Mikuuni

Just up the King'ori road from Malula, there is a school that serves an area where there is no actual village, simply small farms dotted here and there. It is surprising therefore that there is a fairly large student roll.

The school is marked by Jacaranda trees lining each side of quite a long driveway and this makes a beautiful utterance when the trees are out in flower.
The school was not well-endowed with facilities, but I judged it was not a difficult area for teachers to live because of the proximity to the main road. Kikatiti is close by and there is a very good market there on Thursdays.
There was a problem with water, but a large reservoir tank was reasonably close. I never took the opportunity to look at it, but water did not run all the time and always there were cans and drums lined up ready for when water did flow. The water came all the way from Ngarenanyuki. There was a control box on the hill and we actually tapped into it for the Ilkirimuni project much later.

Mikuuni did not require food during the food shortage nor were the recipients of the Assistance for Primary Schools project.
Although the school is hardly up the hill from Malula, agriculturally it is better because there is more rainfall there and so planted crops are more likely to be harvested. That is the crop usually do not fail.
As for the Primary Schools Assistance Project, the school was not nominated by DME. The reason for this may have been that at the time the Pastor was censured - but anyway that has nothing to do with anyone here. But because he was out of action, perhaps this school was lost between the cracks, so to speak.

Mikuuni was a good little school and the teachers worked well with the students. It is easy to sum things up even on a short visit and I was always happy to visit this school and carry out our environmental programme. Whenever we arrived there the kids were studying and the teachers were in the classrooms.

We found the kids to be disciplined and keen to participate in the environmental programme and enjoyed the competition to be selected as having the best tree. Well, as usual it turned out to be one of the best ten trees. These kids were fun to work with and when I inspected the trees with them, they took note of any advice I gave them.

The church almost next door also wanted to have an environmental programme and that too was successful. They were keen to plant a little forest on the other side of the road. The church owned the ground there, but I could see that it was used for grazing and expected any trees planted there would become fodder. The project did not succeed [or even start] because of the Pastor issue.













One of the Mikuuni Prizewinners.










One of the prizewinning groups at Mikuuni.













A Dodonea viscosa planted at Mikuuni - this species is endemic to New Zealand, Australia and Africa. Maasai use the wood ash to line calabashes and to add flavor to sour milk or loshoro.