Gazi surprised us by the large number of schools and schoolchildren in different uniforms. Gazi Primary School is located in Coast province, Kwale district, Msambweni divison, Kinondo location and Msambweni Constituency. Although you can find only one public school in internet search, we clearly saw a Muslim School and a girls school in the area.
Education officials announced in July 2020 that they were canceling the academic year and making students repeat it. They are not expected to begin classes again until January, the usual start of Kenya’s school year. Education experts believe Kenya is the only nation to have gone so far as to declare the entire school year a total washout, and order students to start over. The decision to suspend the academic year affects more than 90,000 schools and over 18 million students in pre-primary through high school, including 150,000 more in refugee camps, according to the education ministry. National exams usually taken by students in their last year of primary school and high school have also been postponed, and there will be no intake of new students in 2021.
As we walked towards the village, children were just getting off school, wearing pink and green uniforms and we were the main attraction of the day. Later our guide Paul told us that he has not taken any tourists to the village since Covid so I think it is possible that some of the kids just did not see any foreigners ever. They were screaming “Europeans” in Swahili and ended up running after us while we were looking at the old buildings.
