Rows of spinach sprout in the sports field where the students of Roka Preparatory school once played football, and clucking chickens fluff their feathers in sawdust-covered classrooms where children once sweated over their exams.

No students have thundered down these eerily quiet corridors since March, when Kenya abruptly closed its schools three days after the first case of Covid-19 was detected. The loss of income means some private schools will shut permanently.

“I had to think of how to use the classrooms because they were haunting,” James Kung’u, the school’s director, tells Reuters

“When you wake up in the morning, and you find the empty classes looking at you - as an investment, (it’s) very discouraging,” says Kung’u.

Read the full report by Reuters here.

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