An appeal letter to Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi

Dear CS Matiangi,

It's 14 degrees today, this is how our sons are going to school.

I have a pair of jeans, a sweater, leather jacket, scarf and a cup of tea on my desk every 30 minutes in a warm office, with real windows and I'm still struggling with the cold.

Picture, they have warm classes but most primary schools in Kenyan have no windows, most kids have torn shorts and no socks or shoe's. It's unreasonable for us to expect kids to concentrate in class, we are exposing them to all kinds of respiratory infections and other medical conditions.

Let me add for my fellow middle class, not all kids get picked by a school bus or driven by parents or Uber to school, over 80% of them walk more than 1Km to school in this weather.

Please, my good friend, I beg, issue a statement to allow all children across the country to wear home cloths i.e trousers, jeans etc to school during this season. We cannot have a debate about "uniforms create equality" during this season because the alternative is pneumonia.

Our cold season is only one month long, so we should also not subject parents to buying a whole new set of uniform for just one month.

We should probably make it just exception for this one month to allow kids to wear a different set of trousers and heavy jacket they already have access to, while maintaining the sweaters and school shirts they already have.

Madam first lady, I appeal to you as well, I am a big supporter of beyond zero campaign, we also need to go beyond 5, 7 and 10 as well, we can't be losing our children to pneumonia because of preventable things like school uniform.

Please, share this widely, if you have a child in primary school you care for and let's change this colonial culture of shorts during the cold season.

From a Dad.