Starehe Centre: Orphans’ refuge that became a beacon of excellence

Inset: Starehe founder Geoffrey William Griffin. At least 14,400 students have passed through Starehe Boys Centre, out of which 70 per cent were from poor backgrounds. [File, Standard]

In the fog of the season’s end, the fabric holding the parchment of imperial colony was violently torn apart, exposing the jailer and the prisoner who had always treated each other with mutual hostility.

Finally, the sun was rapidly setting for the British in the Kenya colony, bringing to an end seven decades of the domination of the black majority by white minorities. The future looked forlorn.

And in the twilight of this new dawn, fear and uncertainty reigned in people’s hearts. Few dared to dream of starehe (unburdened) future without the colonial shackles. Prison cells were being flung open and the country was pregnant with great expectations.

But when the prisons ultimately opened, gushing out endless streams of teary-eyed orphans, hungry and homeless, there was a collective fear in society.

Thousands of orphans

Where would the thousands of orphans - some of whom had served as child soldiers weaned on violence in the streets and in the forests - go?

It would take a miracle to re-integrate the boys who had lost their parents and innocence to an uncaring system.

This miracle came in the form of a disillusioned colonial soldier, who had at one point in his career helped put thousands of freedom fighters in detention camps and prisons.   

Dr Geoffrey William Griffin, the son of a Kitale colonial police officer had started off as a soldier in the British Army and served as an intelligence officer who debriefed Mau Mau freedom fighters but later resigned to joined the civil service as a colonial youth officer.

His tour of duty took him to some of the most notorious detention centres, among them Manyani, where hardcore Mau Mau freedom fighters were being held. Here, he witnessed the atrocities meted on the inmates. Children and adults were held in the same cells and indiscriminately brutalised. “Four thousand boys were arrested on the streets of this city in 1958, 3,000 of them for being without any apparent means of support. I tried very much to interest the colonial government and the Nairobi City Council in the problem,” Griffin is quoted in a 1968 interview.

This was happening just as the State of Emergency had been lifted and independence was looming. The outgoing regime was not about to invest resources to cater for vulnerable children amidst a debate over who between the central government and and city council should do it. Earlier in Manyani, Griffin tried to separate the children from young men he had encountered - Mau Mau oath administrator, Joseph Kamiru Gikubu and a freedom fighter, Geoffrey Geturo.  

The meeting between Griffin, Gikubu and Geturo was destined to shape the future of  thousands of young men.

Once Griffin had separated the young boys from the youth, he was allowed to transfer an estimated 4,000 boys  from Manyani to Wamumu. He also reunited with Gikubu and Geturo and the idea of a special boys’ centre was born in Wamumu, as the boys literally built the centre, although it would later be crystalised in Nairobi.

In the meantime, Griffin, who was fed up with the attitude of the government, decided to act as an individual.

He set up two feeding centres, one at Kariokor and the other at Starehe, where delinquent juveniles would congregate, eat and later disperse.

As Starehe Boys’ Centre’s head of operations Fred Okono explains, the centre started in 1959, when 17 boys sought refuge in two tin huts donated by oil company Shell.

Okono explained that to keep the boys occupied, technical courses such as woodwork, masonry and automotive courses, were introduced.

A primary school was later started at the centre. By then, Griffin had been joined by Gikubu and Geturo. That marked the birth of Starehe Boys’ Centre.

But things were not smooth, as the founding director explained in 1969, during Starehe’s 10th anniversary. He demonstrated how his idea was strongly resisted and at one point, he was technically sacked and his post  scrapped, and was only reinstated after the intervention of Tom Mboya and other leaders.

He was also denied permission to take two boys to England where he hoped to launch a fundraising campaign. “To get permission for the boys to leave Kenya in 1962 for a fortnight, the matter had to be deliberated by the Council of Ministers.”

Ironically, although the government refused to assist the centre, courts and other institutions kept on referring children in need of safe custody there. To prepare the boys for a future, Starehe prioritised strengthening their individual characters before inculcating in them the importance of duty, hard work and teamwork.

Starehe had to break conventional norms to survive. In 1962, its hungry boys in military formation marched daily to Kariokor market food stores.

According to George Waigwa, who was a fourth former in 1969,  each boy was assigned a number which he was supposed to give the owner of the stall to be served with food and keep track of the number of meals taken. Each boy was supposed to eat Sh1.50 worth of food.

When this system was scrapped, the cooks started delivering food on stretchers from Kariokor Market to the school, dodging traffic on Race Course Road on their way to the centre. Despite these challenges, Starehe became a magnet that attracted vulnerable boys hungry for a better life from all corners of the country.

Josphat Mwaura, who is serving as Starehe’s director, recalls the day he first visited the school in 1978 to deliver his application form.

“I was roughed up by boys st Ziwani estate. They grabbed my envelope and when they checked and saw the yellow form, they were disgusted. They slapped me with the envelope and then let me go,” says Mwaura. The destitute schoolboy from Riabai village in Kiambu, whose mother could not afford school uniform, later became a captain in Starehe. 

In Mwaura’s school autograph, chronicling his life at Starehe, Griffin wrote, “Despite being the youngest of the captains, you have done a fine job. Your cheerful smile will be missed next year.”

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since and as Starehe marks its 60th anniversary this year, Mwaura is impressed by how a centre which was created in the shadows of war was able to bring the colonised and the coloniser together. Mwaura, who is also the CEO of KPMG, is impressed at the contradictions of life. For over 25 years, Griffin directed Starehe while he was still at the helm of the National Youth Service, where he interacted with a former Mau Mau veteran, Waruhiu Itote, popularly known as General China, and a notorious detainee, J M Kariuki.

“I have been a director at Starehe for one year now while still working at KPMG. It is very demanding and I cannot understand how Griffin worked at Starehe and NYS  for 25 years,” Mwaura said.

Mwaura remembers his schooldays when Starehe would tense every time Patrick David Shaw zoomed out of the compound whenever he received news of armed robbery in the city. Shaw, Mwaura explains, was a a full-time employee of Starehe and doubled up as a disciplinarian as well as deputy director in charge of standards. 

His physique was intimidating. He rarely administered corporal punishment, but would relentlessly pursue errant boys on Saturdays as they cleaned Ziwani estate.

Shaw was a mountain of a man, who was  six feet tall and weighed 136 kilos. He was the most dreaded law enforcer of his time. On one occasion, he stomped on the footbridge over Race Course Road to test its strength. The failed the test when one of its steps caved in.

Whenever a building was being constructed  in the school, Shaw would lean on a wall to test it and if it was poorly constructed, the fundis would have to redo it. Though a primary school dropout, Gikubu who was the director in charge of the uniforms and bedding, had a way of disarming naughty boys who tried to get replacement of shoes by presenting mismatched pairs.

Gikubu would hold a shoe in each hand, squint his eyes and then declare: “This shoe is not the brother of that one. You boy do not try to cheat me.”

Starehe’s journey in the last 60 years has been both daunting and rewarding. An estimated 14,400 students have passed through the institution, out of which 70 per cent were from poor families, and are now working in senior positions.