Kitui high school bus: a reflection on the increase in the number of Kitui high schools buses

I happened to visit Kitui town on a day when there were school sports competitions going on. I was amazed at the huge number of Kitui high school buses moving up and down the town. Hardly 5 minutes could go without one or another school’s bus passing by. There were literally hundreds of them, and in this post-matiang’i era, the Kitui high school buses are very conspicuous due to their yellow color (it is matiang’i who ordered for school buses to be painted yellow, and that has indeed made them stand out).

Yet if my memory serves me right, in the earlier years, only the Kitui School used to have a bus – a battered old machine (I think it was a Leyland or something). The very idea of a school having its own bus used to be incredulous to most of us. Now we find that even the lowliest of high schools in Kitui has a bus to boast of. What does this tell us?

Well, I think the proliferation of Kitui high school buses is testament to the fact that the economy is growing. What I know for sure is that the parents of the 80s and early 90s wouldn’t have afforded to finance the purchase of school buses, even if they wanted. But today’s parents, with just a little prodding, are able to fork out the funds required for the purchase of brand new Isuzu buses.

I also think that the management of Kitui high schools has improved considerably over the years. From an era where most of the Kitui harambee high school headmasters used to be ‘form six’ graduates in the 70s and 80s, we are now in an era where the same schools’ principals tend to be masters degrees holders with vastly different visions.

Could we then eventually get to an era where elite high schools in Kitui would be buying airplanes to offer aviation lessons to their students? I mean, a bus has become too commonplace. Well, only time will tell…