As a child, my mother was paricularly militant about books. In fact, one of the worst things one of us, my siblings and I would do, was destroy a book. It took a while, but overtime I began to appreciate the value of books. For Mother, it was more than preserving books for sanctity's sake, but that I had to pass onto the book to my brother who would then pass it on to the next sibling and so on. And for the most part, we shared books among ourselves, but not without challenge. It was not uncommon for another child, whose parents could not afford them, would steal your textbook. Understandable, yes?

But here's what I don't understand. Vandalism. Vandalizing textbooks is not an act of survival, but one of destruction. An act that is unexplainable. At least to me. But, I saw it happen in both my primary and high school libraries where students would just rip books up just because.

The PS gave an example of Mt Elgon District where people burnt textbooks.

Burnt textbooks!

Onto the other culprit: theft of textbooks. This is hardly new. I remember seeing books on sale on the streets that had school stamps on: stolen books for sale. (This is also common practice in government pharmacies and hospitals). And there are gangs:  

“The ministry believes that much of this loss was attributed to organised gangs raiding schools in the [Central] province in a systematic way,” it said. “The gangs were subsequently caught and the ministry believes that the rate of theft should reduce.”

Our collective disinterest in books is very telling.  Not surprising that we don't read.

I would be interested in knowing if administrators and teachers are involved in these schemes. I wouldn't be shocked if they were, but I am interested in seeing a sytematic address of a problem that is definitely affecting our children's education.  I would also like to know about accountability measures. For instance, once schools procure textbooks, how do they accout for them? Do they report when books are stolen? Missing? Not delivered? Then what happens? Who conducts the investigation? If we had these measures in place, then an investigation six years into the loss of books would not be necessary. 

PS. This report (by Education ministry, Kenya National Audit Office and UK’s National Audit Office) came out last year in August, why are we only hearing about it in now in February, 2010? 

END RANT.

All submissions to Imagine Diaries, unlike other articles on the site, are neither edited nor reviewed by our editors before they appear on Kenya Imagine.