When culture rules; Maa boys who just won’t go to school

For almost six years PL (acronym of his name) has been herding cattle here at Suguro village, in Narok South Sub-county, Narok County.

He started when he was 12 years old. He is now 16, a school-going age. In fact, he would be in Form Two.

I find him standing under a green acacia tree, shielding himself from the sun’s heat. It is 22°C.

Dressed in a faded beige trouser and a red hoodie sweatshirt, PL is watching over cattle nibbling on the green grass in a fenced-off field near River Masaantare, a seasonal river.

Apart from the stagnant brown water on the river, it’s lush green here - from the maize and Napier grass plantations, to the euphorbia and acacia trees.

It simply smells fresh and relaxing, except for the baaing sheep and clanking of the bells around the necks of the cattle. Of monotony are the crickets chirping and ringneck doves cooing rhythmically as if they are in a competition.

PL has an eye infection. There is a white discharge on the corner of his eyes. He looks down throughout the interview.

Until 2018, PL was a pupil at a public school in Ololulungá Ward in Narok County.

His parents, who live in Suguro village, had taken him to live with his grandmother so that he would attend a nearer school. But he says the school was too far. He got tired of walking long distances.

There is no school in Suguro. The nearest in Oloenai that goes by the same name is four kilometres away. Olkiriaine Primary School is also far.

So, he dropped out of school at Class Three to herd his relative’s cattle in exchange for money. He earns Sh5,000 each month.

“Each month, I buy a sheep for Sh 3,000 and give my mother the rest of the money,” he says through a translator as he speaks little Swahili.

He says he has sold at least 10 of his mature sheep at Ewaso Ngíro or Ololulung’a market. Sometimes, he sells them at Sh6,000. Other times Sh8,000 or even Sh12,000. He gets the best price in December.

He surrenders all the money to his mother. He says he also has a young herd of 10 sheep. His employer has allowed him to raise them alongside his cattle.

“I don’t want to go back to school. I have become now older. At my age, I cannot start school again at Class Three, mingling with younger children,” he says, all the while looking down and scrabbling grass with his right foot covered with tire sandal.

The money he gives his mother is spent on educating his other six siblings, he says.

I ask him: “You are out of school working and your income is being spent on educating your siblings. How does it make you feel that your siblings will be educated while you are not?

His response: “I don’t feel anything. I’m happy that they have a chance to be in school. Who will look after the cattle if I go back to school?”

Unfortunately, this feeling of sense of responsibility shouldered on the Maasai boys is compounding the problem of very distant schools, making it is easier for the boys to retort to the cultural order of protecting livestock as the households’ wealth.

At a young age, they are settling for child labour over education, a lifelong investment. The end result is a cycle of poverty that again contributes to the children dropping out of school.

A 2021 joint baseline survey by United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef) and National Council for Nomadic Education in Kenya (Naconek) established that in 16 counties including Narok, pregnancy, child marriage and child labour are the primary reasons why children leave school. 

Other counties were Baringo, Bungoma, Garissa, Isiolo, Kajiado, Kilifi and Kwale. Others were Mandera, Marsabit, Narok, Samburu, Tana River and Turkana. They also included Wajir and West Pokot, as well as Nairobi informal settlements.

In Kenya, the national average illiteracy rate is 16.3 per cent according to the 2019 Census. But in the pastoralist communities, the illiteracy rates exceed the national average.

In Turkana, for instance, 68 per cent of the population is illiterate. Of these, men constitute 67 per cent and women, 70.5 per cent.

In Narok and Kajiado counties, the rates are 27 per cent and 17.9 per cent respectively.

Further analysis of the Narok data shows a 13.6 per cent drop out among boys against 15 per cent for the girls, which represents a marginal difference.

Last October, Unicef in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Naconek launched ‘Operation Come to School, Phase Two’, an initiative aimed at getting 250,000 out-of-school children back to school by end of 2023.

It targets children aged six to 13 years in the 16 counties.

Sadly, PL is not in the age bracket. And so as his fellow children get a second chance, he will not.

Most disheartening is that he is not the only boy who feels he will betray his culture if he chooses school over herding. Worse still is seemingly bad blood between teachers and parents or the latter giving up on their children altogether.

“I’d like to return to school but then there is no one else to look after the cows,” says Lenu whose younger brother and sister are both in school.

He says he is 11 years old but his father says he is 16. He speaks a few Swahili words, the more common being greetings.

But he is the eldest in a family of three. And his younger brother who will be joining Class Eight, next term is 14 years.

When he dropped out of a school in the nearby village of Olabai, is also unclear. His father says five years ago, his brother claims it was in 2020, while for Lenu it was after his end-year exams in 2017.

He says he left because the teachers told him to get medication for his chest problem. He says, he is allergic to cold weather, which caused him chest pain. But his father told me, the teachers told him he was mad and so the labelling put him off.

“I haven’t taken him to an alternative school because he does not want to return to school,” says his father who has surrendered the herding of his sheep and cattle to his son.

