Kenya: Education at Risk | God's World News

Kenya: Education at Risk

06/20/2018
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    Teachers who had to leave their schools seek safety in the headquarters of the Kenya National Union of Teachers in Nairobi. (AP)
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    Hundreds of schools near the Somali border had to shut down as teachers fled for their lives. (AP)
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    School kids attend a church service in Kenya. (AP)
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    The al-Shabab terrorist group has been targeting non-Muslim teachers in Kenya. (AP)
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    Al-Shabab fighters sit on a truck in Mogadishu, Somalia. (AP)
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Five days a week, Abdirizack Bashir rises at dawn. He dreams of becoming a doctor, so the 12-year-old treks five miles through the Kenyan forest to school. Now, as if the journey isn’t tough enough, terrorists are attacking the region. Wajir County along the Kenya-Somalia border is a danger zone. And education is an early casualty—due to a mass exodus of teachers.

Al-Shabab is an Islamic group linked to Al-Qaida. It has carried out attacks in Kenya since 2011. The group is angry that Kenyan troops fought them in Somalia.

Al-Shabab dislikes education. Educated young people learn about how terrorism harms economies, countries, and people. Al-Shabab wants to disrupt education in Kenya, so the group is attacking teachers—but only non-Muslim ones.

A recent assault on an elementary school in Wajir County killed two non-Muslim teachers. After that, nearly 1,000 teachers, Muslim and non-Muslim, left the area. Schools closed, and thousands of children like Abdirizack have no classes to attend.

Sound like summer vacay? Wrong. The area is now prime recruiting ground for extremist groups—since children out of school are easy targets. Al-Shabab deceives students. The group says the government can’t protect young people. But al-Shabab promises it can.

The violence and dishonesty prove that groups like al-Shabab are imitating the devil, “a murderer from the beginning, . . . a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)

Abdullah Boru Halakhe is an expert in fighting extremism. He says, “The government has failed even to do the basic like, for instance, stationing security officers at some of the schools.”

The threat of attack isn’t the only problem non-Muslim teachers face in the region, says Peter Amunga, an education activist. Religious discrimination by the Muslim community and radicalized students present other challenges.

Wangechi Nderitu is a teacher hiding out at the Kenya Teachers Service Commission. He tells of a student who was punished by teachers. The boy trained with al-Shabab in Somalia for two years. He returned and went after those who punished him. Thankfully, they were gone.

Despite the danger, the Kenyan government is forcing teachers to stay in the region without added security, Nderitu says. Teachers’ bank accounts are frozen. The Teachers Service Commission says money won’t be released until the teachers go back to work.

“This is blackmail,” Nderitu says.

For 12-year-old Abdirizack, the politics don’t matter. “Now that there is no more class, what will I do with all this time?” he asks. Terrorism threatens his dream.