Early Education and Care in Kenya
​By Zahra Rahbari

Through this interview with John, we are taken miles away, to Kenya, and will get familiar with children's hardships and childhoods in such countries.  

Kenya in John’s Words and the Grief
Children do not do what they are supposed to do normally as children. They do not have childhood nor play! Instead, children in Kenya wait dreadfully for their parents to come home with a loaf of bread at night. Grief for Kenyan children is beyond words!

Kenyan Children’s Childhood
One of the very first rights for every child is to get educated (Unicef, 1992). However, in the majority of the world, this is not the case (Punch, 2003) and as John noted education in Kenya is a luxury and not accessible for many children. John's words reminded me of Szente et al.'s (2007) notion that in some countries, children’s childhood disappears due to various reasons, including poverty and not being able to get educated.
 
Work and Play
Another aspect of different childhoods is the importance of shaping children within social and cultural settings of communities. Different cultures lead to a diversity of childhoods and imbalances of two main factors attributing to children’s well-being and life: work and play. John highlighted that the two concepts of play and work manifested children's childhoods in Kenya as one, work in form of play. Play which is the best part of childhood comes voluntarily and without any extrinsic motivation and is every child’s right. Unfortunately, in a developing country such as Kenya, play may seem a luxury and it has vanished from most children’s lives due to the lack of families’ economic stability and instead has given its place to work (Punch, 2003; Unicef, 1992; World Bank 1996). 

Positive Side: Connection to Nature in Kenyan Children’s Life
According to John, the interviewee of the discussion, contrary to the disadvantages poverty brought to Kenyan children, the children’s bond with nature due to lack of other resources was an advantage (e.g., playing with wood and sticks). The reason is that children’s play area is the natural environment and materials, and they keep making positive relationships with nature (Spaling et al., 2011). It is worth mentioning here that children's engagement with nature is beyond green movement or as Duhan et al. (2017) put forward, nature and childhoods are far away from environmental conversations as advertised normally, i.e. taking care of the earth. According to Duhan et al., the connection moves toward learning with and about nature as well as staying connected with nature. The actual interaction with nature that Kenyan children authentically have.
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Final Reflections
Through the interview with John from Kenya, we had a glimpse of such countries and children's upbringing there. Social status, poverty and policies regarding early learning and care drive children's routine in a country like Kenya. As an educator-researcher, I find many questions to ponder on such as the following:
- With the advance in technology, how could we support children's education in such countries?
- As educators, how could we support these children after immigration and coming from developing countries to a developed country, e.g., Canada?

References
Duhn, I., Malone, K., & Tesar, M. (2017). Troubling the intersections of urban/nature/childhood in environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 23(10), 1357-1368. doi:10.1080/13504622.2017.1390884

Punch, S. (2003). Childhoods in the majority world: Miniature adults or tribal children? Sociology (Oxford), 37(2), 277-295. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038503037002004

Spaling, H., Montes, J., & Sinclair, J. (2011). Best practices for promoting participation and learning for sustainability: lessons from community-based environmental assessment in Kenya and Tanzania. Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management, 13(3), 343–366. https://doi.org/10.1142/S1464333211003924

Unicef. (1992). The United Nations Convention on the rights of the child. Office of the Commissioner for Children. Retrieved from: https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx

​World Bank. (1996). Assessing Poverty in Kenya. Africa Region Findings & Good Practice Infobriefs. Washington, DC. Retrieved from: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/9980
 

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