movement in 1977.  She's now the 
Assistant Minister in the Ministry of Environment. 
 I've come here to ask her about her days as an 
activist and to challenge her about whether or not, 
now she's a politician, her activism days are over. 

WANGARI:
We used to come here all the time and we would 
plant trees but this one time the people who had 
privatised the sections of the forest hired 
hooligans with whips and clubs and crude weapons, 
bow and arrows, to suggest that this is not 
organised crime but the minute we came in here, we 
caught policemen in full uniform consorting with 
those hooligans.  And then of course we came into 
the forest and we were beaten mercilessly by the 
hooligans.

NARRATOR:
How badly hurt were you when you were beaten?

WANGARI:
Well I was pretty badly hurt on the head.  
Fortunately - and I thank the man who hit me - he 
hit me once and didn't hit me twice, which I'm very 
grateful for. But what I'm describing is a typical 
scene of what was happening during the Moi 
administration. But I'm really very glad to see at 
least the section where he was standing, as you can 
see it's an indigenous forest.  It's a beautiful 
forest, it's a great heritage.  We should protect 
it and the entire forest should be restored to this 
vegetation.

NARRATOR:
But the fact is that you are now sitting beside 
people who had been accused of raping the very 
environment that we're standing in, who had been 
accused of using land for political capital, using 
land to win elections, and there was a point at 
which you would always speak out against those very 
people and now you drink tea alongside them.  How 
effective can you really be now that this is your 
position?

WANGARI:
Well I see what you mean.  I know that that is 
something that is of major concern but there 
nevertheless is a commitment.

NARRATOR:
But is the commitment enough, do you think?

WANGARI:
Well I think so.  I think the commitment is enough.

NARRATOR:
But doesn't Kenya need more than commitment, 
doesn't Kenya need practical action right now?

WANGARI:
Well we are seeing practical actions.  For example 
we are seeing people who had been allocated land 
voluntarily and on their own surrender the title 
deeds that they had been given, and we have seen 
many people not come forward to claim land that 
they had been allocated.

NARRATOR:
You're now walking the corridors of power with the 
same people who grabbed that land.  How does it 
feel when you pass people who may have been 
responsible for stealing masses of land that 
belongs to the Kenyan people?

WANGARI:
Well when I see those people come forward and say 
that I want to give up the land that I had been 
given, then I see a certain amount of change.

NARRATOR:
Are you at all worried that you too may be tempted 
by the trappings of power, the trappings of wealth, 
what comes with being in government?  Have you 
become a politician now and stopped being an 
environmental activist?

WANGARI:
Absolutely not.  They say that power corrupts.  I 
certainly hope that I will not feel that I have 
power that corrupts me.  What I hope is that I have 
now opportunities to do better than I could when I 
did not have power because every time I talked at 
that time, I was criminalised.  I was vilified.  
But now I feel that I am vindicated.  I am 
legitimate, I can speak and my people can say yes, 
she always spoke like that.  I want to remain true 
to myself.  I certainly hope that nothing, nothing 
is yet out there that is more important to me than 
what I believe in.

NARRATOR:
Professor Wangari Maathai has been an outsider for 
most of her life.  Her staunch defence of the 
environment has prompted both love and respect from 
ordinary Kenyans, and hatred from previous regimes. 
 She's now on the inside and her mere presence 
within the new government is a significant sign of 
the major political change that Kenya has gone and 
continues to go through.  But there are those who 
are sounding warning bells, already saying that all 
isn't well within the new regime, as stories emerge 
of MPs awarding themselves hefty pay increases and 
interest-free car loans, and that isn't all.  Kenya 
desperately needs tourism to boost its devastated 
economy, but the war in Iraq means the tourists are 
staying away.  

But such issues and stories have failed to dampen 
the mood of enthusiasm that has infected the 
streets, towns and villages.  For those that live 
and work there, every time a boy like fourteen-
year-old Daniel does up the top button of his 
threadbare school shirt, leaves his run-down shack, 
and walks through the school gates with his head 
held high and a broad smile on his under-nourished 
face, it's a reminder that some change has come – 
not just for those at the top but for all Kenyans.