OlKalou town had only two Primary schools, which are still standing today. AC and St. Joseph. There was no high school in OlKalou. The closest high school was Nyandarua High School, which to us, may as well have been a hundred miles away from our simple lives in OlKalou.
The British Settlers sent their children to schools far away from OlKalou. They went to elite all white boarding schools like Pembroke House near Gilgil and other similar schools in Nakuru and Nairobi. After the British left and the locals took over the Settlement Scheme, there were no schools to take their children. The only option they had was sending them to AC or St. Joseph in OlKalou town.
Considering how big the farms are, children from ten farms away from OlKalou town, were likely 5 kilometers or more away from the schools. Imagine how far the children from the edge of the Settlement Scheme would have to walk to schools in town. The parents of the Settlement Scheme had to build a school for their children fast.
In 1969 they bought land next to the Cooperative Society offices and they hurriedly built one classroom and a staff room. They admitted their pioneer students in January of 1970. They called the school Munyeki. The name was derived from the three districts of Central Province where the Pioneer Parents came from. MU was for Muranga, NYE was for Nyeri and KI was for Kiambu. All the years we attended school there, we did not bother to know where the name originated. In fact, we were embarrassed of it because it was not English sounding like the town schools AC and St. Joseph.
Munyeki was ran locally by the District Education Board, meaning, it was not supported by the Ministry of Education from its headquarters in Nairobi. It was entirely supported by the parents whose children went there. It was slow progress.
