School Lunch

It was the day of the games. Students from all the surrounding primary schools were going to be gathering at Jaffery School to compete. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen such a gathering. Brilliant colored uniforms against the African sky. Children racing around a makeshift track, barefooted, thorns and rocks ignored in their graceful, seemingly effortless flying. High jumpers sailing into the air.But there is one thing that makes game day really hard. School lunch. For many of these children, lunch is the only meal they receive in a day, and as one teacher explains to me, it is especially hard if the games fall on Friday because it means that if the children miss lunch on Friday they may well be hungry until Monday; certainly not something we think about when we schedule a track and field day here.But how were they to get lunch for 100 children to Jaffary school? As I heard three teachers discussing it, I realized that getting lunch there would be no small feat. No picking up subways or telling everyone to bring their own. Taking lunch to Jaffary, 10 miles from Bahakwenu Primary school, would involve taking a cook, a huge pot, the grain to cook, and figuring how the water and fuel (wood) would be acquired to cook it with. All of this planning took at least an hour, as I listened from inside our cement block home.Then the teachers came to me. “Rinda,” they said. “We have a problem. It is very far to transport the cook, the pot, and the grain.  Could the Kenya Keys vehicle help shuttle all this?” I wondered how they ever would have done this had we not been there, but history has shown me they manage things that are seemingly impossible every day. Nonetheless, it was nice their burden would be somewhat less because we were in town.We went to the games the next day. My curiosity drove me to where school lunch had been prepared. I still couldn't imagine how each school pulled this off. There it was. The giant pot from school. The open fire burning in the classroom. The water and fuel somehow acquired in proper proportions to cook all that grain. The children, in between games, having something to turn into their own fuel, stomachs not as empty as they might have been, going in to the weekend.