The morning the school burned, I heard my daughter coughing behind a crowd of parents. I also saw grey smoke rolling over the roof of a private primary school in South B, Nairobi. Then, a man in overalls grabbed my wrist and whispered, “Mama Achieng’, nilijua hii ingetokea.” I knew this would happen.
For a moment, everything around me felt unreal. Car horns blared outside the gate. Children cried in bursts. Teachers shouted names over one another. The guard kept waving parents back, as if distance could calm a mother who had just learned her child’s classroom block was on fire. I had dropped Achieng off less than forty minutes earlier. Now, I saw students standing on the far side of the compound in mismatched socks, some wrapped in sweaters that weren’t theirs, others barefoot on the dusty assembly ground. Smoke pushed from the upper windows of the lower primary block in thick breaths. Then the smell hit: burnt plastic, hot wires, paint turning bitter in the heat.
And then, I saw my daughter.
She was alive. She was outside. But her face looked empty. She clung to her teacher’s skirt and stared at the building as if it had personally betrayed her.
When I reached her, she gripped me so tightly that her nails dug into my arm. “Mummy, tulikuwa tunahisi kitu kinaungua,” she said. We could smell something burning. Before I could answer, the maintenance worker leaned close again. His face had lost all color. “I warned him,” he said. “I warned Mr. Kilonzo, and he paid me to keep quiet.”
In that instant, I realized the fire was no longer an accident. It was someone’s choice.
My name is Akinyi, and until that morning, I had tried very hard to be the kind of parent who trusted the system. I am not naturally confrontational. I work long hours in an insurance office along Upper Hill. Like many Nairobi parents, I chose a private school to provide my child with structure, discipline, and a feeling of safety.
My daughter’s school was in a crowded part of South B where flats pressed close together, and every service carried a premium.
The school sold order: clean uniforms, neat report forms, a promise of attention. We never missed a payment; most of us stretched ourselves to cover the fees. We wanted our children in smaller classrooms than the public schools nearby could offer. We wanted a path that looked stable. We wanted our sacrifices to buy peace of mind, not only better grades.
Video : “Devastating”: BC elementary school destroyed in suspicious fire
But beneath that polished image, small warnings kept piling up. Achieng first mentioned the flickering lights casually after supper one evening. She said the bulbs sometimes blinked during lessons, and the class laughed whenever the ceiling fan slowed down. Later, another parent posted a video in our messaging group showing sparks snapping from a socket near a corridor wall. Someone else described a sharp burning smell after a blackout.
Then came complaints about the backup generator. It had become so loud and erratic that children covered their ears when it started. Even the teachers looked tired of pretending it was normal.
At two parent meetings, we raised the issue directly. Mr. Kilonzo smiled, folded his hands, and said, “Kila kitu kiko chini ya udhibiti.” Everything is under control. He blamed the unstable electricity supply and talked about scheduled maintenance as if a timetable could make danger wait.
I wanted to believe him. That is what troubles me now. I knew enough to worry, but not enough to pull my daughter out. Like many of us, I mistook repeated reassurance for action. We kept paying fees. We kept packing lunch boxes. We kept sending our children into a building that had already started warning us.
The fire broke out on a Tuesday in late July, on a cold morning in Nairobi. I had just reached the office and switched on my computer when my phone rang. It was Faith, a mother with a third-grade child. “Akinyi, rudi shule sasa,” she shouted. Come back to the school now. “Kuna moto.”
