By Jeckonia Otieno

At about 10am, amid the searing heat and dust, children are busy in three classrooms.

In one classroom is a group of special needs learners living with different disabilities – physical, mental and albinism among others. A wheelchair pushed by a man in his 50s arrives, accompanied by his wife.

 On the wheelchair is a diminutive girl who is pushed up the ramp into the busy classroom. One look at her you would mistake her for a seven year old and she has to sit with fellow learners with disability at the Daryel Alternative Basic Education Centre (ABE) one of the integrated schools in the camp.

 Mohammed Abdullahi’s daughter Hawa got sick at the age of three when he was in his home area of Kismayu, Somalia at the height of conflict.

n September 2010, he had enough of the war and decided to escape ending up at the Dagahaley Refugee Camp with his entire family. He had tried getting the girl, now 16 years old to different hospitals for treatment but nothing seemed to work.

 “Her skin was peeling and she started getting deformed yet doctors could not find out what was exactly wrong with her,” says Abdullahi over his daughter who developed a hunchback and cannot walk.

 On arriving in Kenya, he had to take turns with his wife taking care of the girl since she could not go to school mainly due to lack of special amenities. So Hawa just stepped into school for the first time since birth this year. “She told me she was tired of staying at home and would report me to the authorities if I did not take her to school like her siblings. We started bringing her to school,” Abdullahi says. 

He says since she joined this school, the family has had a bit of time even to work because before they had to look after her in turns so that she is not harmed because children with disability are viewed as sources of bad omen within the community.

The education centre is among those run by humanitarian organisation Save the Children to ensure equal access to education for refugee children in Dadaab. The programme targets children aged between five and 17.

Despite 62,610 refugee children being enrolled in school in the camp, about 38 per cent of all children in the camp are yet to attend school. This is attributed to multiple community and school-based barriers.

According to a 2017 UNHCR report dubbed Out of School Children Assessment Dadaab Refugee Camp, there are 35 pre-primary schools, 35 primary schools and seven secondary schools for the learners.

The report found that close to seven in ten children who should be in pre–primary school are not enrolled while 64 per cent of children eligible for primary education are also out of school.

Some of the reasons given for non-enrollment include child labour, Duksi education, ignorance and economic reasons among others.

Faiza Noor, a programme manager with Save the Children’s education programme in Dadaab, says some barriers include inability to pay for some needs that come with schooling, preference for informal religious education and gender-bias which mainly leaves girls exposed.

 Just like Abdulalhi, Abubakar Hassan left his war-ravaged home in Kismayu in 2008, with his family and ended up in the camp. By then his children were young and four have transited through this same school into the formal school that shares a fence with the integrated school.

This article was first published on the Saturday Standard on March 7, 2020