While thousands of her peers in the 2022 Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam have joined secondary schools, Dorine Idza remains desolate.
Dorine, 15, scored 310 marks in 2022 KCPE exam and she was among the best pupils at a slum school in Kisauni sub-county, Mombasa County, where she was under sponsorship.
Her incredible performance earned her a Form One slot at Kibirigwi Girls Secondary School in Kirinyaga County, a dream that now appears elusive due to the abject poverty her family is grappling with.
Since the release of the 2022 KCPE exam results, Dorine, a second born in a family of three, has been left to seek other alternatives to ensure her dream to become a doctor does not fade away.
Together with her father, she has been combing the neighbourhood looking for menial jobs to raise her school fees.
The media caught up with her as she was at the entrance of a salon selling sunflowers, groundnuts, baobab sweets, homemade soap and omena, yet she is supposed to be in school.
“I am here because I want to raise money to go to school. I get paid Ksh50 a day.
“When I saw my father stranded after trying to get bursary in vain, I decided to help him raise my fees. Luckily my aunt told me to come help her sell these and she would pay me,” Dorine said.
She added: “I would like to help my father who has raised us alone after our mother died in 2017.”
Her father, Huxley Mwadzoya, 45, has been struggling to feed and educate his remaining three daughters ever since his wife died in 2017 and his first-born shortly after.
“I have struggled with these children to get them to school,” Mwadzoya, who hawks tea leaves and does other odd jobs for a living, says.
He has walked into many offices including the Frere Town MCA’s office, Nyali NG-CDF office, Mombasa Deputy Governor Francis Thoya’s office, even the Catholic Church, but all in vain.
Tragedy and misfortune have followed Mwadzoya. In 2015, he was knocked down by a car and was hospitalized for almost two months.
But after making full recovery, he lost his job at a furniture shop, where he had worked for 15 years.
Two years later, his wife suddenly got sick and died after three days.
In 2019, the house he lived in was razed to the ground, and with it, everything he has ever worked for in his life, including all his official documents.
He had to start from zero. Mwadzoya says his daughter Dorine also suffers from sickle cell anemia, and has to take medication every day.
“I spend about Ksh6,000 a month on her medication. I have to travel to Kemri in Kilifi every month to take her medication. Sometimes I fail to raise that fare,” says Mwadzoya.
Sophia Msikoya, a neighbour, says she has watched Mwadzoya struggle to feed and educate his children and decided to ask Dorine to help her at the shop.
“She is a hard-working girl like her father. When I heard she got 310 marks and she was still at home because of lack of school fees, I talked to her father so he could allow her to help me here and get paid instead of staying idle at home,” she says.
To assist Dorine join high school contact her father on phone number 0723953875.
