The best high school institution in Kenya, Alliance High Boy located in Kiambu, has been rocked with a bizarre and archaic bullying system to form one freshers.
It is shocking that a school reserved for the top cream in the country can fall short of such an outdated culture in our secondary or A level institutions.
Details emerging which were disclosed by Teachers Service Commission, showed that an investigation in the school revealed form students were being harassed by their senior students.
Here is a list of testimonies that students disclosed to the media, on how they have been being bullied and indicted by prefects and even other senior student
1.Sleeping on Graveyards
Students who are accused of breaking rules are ordered to sleep on graveyards at night as part of the punishment.
“They step on our backs, tell us to swim on grass and then lie on graves in the school graveyard,” the report quotes one of the Form Ones as saying. “On one night, I remember, I lay on the grave of one of the most famous principals called Carrey Francis Edward
2.Horror Beating
Nation reports that on Tuesday, police in Kiambu questioned Mr David Kariuki, the then-principal, and one of his deputies, a security officer, a nurse and three other school staffers over the torture reports.
The seriously injured Form One student, whose name could not be revealed for legal reasons, is said to have been taken to Kikuyu PCEA Mission Hospital near the school bleeding profusely after a particularly savage beating. He was pulled out of the dormitory by prefects at 11.10pm and frogmarched to a classroom, where he was beaten up.
3. Denied Food
Due to inadequate cutlery in the dining hall and the short time allocated for meals, Form One students are used to missing meals as the older boys take all the available cutlery to help themselves to all the food,” says the report, saying the period allowed for meals is only five minutes.
4. Forced To Work At Odd Ours As Seniors Slept
During the “induction”, Form One students are forced to wake up at night and clean bathrooms and classrooms as the rest of the students slept. The slow ones are beaten up by the prefects.
5.Mob Justice from Seniors
Another student said he and his classmates were chased around the school at night by prefects armed with whips and belts
Another student spoke of the “induction” tradition, which he said “left me with wounds all over my body while some of my classmates suffered broken hands and legs”. He said senior prefects, together with the rest of the school, kicked out the Form Ones from the dining hall during meals.
6.Worship prefects as demigods
Report quotes that, Some of the house captains told us they were our gods and that we should worship them.
7.Swim in the playground
They told us to do impossible things — like swimming on grass or hugging light bulbs, report says.
8.Draw a car and then drive it
Another one said he was woken up at 4am and ordered to sit on a toilet basin and also draw a car and get inside the drawing.
He added that when they reported to the teacher, all the prefects got was “a mere verbal warning”.
9.Spending the nights in Toilets
“I have even spent countless nights cleaning toilets while suffering beatings from prefects using belts and hockey sticks. Truly, if people could know what goes on at night in this school, they would be shocked.”
10.Sing National Anthem as a Reggae tune
Sometimes they were forced to sing the national and school anthems in a reggae tune, he recalled.
Alliance High School was attended by bigwigs such as Senators Amos Wako, Anyang’ Nyong’o, Kiraitu Murungi, James Orengo and Senate Speaker Ekwee Ethuro, as well as veteran newspaper editor Philip Ochieng. Others are former Chief Justice Evan Gicheru and former Attorney-General Charles Njonjo.
