“In our day, the child was a communal concern. Their discipline was a communal concern. In this day and age of children being referred to as baby and daddy even when they’ve began to grow beards, you wouldn’t dare to spank another’s child.
“We don’t spend time with our kids. Today’s idea of quality time is the children go on rides and the parents imbibe. As the Bible says, father’s in particular, take the time to train your children in the way of the Lord.”
And it’s the parents of the three Stephjoy boys believed to have started the fire that claimed his son Zachary Njoroge and Ian’s lives that Joseph Gitau held accountable. “I hope that this serves as a lesson,” he said at Ian’s burial, having buried his own son on Friday.
The school, he told Capital FM News, had also dropped the ball by not ensuring his son’s safety while he was in their custody.
“We’d transferred him from a day school to Stephjoy because he said he wanted to be an engineer like his older brother and needed the environment to read. He died at the Kenyatta National Hospital after telling me the dorm door had been locked from the outside and that’s why he couldn’t get out before fire got bad and burnt him horribly.
“The school should have had someone ensuring everybody was in their beds where they were supposed to be. They shouldn’t have been able to lock the doors from outside.”
Another Stephjoy parent, Jeremiah Kimani, accompanied him to Ian’s burial. His son had been in the same class as Zachary and fortunately survived the fire.
And just like Gitau, he too felt that the school and the parents of the three suspects, had some responsibility to bear.
“The suspects were transfers. The school should have investigated what the circumstances of their transfers were before letting them anywhere near our children.”
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