School of two students blooming

By Abenea Ndago

When Solomon Omer walked into Ragen AIC Mixed Secondary School in Lower Nyakach Division in 2005, he was shocked beyond words.

He had been transferred to head the school, but he found only two students discussing under one of the trees in the compound.

“I still remember them very well,” he says.

“One was called Godfrey Onyango, and the other was Kennedy Ouko Otieno.”

It was a few days after schools had opened countrywide, and so he asked the two where the rest were. But their reply shocked him further: they told him they were the only students in his new station, a vast compound which measures over 18 acres of flat, expansive land.

He recalls, “I thought I was dreaming. Only two learners in a whole ocean of land? I thought they were joking.” Yet it was the truth.

He then decided to ‘borrow’ students. He went to the neighbouring Mbugra Mixed Secondary School. The Principal sympathised and helped him with 22 more learners. He looked for three more from elsewhere, and that was how he enrolled 27 students in Form 4 that year.

In spite of that difficult beginning, there are close to 200 students in the school today.

But after a small research, Mr Omer discovered that the school’s curse was clannism. Nyakach clan has seven sub-clans: Kadiang’a, Kajimbo, Koguta, Agoro, Kandaria, Kabodho, and Jimo. The school is situated in Kabodho land, but just at the border with Jimo. And now leadership wrangles were bringing down the school. No parent was willing to enroll his child if the school was headed by someone from the other sub-clan.

He seized the opportunity and defined his role. He says, “But I belonged to neither sub-clan. So I vowed to use all my energy in fighting clannism in the school, which is what I do to this day.”

Modern

Omer’s efforts are now being complemented by the Community Development Trust Fund (CDTF) in collaboration with the European Union (EU).

In 2011, he came upon a rumour that the two bodies wanted proposals for school development projects. He conferred with Nyadida Yimbo, his Board Chairman at the time, who then gave him the green light to do the proposal. He sat for long days, wrote the paper himself, and sent.

 In 2012, he received a call. His proposal had sailed through.  The CDTF team visited the school on December 12, 2012.

The GoK/EU Project, funded through the CDTF, will cost 6.6 million to construct 4 modern classrooms, 10 toilets, and 3 giant water tanks.