As the Munyeki school grew, the demand grew as well. More families bought land and settled in places like Marubani, Kabuteni and Kaimbaga. Those were new settlements in the mid 1970s, and just like the dilemna that faced our parents, they did not have schools to send their children. Their only choice was Munyeki.
Students walked more than five kilometers to reach school. It is amazing they made it to school on time every day in all kinds of weather. The Munyeki parents realized they had to add more classrooms, and FAST so they could add another stream to accommodate the rising student population. They decided to concentrate their limited finances on getting some structure standing, as long as it had walls and a roof over it, but the finishing touches were left incomplete.
We had classrooms with rough incomplete floors, rough walls that were not plastered, no ceiling and no doors or windows. The huge spaces for doors and window were left open. We had plenty of fresh air as we sat in the classroom but we also endured sharp cold winds that blew right through. When rain fell, it poured right in through those uncovered doors and windows, flooding the unfinished floors. We gathered in the middle of the classroom and climbed on our desks to stay dry.
The parents and teachers were not bothered by any of that. All they knew was that there was a school standing and growing, and their children were advancing every year. Two streams of pioneer standard seven students graduated in November 1976 as scheduled, in those same conditions, but they made it.
When the results came in January, majority had performed so well earning themselves admission to reputable Provincial High Schools all over Central Province, with one student going to a National School. It was the talk of the town for many years to come.
My three brothers were in those pioneer classes and they were proud to receive their CPE certificates from a school their parents built, one classroom at a time. They had blazed the trail and now my other brothers and I had to follow suit, unfinished classrooms and all.
The end always justifies the means. I hated being in those circumstances back then, but today I appreciate and applaud all those Pioneer Parents for putting their priorities right. They did what they needed to do, with whatever little they had, and we are now the proud product of their insightful decisions those many decades past.
Our current Governor of Nyandarua, Honorable Dr. Kiarie Badilisha was a Pioneer student at Munyeki Primary with the rest of us. His very decent parents, alongside mine and every Pioneer Parent in OlKalou South made those tough decisions to forego classroom “comforts” in favor of us, their children, getting an education that they believed would open doors for us that their illiterate and semi illiterate selves could not have accessed. They were right. I wish they all lived to see their “son” crowned Governor of Nyandarua.
Our OlKalou Member of Parliament, Hon David Kiaraho was also one of those Pioneer students of Munyeki. He did not stay until graduation like the rest of us, but him and his younger sister were in school with us at the brand new Munyeki we all experienced.
Our Founding Speaker of the Nyandarua General Assembly Hon. Wahome Ndegwa graduated from those incomplete classrooms as well, like a lot of other very important alumni’s of Munyeki, too many to mention on this forum. The one thing we all have in common is this: We ALL made it somehow with rock solid Munyeki values. Whether holding a big office like the ones I mentioned above, or simply holding a job somewhere to make a living, running a small business, farming like our Pioneer Parents did, or simply raising a family as a housewife, we are all very proud of our roots that run deep in OlKalou, regardless of where else we reside today.
