Sakeji sits at 1,400 meters elevation on the Sakeji River, a tributary of the Zambezi, in the Ikelenge District north of Mwinilunga. The altitude keeps the days warm and the nights cool - particularly in June and July, when early mornings can feel sharp. About 1,400 millimeters of rain fall between October and April. The river provides hydroelectric power through a small turbine; a diesel generator steps in when needed; VSAT satellite dishes handle internet and email; the two Zambian cellphone carriers, Airtel and MTN, reach the valley. Meat and milk come from Hillwood Farm, donated for the school's use by ffolliot Fisher, son of the mission's founders. Fresh fruit and vegetables arrive from local growers. The rest - flour, salt, books, uniforms - travels up from the Copperbelt mining region, a long journey over hard roads.

Sakeji was built first for the children of missionaries. Without it, those families faced an impossible choice: send their young children on a journey of weeks to reach schools in Britain or South Africa, or abandon the mission field. The school therefore served a practical function in keeping Protestant missionaries - Plymouth Brethren, primarily, but from all denominations - in Zambia, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. From the beginning, though, the Fishers also opened the school to local Lunda children, and the Lunda people took that opportunity seriously. Their best and brightest studied alongside the missionary kids. This was not a universally welcoming environment - the curriculum centered on Christian scripture, the teachers were all Plymouth Brethren, and the expatriate culture was British - but within those boundaries, the school's educational approach was unusually open. Teachers discouraged blind belief. Questioning was allowed. For Lunda students who went on to leadership positions in independent Zambia, that early encounter with rigorous education mattered.

The Northern Rhodesian government of the 1920s had strong opinions about missionary education - most of them skeptical. The head of the colonial Department of Education was scathing about what he called 'an itinerant evangelist giving a little instruction by the way in reading and writing.' When government inspectors arrived at Kalene School and found it failing to meet the minimum standards required for grants, they said so plainly. The missionaries, unused to that kind of direct criticism, pushed back hard. The dispute went on for some time before the school agreed to meet the standards. It was an early instance of a pattern that would repeat across colonial and post-colonial Africa: religious schools and governments negotiating, sometimes bitterly, over curriculum, accreditation, and who got to shape the next generation.

Sakeji peaked around 1960 with 110 boarders. By 2012 the count was 74 pupils, aged 6 to 14, served by fourteen missionary teachers and caregivers. Both students and staff come from many countries. The buildings are burnt brick with wood-truss roofs and corrugated aluminum sheeting - solid construction meant to last in a climate that can be hard on less substantial materials. The nearby Catholic school at St. Kizito closed in the 1970s, and the other former missionary schools in Mwinilunga are now government-run. Sakeji alone continues under Plymouth Brethren support. Some of Zambia's more prosperous families send their children here, drawn by the quality of boarding education in a country where that is often hard to find. For the missionary kids who grow up at Sakeji - far from any city their parents came from, learning Lunda phrases alongside English, swimming in the Sakeji River with Zambian classmates - the school is a kind of shared country of its own, one that alumni from many decades remember vividly and often return to visit.