Teachers from hell on the loose

Doctors at the Nyahururu county refferal hospital attend to a class one pupil at Kamukujni primary school in Nyandarua County. The boy sustained serious injuries on his private parts after he was beaten up by three teachers who have since escaped.

Mary Wangeci’s afternoon was temporarily interrupted by the entry of her sobbing son. Sensing something was amiss, she quickly abandoned the meal she was preparing for her family to find out what was wrong.

“Follow me to school immediately, teachers have beaten Kamau, he is crying in the staff room. He is bleeding and he cannot walk,” he told her.

Together, they dashed to Kamukunji Primary in Nyandarua County, where she found her six-year-old son slumped in a chair, soaked in his own blood.

“He was exhausted from crying, and he was bleeding so much that I did not know what to do with him,” she says.

The teachers surrounding him insisted he had gotten into a fight. But the pupils, who witnessed the events of Thursday afternoon unfold had a different story, revealing details of what is turning out to be one of the most harrowing and heartbreaking incidents of teacher brutality in the Kenyan public school system.

The other pupils said that Kamau, a Class One pupil, was playing in class when a teacher spotted him. He summoned him outside and together with two other teachers started raining blows on him.

Rain and blood

His screams, pleas for mercy and attempts to free himself from the grip of the teachers were futile. The pupils who watched in shock said at some point, one of the teachers stepped on his genitals as he lay helpless on the ground, his frail arms no match for the large fists and huge feet of teachers ordinarily charged to protect him. Each of the blows landing with a sickening finality, sinking young Kamau further and further away from consciousness.

Wangeci says by the time she bundled her son onto her back and started her long walk to hospital, he could barely speak. Her journey to Nyandarua County Referral Hospital saw her walk in rain, wading through pools of mud only hoping that the silence from her son on her back was not an indication of the worst. “We were covered in mud; drenched in rain and blood. A trailer driver saw us and because we were both crying, he had pity on us and gave us a lift,” she says, adding that the school only gave her Sh500 and asked her to take her son to hospital.

The outcry from enraged parents who were asking for the arrest of the teachers involved has resulted into an indefinite closure of the school.  

Pauline Wanja said she was agitated when her niece, who goes to the school, returned home traumatized and told her of how Kamau’s cries had sent shivers down the spines of children who witnessed the punishment.

Nyandarua County Education Officer Joan Githinji, who visited the school on Friday afternoon, ordered a probe into the matter.

“We cannot allow this to happen in this county. The matter has been taken up and I will follow it personally,” he told the angry parents who were protesting.

Dr Wambui Ngatia said the boy had undergone surgery to restore his testicles and stitch the scrotum.

“They would have killed him, I am lucky he is alive,” said his mother.

The story brings to light, yet again, the many cases of the thin line between disciplining and brutality – one that teachers skirt around, with some of them crossing it. Statistics from the Kenya Demographic Health Survey and a report by Child Line Kenya reveals that teachers are among the most likely people to physically abuse children.

In an earlier interview with Sunday Standard, Martha Sunda, executive director of ChildLine Call Centre, said they receive distress calls daily from children and parents who report ruthless teachers who beat and intimidate students.

Jamia Abdulrahim, a parent from Kibra in Nairobi, says anytime she hears of a child who has been brutally beaten by a teacher, memories of her son wailing flood back. A few weeks ago, her son came home wailing. His arm was dislocated. Upon inquiry, the son narrated amidst sobs how his senior teacher at Kibra Primary had assaulted him for an uncollected report form.

“I was not able to collect his report form when school closed last term because I was taking care of my dying mother, she had cancer and needed me in every step of her journey,” says Abdulrahim.

She broke the rules and failed to show up when other parents were collecting their children’s report forms. On opening day, her son was severely punished for it.

“He was in so much pain, I had to take him to hospital,” says Abdulrahim, who later took up the matter with education officials in Lang’ata.

[Additional reporting by James Munyeki]

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