It is no wonder that every year, Coast Province in general and Mombasa in particular performs abysmally low academically compared to the rest of the country.
One wonders why, naturally. There are many reasons, of course, but one of them is that the level of NOISE in this county is awful!
Imagine that you are a visitor here and entering Mombasa for the first time. One of the main things that will hit you will be the level of noise and next is the overflowing garbage all over town (city....?!), and the resulting smell and unhealthy environment.
Starting from the traffic to the promotions of various things is done with ear-splitting 'music' using huge speakers, certain tuk tuks which are diesel powered, heavy transport, matatus and private vehicles equally playing loud music which one can hear even if those vehicles' windows were closed, etc., give no thought to the fact that they are polluting the environment.
Of course, to add to all this racket are the religious noises emanating from mosques and churches
Then in this day and age when fuel is so expensive, there is no improvement in the way all these vehicles are operated. Meaning that when they are dropping off people or delivering goods somewhere. They leave their vehicles on idle and the noise and fumes that they give out have to be experienced to appreciate what I am talking about.
Since this is an election year, our recycled politicians, instead of obeying the environmental laws, go about everywhere, with huge speakers tied to various vehicles promoting themselves with - again, you've guessed it - AWFUL 'MUSIC'!
Unfortunately, despite having environmental laws regarding noise pollution, none of our environmental officials - country and county wide seem to be doing their jobs of enforcing these laws and so they have become as good as not being there, anymore, utterly USELESS!
And so now to get back to the initial point of all this noisy environment interfering with our children who are trying to study. They don't and cannot and hence, this county is one of those that hardly ever produce outstanding academic scholars, unfortunately.