Telegraph Christmas Appeal: a school that could change the future of Kenya

Starehe Boys Students Listen To Singer Akon During His Recent Trip To Kenya. File Picture

For those who remember Kenya’s reputation as a beacon among African countries, its descent into poverty and kleptocracy is desperately sad.

Kenya needs leaders with a commitment to decency. When President Mwai Kibaki was elected in 2002, one of his first acts was to appoint an anti-corruption tsar, John Githongo. But six years on, Mr Githongo is in exile in Britain and a weary resignation pervades Kenya’s 40 million people, four million of whom live on the edge of starvation.

One group of people now see that it is up to them to provide an alternative to the political see-saw whereby the most powerful of Kenya’s 42 tribes – the Kikuyu, Luo and Kalenjin – come to power and advance only their own kind.

Within the country, Starehe – which means place of comfort – is increasingly becoming not just the name of a boys’ college, but a rallying cry for those who believe there is a better way to lead, one inculcated by an unlikely guru, Geoffrey Griffin.

In 1959 Mr Griffin, the ex-Army son of a British policeman, set up Starehe in the slums of Nairobi as a refuge for boys displaced by the MauMau insurgency. Starehe has grown into a school that takes Kenya’s poorest but brightest pupils – 1,200 boys and girls at any one time – and gives them not only a free, first-class education but a set of principles to match.

Over the assembly hall doors at the boys’ college are inscribed the words: “From those to whom much has been given, much will be required.”

Most of the school’s alumni have interpreted that as giving service in the professions. One third of the trainee doctors in Kenya’s public universities come from Starehe, a number that will swell once girls move on from the sister school opened in 2005. Others go on to become engineers, lawyers, accountants and teachers. But, seeing the plight of their country, Old Stareheans are coming to realise that even more is required.

The power of Stareheism as a force for good has stirred the optimism of old Africa hand Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a former chairman of Shell and Anglo-American. He has known Starehe since 1966 and now supports the Starehe Future appeal to endow places and support a school that has much to teach not only its pupils, but the world, about ethical standards.

“People actually like behaving well, and the world wants to work with people who do,” he says. “In Starehe, there is no compromise. The last director wanted his son to go there but he couldn’t because his marks fell short by 0.05 per cent.” Boys enter the college aged 14 or 15, often barefoot and hungry, each chosen from more than 100 applicants per place on the basis of need and academic performance.

The vast majority come from homes where a dozen members of the family may live in one room, but at Starehe they know they will be able to create a better life, not just for themselves. “He is our light and our hope,” says the uncle of Richard Onyangu, 16, a pupil whose parents both died of Aids.

In class, the atmosphere is of quiet concentration. But it’s what they learn outside lessons that matters even more. After the teachers go home, the boys run the school. At 6am they start an hour’s cleaning; after school, they organise homework and activities. There are no discipline problems. Where disputes arise, they are settled at a baraza – parliament – where teachers often have to account for their actions.

There are few rules, above and beyond civilised behaviour and the need to speak only English or Swahili to avoid the perpetuation of tribal divisions. Anyone who uses their local language is made to learn 60 lines of Shakespeare overnight.

After four years, they emerge with not only some of the best results in the country – each year they compete for top of the league table with Nairobi’s best private schools – but a commitment to the Starehean Way. “Stickability was one of the concepts Griffin drummed into us,” says Raphael Tuju, an Old Starehean who was foreign minister until 2007 when he lost his parliamentary seat. He now advises President Kibaki on ethnic matters.

“Griffin taught us, if you do the right thing, you must be prepared to stick with the consequences,” says Twalib Ali, the country’s leading sugar trader, who supports 10 girls and 10 boys through the colleges. “I have not offered sweeteners, even though I have lost business in the process. But, if you are honest, people learn to trust you. It is your good name that matters most in this increasingly global world.”

“This is a corruption-free zone,” says the sign outside Nairobi University. Since George Magoha, 57, became vice-chancellor six years ago, he has tried to give some meaning to that notice.

The university used to be riven by strikes and rumours of cheating. In the past five years, managers have become accountable to students, strikes have ceased, and student numbers have risen from 25,000 to 46,000.

Lecturers’ pay has risen from £350 to £2,000 a month and academics have returned from abroad. Imbued with the Starehe work ethic, Mr Magoha starts work at 7am and still practises as a surgeon. “Griffin said ‘If you are going to clean a toilet, clean it so no one can clean it better’,” he said.

Old Stareheans’ main sorrow is that they cannot between them raise enough money to endow places at the school to keep it going in perpetuity, so they need the Telegraph‘s help. It’s not self-interest that prevents them finding £15,000 to endow each place, but the responsibility each feels for those who depend on them personally.

Raphael Tuju is one of 18 children from a poor rural area. He has not only helped his extended family, but built two schools.

The level of dependency is crushing. The government provides Kenya’s poor with nothing: families have to pay for water, even for the use of a latrine. Contraception is beyond their means, and so is the maize porridge on which they subsist because drought and strife have caused food prices to triple in two years.

Richard Onyangu is acutely aware of his country’s problems. “If there was more equitable use of resources it could reduce corruption. But I worry. My family depend on me and I must look after them, but I also want to do the right thing.”

With Starehe principles to guide him, he will find a way.

To make a donation to Starehe, or any other of the Telegraph’s four Christmas charities:

1 Call 0870 043 3759

2 Visit www.telegraph.co.uk/charity,

3. or by telephoning 0800-117118 on Sunday, December 13, when Telegraph staff will be taking readers’ calls between 10am and 6pm. Calls are free.

Story on:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/telegraphchristmasappeal