By Ray Pollo, Senior Officer – Communications

Employing Green Solutions Against Hunger, Taveta Teen Embraces Life Skills and Values to Support Family

Tucked away behind some shops in Mwatate town, is Kariobangi village. We discover young Marita Ewa watering a tiny kitchen garden. Her forte is tender care. Every dry morning, she wakes up to her tools: a water jug and a hand-sized watering can, which she cut from a plastic bottle. She has perforated the can just enough to sprinkle water on her delicate beans and tree seedlings. Leaning on their weakening wood fence are two stalks of sugarcane, which she also planted recently.

The 13-year-old girl is busy greening her space, and her brain too. Apparently, what remains hungry on the day of our visit is her resilient tummy. Their level of lack is loud. Lunch time is not necessarily food time. Even their saucepans hung hungrily on the emaciated kitchen walls. They are just sooty, not soupy. The traditional stone stove is cold and quiet! The only visible smoke oozes out of a kerosene-starved lantern lamp, locally known as koroboi. It is infamous for its sooty embers and for gobbling-off kerosene budgets from needy pockets. Nonetheless, it is the only light that shines Ewa’s education path. Although it is daytime, Ewa must light her lamp to see. Her house is dark. The corner kitchen is shy of windows, the dots of light that land on the empty table and the floor, only peep through some roof holes. The roofing sheets are rusted and tired. Occasionally, rainwater seeps through them, which has worked against the gapping walls in the kitchen, now bending on an adjacent brick wall of a neighbour.
Nonetheless, young Ewa reads on. She has brought a long a friend to meet her guests (the ALiVE Team), who are assessing life skills and values among adolescents in the Taita Taveta County. Both welcome us with amiable respect and sweet coastal Kiswahili accent. They lend me one of the two chairs in the room. I regrettably decline as I must follow through with my documentation assignment. Ewa sits and welcomes her friend to revise with her. The young orphan has been topping her class despite her pile of socio-economic predicaments. “Term one she was number two in her class. She is a hardworking girl who understands my struggles,” Ewa’s aging grandma, Nana, says with a hopeful smile.

Resilience is their creed. They join forces to battle poverty with their sweat. As Nana goes fending for the family, Ewa helps with
house chores before she settles down to study. “I don’t have to tell her what to do. She knows she has a role to help around and to read her books. Poverty is a language that my granddaughter understands very well, so she digs into her books like they are her sole life spring. I am proud of her for that. Sometimes she helps me with beadwork and pottery, which I sell to meet our needs,” Nana adds

Poverty is a language that my granddaughter understands very well, so she
digs into her books like they are her sole life spring. I am proud of her for that.
Sometimes she helps me with beadwork and pottery, which I sell to meet our
needs,”

Nana adds.

“I would like to be a doctor. I know education will give Nana and I a better life. That is why I love my books,” a focused Ewa affirms. Ewa just like any child has a right to quality education. She has the will to thrive in and out of class. She paints a positive picture of adolescents who are not only going through school, but also acquiring critical life skills and values both at home and at school. This aligns to the vision of Action for Life Skills and Values in East Africa (ALiVE), which aims to ensure that learners acquire 21st century skills and values that would enable them to learn and thrive at school, at work and later in life. ALiVE carries out assessments on life skills and values.

In 2022, ALiVE conducted a large-scale assessment across East Africa, covering Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Zanzibar. The findings indicated that only 5% of adolescents assessed in Kenya, had proficiency in problem solving skills. Read the full report here. The results show that most adolescents are not functioning at particularly high levels in the skills and the value assessed. The findings informed the need to contribute to nurturing and assessing life skills in the region. As such ALiVE has continued to develop assessment tools and conduct periodic assessments across East Africa.
In April 2024, ALiVE team in Kenya did assessments in Nyeri, Kisumu and Taita Taveta Counties. Adolescents aged between 13-17-year-olds were assessed on their proficiency in problem solving, self awareness, collaboration, and respect. The exercise targeted 1,125 households, with an aim to assess two adolescents per household on their skills in problem solving, self-awareness and the value of respect. The adolescents were then placed in groups to assess their collaboration skills.

As we seek to analyse the findings of the assessments conducted in 2024, it will be interesting to note any deviation from the previous findings in 2022. ALiVE encourages stakeholders especially caregivers and teachers, to help children grow better by nurturing in them life skills and values. During the April assessments in Kenya, ALiVE team shared customized calendars which were issued to caregivers, to help them appreciate and support learners nurture requisite life skills and values.
Ewa is one of the adolescents who were assessed in Taita Taveta County. After a half an hour of the assessment, we left behind a teenager and a grandmother who face life with rare optimism. We appreciate the bond between the two and hope that our interaction with them will help to solidify their cause in enhancing values and life skills. Ewa has demonstrated her worth. She has exhibited observable abilities in problem solving and collaboration skills through her daily chores and encounters. Need I add that Ewa sounds like hewa, Kiswahili for ‘breeze’. Indeed, she is a welcome cool breeze to a world that is choking under the effects of climate change. She has promised to call us back to eat from her garden when her crop matures. We shall revisit!