As it is now, Lenu will be herding cattle in the long term unless either the government, children’s rights organisation or a human right advocate rescues him from the grazing field.

Caroline Lanoi, a, co-founder of Engápe, a community-based organisation says parents, here, who are conscious about educating their children take them to relatives whose residences are near schools.

This is the case for Lenu’s brother. He lives with his aunt in Olululungá where schools are closer.

“I told my mom to take (Lenu) back to school but then when I came home (for school holiday), I found that they had not done so. So, I told myself, ‘What am I supposed to do if my parents had not taken him back to school?’” says Lenu’s brother.

But there is one little boy who has gone against the grain to challenge his father to allow him to be in school and not in the grazing fields.

Kelo is aged 10. Last year, he says he took himself to Olenai Primary School against his father’s wishes. And the teachers enrolled him in Class One.

“He told me to look after livestock, I said ‘No, I am going to school,’” says Kelo. Unlike PL and Lenu, he can communicate in complete Swahili sentences.

Herding is a tough job. For all the boys, they have to wake up at 5 am, go grazing and return the cows home at 8am or 9am for milking during which they are served tea for breakfast often without a snack. At 10am or 11am, they set out for the second round until 6pm. Sometimes they graze them beyond five kilometres when it’s dry and pastures are scarce.

Authorities are much aware of the challenges facing pastoralist boys, cutting them off school.

But unlike the elaborate measures to save the girl-child, what has been done for the boys can only be told in a mix of girls’-oriented initiatives.

Ms Lanoi who has been running empowerment initiatives in this community says she feels “guilty” that she hasn’t given boys much focus.

“When we invite girls and boys for mentorship activities, the boys don’t turn up but we don’t go the extra mile (to find them),” she says.

Once again, the culture catches up with the boys.

“Even for the boys whose parents have allowed them to go to school, it becomes difficult for them to come for mentorship. The father will tell you he gets adequate mentorship at school and when he’s at home, the boy should play his herding role and nothing else,” she explains.

So then, has the government which has the absolute authority to change the tide in favour of the boys failed them?

Felix Kisalu, Narok South Sub-county, Deputy County Commissioner refers to the 2021 joint study by Unicef and Naconek, which he says established that close to 10,000 children in his region were out of school.

He says the ratio of boys and girls out of school was near equal. Edwins Saka, head of programs at Naconek, clarifies that of the total number, 58 per cent were boys.

Mr Kisalu says they have made strides in returning the children to school.

“For the last four to five months, we have been able to rescue 5,500 and the exercise is still ongoing. We hope by next term, all children will have been rescued,” he says.

In response to the percentage of the boys who have been rescued Mr Kisalu says: “The figures are almost 50/50.”

He mentions that boys are more exposed to external factors that would influence them to drop out of school.

“During drought, the boys move to far-flung areas including Tanzania in search of pasture. So, they also get exposed to external influences easier than girls,” he says.

He adds: “They are also lured into tout, boda boda or farm work. The boychild is in high demand for labour.”

Up to this moment, there is no mention of a deliberate gender equity mechanism to ensure boys have an equal chance of accessing education.

But he says: “to convince this boy who has been used to getting little coins to switch the commercial mind-set to academic is not easy. It requires teachers and guardians who are well mentored.”

He agrees that: “Time has come to have tailor-made programs to target the boychild and address the unique circumstances the boychild finds himself in. Not many agencies have tailor-made programs for boys.

One teacher is already doing something to save the boychild.

“In my school, we have about 150 boys and 200 girls. Usually for every two girls who drop out, four boys drop out,” says Ann Osono, a teacher at Olaenae Primary School in Narok South Sub-county. She has been teaching in the school since 1999.

She says for the past five years, she has been enlightening parents on the importance of educating their sons. She does this through parents’ meeting in her school, churches and making door-to-door visits during holidays.

She proudly speaks of a boy she saved. His father had condemned him to herding. But through regular door-to-door visits, she managed to convince him to take his son to school. He has since completed high school.

Ms Osono says the low enrolment of boys at her school awoke her into taking it upon herself to change the situation.

While the teachers and civil society, make efforts within their means to ensure boys access education, there are those mountains the government has a legal and Constitutional responsibility to move.

Edwins Saka, head of programs at Naconek, a State agency responsible for nomadic education, puts this into perspective.

“One of the issues is that the schools are far and this discourages children from going to school,” he says.

Except for early childhood development and education, the national government is responsible for building public primary and secondary schools.

On interventions, he says: “We are now talking to those boda bodas not to allow any underage boys. The chiefs are also supposed to ensure that no underage boy is loitering in the markets or trading centres.”

Well, the government may be partly opening its eyes to the plight of the boychild and barriers blocking their way to the classrooms, but one 17-year-old Jeremy Osono, is determined to see the whole of the next generation of Maasai boys educated.

“I want to be a successful lawyer and return home to mentor other boys. I want to be their role model. I desire to see every boy here educated. That is the only way we can fight household poverty in the Maasai community,” Osono, a Form Two student, says from his home in Suguro village.

This story was produced in support of the International Centre for Journalists and World Health Organisation.

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