St. Mary’s High Igoji took root as part of efforts to improve girls’ education

The first British administrator in Meru, Edward Butler Horne, arrived in 1907. On May 13, 1911, as District Commissioner, Horne declared Meru a township under the East African Townships Ordinance of 1903. He was nicknamed “Kangangi” by the local people for his love of wandering all over their land. Horne granted the United Methodist Church territorial rights in Meru where they first established a mission station at Kagaa in 1912.

Two Consolata Missionaries, Fathers Giovanni Balbo and Luigi Olivero, arrived in Meru on 13 December 1911 to begin their first mission after the colonial government granted permission for the Nyeri Vicarite to expand to Meru. They first settled at Kathitu near Kariakomo in Mwimbi location and at Kiija near Mujwa in Imenti Division.

By a decree of the Holy See in Rome, Meru was split from Nyeri and elevated to the status of an Apostolic Prefecture on 10 March 1926.

Competition among missionaries for territory and souls inland was stiff. The “modus operandi” was very similar: wherever they went, the missionaries sought out the local chief, with whom they aligned themselves for land and goodwill.

The next move was to recruit children, initially boys only, for “kusoma”, the Kiswahili word for reading, which came to mean Christianity, as the two were inseparable. It was not enough to instruct in faith alone: literacy and numeracy were essential as the missionaries realized the crucial role lay leaders and catechists were to play in evangelisation.

Western-type schools became major avenues for both evangelisation and dissemination of Western culture. The initial converts in the hinterland were also the socially marginalised who had lost social identity and easily found a new one in Christ (Njoroge, 1999, p.95).

Soon, Christianity and schools began to be seen as vehicles for advancement. As early as 1927, the distinction between “kusoma” Africans and the rest of the community was discernable. All the students became Christians, as expected, gave up (at least outwardly) traditional beliefs and rituals, acquired a biblical or European name and dressed in Western clothing.

Upon leaving school these “mission graduates” found employment as teachers, catechists and readers with the missionaries, clerks and messengers with the colonial administration, foremen, artisans and drivers with the settlers and traders, thus entering the monetary economy and acquiring a new enhanced social status.

An additional benefit was the provision of modern health services, which had become an integral part of the mission station, underscoring the potency of Western medicine, another of the missionaries’ mesmerizing attractions.

Girls’ education was lagging behind but not entirely neglected for the missionaries quickly realized that they needed to prepare future wives for the fine gentlemen they were churning out. The missionaries started classes for girls teaching them how to cook, sew and knit, basic hygiene, literacy and numeracy.

St. Mary’s Girls High School is situated in Igoji, Meru County some 31 kms south of Meru town. The school was started on 11 April 1943 by the Consolata Sisters as an intermediate school for girls on a five-acre piece of land donated by the community. In 1954, the school moved to the present site measuring 33 acres after land adjudication and consolidation during which public institutions were allocated land hived off from the community by the government.

Many of the original buildings are still standing, including the kitchen and attached dining hall, dormitories and classrooms. Walls are built of chisel dressed stone under a corrugated iron sheets roof. Windows are glazed in wooden casements with wire mesh protection while doors are made of timber matchboarding.

The kitchen contains large wood-fired wrought iron ovens while hot water to the dormitories is provided by “Tanganyika” boilers.

Ms. Annarita Karimi Njeru (later the first woman MP in Meru representing South Imenti in 1975) was the first African headmistress after the school was handed over to the local diocese in 1964.

The school was elevated to national status in 2012 due to consistent good performance over the years. In 2016, the school earned the top spot in the Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education examination (KCSE) national exam in Meru County with a mean score of 8.4.

New classrooms, dormitories and an administration block are in the process of completion.

The school has a student population of over 800. It is also known for high standards of discipline and engagement with the local people in community work.

My granddaughter was recently admitted to Form One in this school. I had the privilege of attending the school’s AGM in January this year where the principal, Mrs Muthoni Rutere (an author and career educationist), stated that the school had been vindicated by the 2016 “Matiangi” KCSE examination results in which, she said, they had regained their rightful position as the number one school in the county.

The principal and the school’s board of management have, over the years, resisted suggestions from parents and other interested parties to do “what other schools were doing” to obtain better grades for their students in the national examinations. They collectively believed that hard work, discipline and honesty were the hallmarks of success and they were not going to engage in shortcuts.

The 2016 KCSE results were a milestone in the Kenyan education system, proving that the measures put in place by the government last year to curb manipulation of exam results were effective. Many schools that had featured regularly at the top suddenly found themselves running nearer the mid-field pack. We have witnessed cases of bullying and acts bordering on cultic behaviour in secondary schools, which all seem to point to an intricate web of money-seeking cartels that have infiltrated even some of our traditional, best performing schools.

We, as a nation, need to change our collective psyche to rout this scourge out of our schools for the sake of our children and posterity.