Kakenya's School

This blog is about a school for girls located in Kenya.

Kenya is on the continent of Africa and is located in East Africa. Its terrain rises from a low coastal plain on the Indian Ocean to mountains and plateaus at its center.


Map courtesy NG Maps

Kakenya Ntaiya, founder of Kakenya Center for Excellence

Kakenya is grown up now, but when she was young she dreamed of becoming a teacher.

When she was just five years old she was engaged to be married. In the Maasai culture, girls grow up and get married in their teens. Education for girls is not a priority. For those lucky enough to finish primary education, only a few make it to secondary school. Parents tend to spend what little money they have on educating boys rather than girls, whom are expect to marry and leave the family. According to Maasai culture, girls marry at the time of adolescence, which corresponds to the completion of primary school for most young girls (age 13).

But what Kakenya really wanted was to be a teacher.She went to her father and negotiated with him. She agreed to go through her teen initiation rites if her father would agree to let her finish high school. He agreed.

Then she later talked the village elders into letting her leave her small Maasai village of Enoosaen in south Kenya to go to college in the United States. She promised to use her education to benefit her village and the entire village collected money to pay for her journey.



Kakenya Center for Excellence

Kakenya has built a boarding school for girls and it continues to grow.KCE opened its doors in May 2009 with 32 students. The center enrolled an additional 31 students in January 2010 in fourth grade. Eventually the goal is to have 150 students in grades four to eight. Each grade in the school has its own classroom. The students are instructed in eight standard subjects - English, Swahili, math, science, geography/history, religion, the arts, and physical education.

Photographs by Cheryl Zook / NGS