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Patrick's
Story... |
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This is Patrick's Story... |
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Patrick
is 11 years old; the second oldest in a family
of four very |
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close
brothers. Home for Patrick and his siblings is a
simple hut with a |
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tin
roof and mud walls and floors. Patrick shares a
small bed with the |
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other
two eldest. For someone so young, Patrick’s life
is full of |
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responsibility.
Even before he joins his friends to walk through
the |
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village
to school, Patrick will have taken his family’s
goats out to fresh |
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fresh
grassland, helped his mother prepare breakfast
and helped |
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organize
his younger brother who attends nursery school. |
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For
Patrick and his school friends, the school day
offers the |
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opportunity
to escape from the harsh reality of their
everyday lives, |
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the
opportunity to be children again, the
opportunity to have dreams. |
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Some
dream of being soccer stars; of lifting the
World Cup. Others |
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dream
of NBA stardom; of being worshipped by millions
across the |
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globe;
of being the next Shaquille O’Neal. |
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But
Patrick is bright and ambitious. His dream is to
be a doctor. It’s a |
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more
realistic dream than that of his classmates.
It’s a dream, in fact, |
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that
he should be able to make a reality. But he
won’t. He can’t. For |
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the
simple reason that he goes to a primary school
in rural Kenya. |
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Everyday
at school, Patrick shares a hot, dusty |
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and
dirty classroom with 40 classmates; a rotting |
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broken desk with
three of them; a tattered and |
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torn textbook with two. All he has to
call his own |
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is his pencil. Yet even that is broken. |
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Patrick loves to read. But he's read
all the books |
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at
school. There are only a handful of them. They |
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too are tattered and
torn. |
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His
younger brother has it worse. He is four. He has
just started at |
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nursery
school. He learns to count from some numbers
scribbled on |
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a
scrap of cardboard. To write, with his finger in
the hot dust outside. |
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Patrick
and his brother have one comfort: that they are
not alone.
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There
are many more children like them. For this is
not the story of |
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one
school and two children in Kenya: it is the
story of many. |
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See Patrick's story come to life in photos at
our
flickr
page... |
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