Kenya's marathon star seeks to help children get quality education

Kenya's leading women athlete and one time the fastest female runner in history has embarked on an ambitious campaign to give quality education to children from the pastoral communities in the greater Horn of Africa.

Tegla Loroupe, the former marathon world record holder and winner of several elite city marathon races, disclosed here Friday that she was constructing a Peace Academy which will draw children from warring pastoral communities in Kenya, Uganda, Southern Sudan and Ethiopia.

Through the "Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation", the elite runner is putting up the 300 million shillings (about 400,000 US dollars) institution in her hometown of Pokot in the Rift Valley Province, northwest Kenya.

The academy, which will have both primary and secondary schools with boarding facilities, a dispensary, a sports training center and conference facilities, will act as a peace-building institution bringing together children from the ever warring communities that have in the recent past traded the pen for the gun.

Amongst these pastoral peoples, men show off their AK 47 rifles, which they audaciously sling over their shoulders. At nightfall, cattle raids are all too common. Children grow up long before their time and cows are rarely killed for their meat but are more valuable as a show of wealth and for payment of dowry.

"Schooling in Pokot was often interrupted by conflict. I had to run over 20 kilometers to school. Boys of school-going ages had to stay away from class to take care of their fathers' cattle, though a few came to class, but only to learn how to count so that they could become better herdsmen," Loroupe told journalists during a fund-raiser for her foundation in Nairobi.

Tegla's Pokot community has suffered the cattle rustling menace which has retarded growth in education and under-development as the boys dropped out of school to participate in the practice while the girls are married off at the tender age of even 13 years.

"I broke Ingrid Kristiansen's 13-year-old world marathon record, making me the fastest female athlete. That wasn't my most important race. By a mile, the most important race is the one I have embarked on," she said.

"I race to stop the vicious tribal warfare in the valley and the surrounding mountains," Loroupe added.

Known as "the little girl with a big heart", the diminutive athlete has captured her country's imagination with her peace building efforts.

She organizes peace races every year in conflict areas in Kenya and the neighboring countries of Uganda and Sudan, which also experience cross-border raids between the neighboring communities.

"I have run for my country at the Olympics, run road races and marathons in major cities across the globe. I now want to run my most cherished race on earth and win peace for the children in Kenya; win peace for children in Uganda and the children of Sudan and Ethiopia," said Loroupe.

Source: Xinhua