On May 14, 2025, a very touching story happened at Adiedo Mixed Secondary School in Homa Bay County. A grandmother came to the school with her two grandchildren and a basket with six chickens. She wanted to pay their school fees, but she didn’t have any money. So, she brought the chickens, hoping the school would take them instead.
The grandmother’s two grandchildren go to Adiedo Mixed Secondary School, a public school in Kendu Bay town, Homa Bay County. Their school fees are KSh 25,000, which is about $190 in US dollars. For people in big cities, this might not seem like a lot of money, but in a rural place like Homa Bay, it’s a huge amount. A 2023 report from the World Bank says that 63% of people in Kenya are very poor, meaning they can’t easily pay for things like food, a house, or school. For this grandmother, the six chickens might have been the only thing she had to give.
In the pictures from that day, the grandmother is sitting on a bench in what looks like the school’s waiting area. She’s wearing a dress with a pattern and a white scarf on her head. She looks calm but serious. Her two grandchildren, dressed in their school uniforms, are sitting next to her. The girl has a red tie and a school bag on her lap, and the boy is wearing a dark sweater, also holding a bag. On the floor in front of them are the six chickens, some tied together, staying quiet. There’s even a white egg on the floor, showing the chickens are healthy.
In another picture, a man, who might be a teacher or school worker, is holding one of the chickens and talking to the grandmother. Behind them, there’s a board with the words “EVENTS OF THE WEEK” written on it, and a colorful chart on the wall that looks like it’s about helping students choose jobs in the future. It looks like a normal school day, but the chickens make it clear this is not a usual visit.
The grandmother bringing chickens shows how much she cares about her grandchildren’s education. In many rural parts of Kenya, people don’t have money to pay for things like school fees. Instead, they use things they have, like animals or crops, to trade for what they need. A 2021 study by a group called the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA) found that 45% of families in rural areas use things like chickens to pay for important stuff like school. These chickens were probably very important to the grandmother. She could have used them to feed her family or sold them to buy things, but she gave them up so her grandchildren could keep going to school.
