To the people of Lokipetot Akwaan village, in Nakalale ward, Turkana North, the bill of rights does not fully apply in their lives as some of their most important needs have not been taken care of.
Majority of Turkana residents are pastoralists and send their boys and girls to look after livestock and do domestic work during the day. This is as their peers in other parts of country go to school to get an education.
Lokipetot Akwaan village, located about 25km in the outskirts of Kakuma, in Turkana West subcounty, has a population of more than 3,000 people.
The village is faced with myriad challenges and one of them has been the lack of a school. However things are slowly changing, thanks to Elimu Pentecostal Church which has built a school in the forgotten village.
Elim Pentecostal Church of Kenya bishop Wilson Kariuki says he has been on a mission for the last 29 years and his passion is see villages develop, the medium for change being education.
He said apart from spreading the gospel, Elim Pentecostal Church sponsors a Turkana child to get education.
“For those years we have been here, we have helped a few Turkana children to get an education by providing sponsorship for students in high schools and colleges from Turkana South, Turkana Central and Turkana West,” Bishop Kariuki said.
He however said they saw a need to put up a school so as to help more children get an opportunity for an education.
This dream has come to fruition and they have identified 180 pupils in Lokipetot Akwaan village who will be given full sponsorship including healthcare and special care in education.
“When we started feeding children, the big question was what next? We had the desire to build the school and we prayed that God would make a way for us to get a school and God connected us with partners who have built a school,” he said.
Kariuki appreciated the effort of partners in building a school that will transform the community.
He said Elim Pentecostal Church has hired two teachers and they are working closely with the Ministry of Education to give them more teachers when the school is fully registered.
David Kioko, Director of Restoring Order Missions International said they have a programme that sponsors vulnerable children and through that, they found a village without a school.
“We came to find a village deep inside here, we have been coming to do food donations and clothes. We later discovered that we could not communicate with about 300 children because they could not speak Kiswahili,” he said.
He said they are looking forward to having more than 300 children start school this week.
He said they have built three permanent classrooms and two temporary ones, an office, a kitchen, desks, and provision of school uniforms.
He urged the government and the well-wishers to support them in whatever way they could.
Daniel Pollard, Director His Glory Ministries in the USA, said he started coming to Kenya 11 years ago and four years ago, he had a vision of Lokipetot Akwaan village.
“I saw a picture of this place on Facebook but I was told not to go to Turkana because it’s very hot. In November last year together with Kioko and others, we came to visit it.”
“We believe that if you get food for people in a day then what happens the next day? We prefer to teach them how to fish rather than giving them food every day and that’s how the vision came,” he said.
He said they came back in February this year and God opened the way. They also got help from sponsors in the USA.
Turkana North National Government Constituencies Development Fund chairman Joseph Lokolio said they have injected Sh2.8 million for the construction of two more classrooms to enhance learning.
James Eregae, a resident of Lokipetot Akwaan thanked the church and partners for the support of building a school in a forgotten village.
He said the little Kiswahili they speak they learnt in town and they didn’t get the opportunity to go to school.
Eregae said they are happy because children will get the opportunity to learn and transform the community.
He said the politicians lured them to vote with a promise to build schools and bring other developments in the area but that has not happened.
Angeline Erot says they have been staying with children in homes because there was no school around but thanked the church for putting up a school to their village.
“We didn’t have the resources to buy the school requirements including uniforms and books to take our children to school in Kakuma that’s far away from here. We now appreciate the work of the church for establishing the school in our village,” she said.
-Edited by SKanyara