Happy House School, a kenyan primary school

The Happy House School is a kenyan primary school located in the southern districts of Nairobi. There are about 70 children dispatched in 8 classrooms, plus a “kinder garden”.

The children spend 8 years in the primary school, from 6 to 13. Then they go to high chool. School is from monday to friday. The year starts in january after the longest holidays in december. We have been warmly welcomed by the director, also teacher, who kindly introduced us to 2 classrooms : 1st year and 3rd year.

The children and their teacher welcomed us, all standing, by a “good morning”. Yoann and Titouan, one after the other, in the respective 1st year and 3rd year classrooms, introduced themselves despite their shyness regarding their english level. Then they pointed out Marseille and France on a worlmap, and the distance betwween the 2 countries. We talked about Marseille and showed pictures to the kenyan children.

traduction en français

We explained that our wish, during the worldtour, was to go and meet children in their school, in order to establish a correspondance between them and schools in Marseille. They were very curious and willing to have penfriends in a french school. We also talked about School in France and showed a short video of Yoann’s classroom. And we could then played at looking for the differences and similarities.

Differences :

  • 6 children in each classroom
  • 5 teachers in each classroom including the referent teacher, and 7 subjects : 5 of them given in english (mathematics, sciences, social studies, …), swahili, and french once a week !
  • The children wear a uniform

Swahili is the language of Kenya and English is the official language. By the age of 8, the kenyan children are bilingual and speak fluently english, that they start learning by 3 ! And most of them are even trilingual because they have been brought up in their mother tongue.

Similarities :

Yoann : there are boards on each side of the class. They have a book of mathematics and I saw substractions on it.
We showed them the boys’ books of french and mathematics and we noticed that the programs are the same as in France, in both classrooms.
They have a library corner and a dining hall. They have a break time of 20 minutes in the morning and afternoon. Yoann and Titouan shared games with the kenyans children and

Yoann was even given a piece of paper with numbers in swahili. They all like football, swimming, races, basket …

Yoann : “Sawa” in swahili means “ça va !” in french (everything’s fine !). It sounds the same !

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