The children who pioneered Munyeki in 1970, had recently graduated from the nursery school which was housed at the Rangwero house, the same house where the Cooperative Society offices were located. The nursery school had started in 1969 in anticipation of sending its graduates to Munyeki when it was completed and ready to take in students. It all worked as planned. The only problem was when the next class of students graduated in 1970. They needed to join standard one at Munyeki, but there was only one classroom available. A second one was under construction.
The resourceful headmaster, Mr. Gachogu decided to run the classes in shifts. The standard two students reported to school early in the morning at 8am. They held their classes until 1pm when they went for lunch. After their lunch break was over at 2 pm, the students went for outdoor activities like sports, gardening, fence building or local field trips. That left the classroom vacant for the standard one students who reported to school at 12 pm. For the one hour before the classroom became available, the standard one pupils started their lessons outdoors. Lessons like writing numbers and the alphabet on the ground with sticks. Gathering sticks to make bundles that we later used for math lessons. 1pm the classroom was vacated by the standard two pupils and it was our turn to occupy it until 3.30 pm, the end of our school day.
The familiar terms we used to indicate which class you belonged to were “Thukuru ya Kiroko” morning school, which meant you were in standard two, or “Thukuru ya thaa inyanya” the afternoon school which meant you were in standard one. I have no idea why we referred to it as thukuru ya thaa inyanya, meaning 2 pm, which is not the time we reported to school. I guess that was our society’s reference to afternoon.
This continued for a whole year until the second classroom was completed and the standard three students got a classroom of their own to learn the whole day. The newly minted standard two pupils still did the sharing with the wide eyed incoming standard one pupils. In the meantime, the parents were hard at work constructing new classrooms, and eventually each grade level got a classroom of their own. You got to do what you got to do.
