Antony Raima Kahindi’s dream to become an architect is slowly turning into a mirage thanks to the inability of his single mother to take her to secondary school.
The 15-year-old boy scored 381 marks in the 2021 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examinations at St. Andrews Primary School in Malindi town but has failed to join Ikuu Boys High School in Tharaka Nithi County as his mother who has six children cannot afford the fees.
With a heavy heart, Kahindi whiles his time either tending to a small kitchen garden in front of her mother’s mud-walled ramshackle or selling fried potatoes outside his former primary school to assist his mother to bring food on the table.
He is now appealing to the government and well-wishers to come to his aid and enable him to join Form One like his peers, who have completed the first term in school and are set to start their holidays this week.
“My peers are in school continuing with the syllabus while I am here doing nothing. I feel so bad and it is like I am not a human being,” Kahindi told journalists outside his mother’s mud-walled structure.
Kahindi said he had worked hard in his studies with the hope that he would help his mother and siblings come out of abject poverty that had made the family skip meals due to lack of money in the home.
His mother, Mary Kambi Kazungu, told journalists at her residence in Sabaki that she is unable to educate her children since she is unemployed and has to rely on selling fried potatoes to school children outside the Sabaki Primary School.
Kazungu says she has two other children in secondary school, one of whom is being assisted by nongovernmental organization, but she has to struggle to educate the others and provide food for them.
She says her efforts to get assistance from organizations offering scholarships, such as Equity Foundation’s Wings to Fly programme had been unsuccessful.
Well-wishers can contact Mary Kambi Kazungu through cell phone number 0739249815 to assist the youngster.
