I’ve dedicated my life to a bittersweet cause

Hard times do not create heroes. But it is during hard times that the heroes within us are revealed. Is there a better way of talking about men and women, who have dedicated their lives to something bigger than themselves?

They may not be armed soldiers fighting invading forces or standing guard against threats to the country’s sovereignty, but they are heroes in their own right, a ‘special force’ against what Martin Luther King Jr once said is the most dangerous enemy – ignorance.

Off the beaten track you find them. Teachers deep in rural areas where they are cut out from the rest of the world. But their world revolves around their hopes and aspirations, to educate, even if it means sacrificing their all, and paying no attention at all to the obstacles that stand in their way.

Smiling and laughing with their pupils, you would think that all is well. But ask Philipo Kayombo, the headmaster of Kisaki Primary School in rural Morogoro, and you will learn that it is all about sacrifice and doing something that makes a difference.

Here is a man, whose life has for over a decade now, been a symbol of the selfless dedication of heroic rural teachers, who find strength to persevere in spite of overwhelming challenges.

When he fell out with his bosses at Kibena Tea Plantations in Njombe, where he had worked for six years, Kayombo decided to become a primary school teacher in another region, hoping to find the peace of mind he had always sought in a new career.

But as he found out years later, teaching is not where you seek peace of mind. It is a profession of sacrifices, especially when you are given the huge responsibility of being a head in a deep rural school.

Kayombo who became headmaster of Kisaki Primary School after completing his teaching course in 2001, may not have regrets that he followed the often rough and narrow path to a career in teaching. But he is a man with no illusion about the weight of the burden he is carrying at this school.

His first rude awakening when he joined the school 12 years ago was the dwindling numbers of pupils attending school on a regular basis. Education awareness is not what one would write home about in this rural place.

“The numbers were not pleasing at all. I was really worried seeing just a few pupils attending school consistently. I knew right away that I had work to do,” he tells Success.

His first assignment was to transform the then 40-year-old school into a serious centre for learning in the community.

He decided to carry out his own investigations as to why there was such a high level of truancy.

“I discovered that many of the pupils who did not come to school were given duties at home to herd cattle by their parents. This was a genuine problem,” he says.

High poverty levels meant that a good number of pupils had to help their parents with work at home, to raise family incomes. This augured badly for the school.

While the parents work in the fields, the pupils, who are supposed to be in school, are forced to wait for the train that passes by Kisaki Station to sell different foodstuffs to passengers.

“With the help of a few enlightened parents we managed to get a good number of pupils back to school, but the problem stills persists, and right now we are taking about a truancy rate of up to 30 per cent,” he says.

Coupled with the lack of funds to start a school-feeding programme that could keep pupils in school, the shortage of teachers, desks and chairs, and decent accommodation for the teachers, the number of items on the to-do list of the school headmaster is a weight heavier than what he can carry.

Performed dismally

Last year, the school performed dismally in the national Primary Leaving Examinations, with only 50 out of the 102 pupils who sat the exam passing and earning themselves a place for secondary education.

This worries the headmaster who believes that he has given his all to the improvement of this school.

“The results are definitely not satisfactory, but considering what we have been going through for years, I still think we tried hard enough, and I resolute and optimistic that we are capable of doing even better,” he says in an assuring tone.

One very urgent matter that he has to deal with is the critical shortage of qualified teachers that has threatened his school for years now.

Currently, the school has an enrollment of 1,109 pupils taught by only 15 teachers. This translates into an average of 74 pupils per teacher against the national average of 1:46.

The school’s academic master, Ms Neema Maanta, says it is normal for her to teach between 150 and 200 pupils per session. “The few lucky ones will have seats, but the majority have to sit on the floor,” she says.

Kayombo says the school has been seeking the assistance of the education officer, Mr Pambe, in a bid to have more teachers. But so far it has been unfulfilled promises, he says. Efforts by Success to reach Mr Pambe were fruitless, as his phone was not going through.

But the Kisaki Station education coordinator, Mr Simplict Shauri, appreciates the work that is being done by education’s unsung heroes like Kayombo. He acknowledges that all is not well at the school. “There are measures that we have taken to help the situation, and this includes mobilising the villagers to help in any way that they can to make the school friendlier,” he tells Success.

The capitation grant from the government of $10 (Sh16,000) per pupil is too little to cover the costs of materials needed per year, he says.

Even so, the disbursement of the money to schools is unpredictable, making proper planning almost impossible, according to a policy brief entitled ‘Capitation grant for education: When will it make a difference?’ by education lobby group Twaweza.

The villagers have come in handy. Parents chip in by making and carrying bricks and bags of cement to the school to fix the cracks that make the classrooms a menace to the pupils.

Kayombo says each parent has also been asked to contribute Sh5,000 towards the purchase of desks, a project aimed at doing away with a system where more than half of the pupils in each class learn while sitting on the cold floors. But that does not work.

“When it comes to money for school development, parents rarely cooperate. Some have openly told me that they won’t pay because to them school is not a priority, that is why they would rather have their children sell bottled water and nuts at the station while others are in school,” he says.

After the hurdles Kayombo has to deal with during the day, there is no comfort for the school head who has no decent place to call home. What this man calls home is anything but a place to call ‘home’.

Like most of the classrooms, his house, a down-to-earth structure with two small bedrooms, has glaring cracks and no paint inside. And he shares it with two teachers at the school. The rest rent houses in the villages, far from the school.

“It is very difficult to be a teacher in this country, especially a primary school teacher. But we do make sacrifices for the sake of the children,” says Kayombo.

The man and his team are heroes to the eager pupils. “They are always on time, and the teachers have to walk long distances,” says Zuwena Mohammed, a Standard Four pupil at the school.

The 10-year-old may not fully understand the headmaster’s burden, but the zeal for learning she has is what keeps Kayombo going despite everything else around him shouting silently for to quit.

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