Slum people demand educational facilities

Before Independence, many rural areas did not have schools so many ordinary slum dwellers had not gone to school when they were young. As a result, they very much wanted their children to be educated because they knew that that would mean their children could potentially earn a better living than they themselves had been able to. When they found that they could no longer get their children into school, they were very upset, and with the impossibility of school attendance came a terrible desperation and despair. Drunkenness and apathy increased, and as people lost hope for a better future for their children, they worked less and drank more. Then some parents from the Mukuru slums organised themselves into a group of about fifty and began visiting government offices, churches, NGOs and religious congregations, pleading for help with the problem of basic education and basic health care. We, the Sisters of Mercy, were among those approached. The matter was discussed in 1983, with most of the sisters of the opinion that the problem was for the government to work through rather than any one else. Yet, the problem was there, and the children who were out of school were getting worse daily: the longer they stayed out, the more they deteriorated.