Hi Team!

I’m so sorry this newsletter is a few weeks late but with power problems, the instillation of the new website (and me trying to navigate around it!), it has been delayed … and delayed some more. Well, it just means the next one will be with you sooner than expected!

Read on and you will see that it’s been a month of exciting website changes, people coming and going, containers arriving, celebrations, future plans forging ahead and the students challenging themselves further with extra-curricula clubs.

Website Wonders!

Roumen Staykov is the remarkable young man in Adelaide, South Australia who has worked around the clock to design an entire new website for the school in a matter of months. It has been an extraordinary feat when you consider that he has a fulltime job and a family as well! He probably has few friends left in Adelaide though – as far as I can tell, he didn’t leave the computer screen for quite a while! I don’t know if it’s any consolation but he now has a huge number of admirers and devotees in Arusha. And I’m sure you will all become great fans when you click on and start using the new improved version.

As well as looking fresh and bright (unlike poor Roumen!), the site contains all the previous info and Roumen has added many additional functions.  The good news is that you will be able to make payments in multiple currencies. At the moment, it accepts US$ and AU$ and soon we will be adding other currencies such as the Euro. You will find it extremely ‘user friendly’ (note my hi-tec jargon!) and for us it will make processing your payments efficient and easy – from the administration perspective, we think it’s a work of art!  

At some point several months ago I gave up trying to understand Roumen’s emails about the complicated workings of websites and what he was doing – but with incredible team work, Bob Treitman and Mary Tynan here in the office in Arusha and Richard and Alex Pagliaro in Adelaide worked tirelessly via email and phone calls across ocean and continent to assist Roumen in every way. Amazing work everyone! We’re all going to feel the benefit of all those months of blood, sweat and tears.

I’ll pass on some of the bits I’ve learnt so far – ‘logging in’ just means that you can register and donate on line. But if you just want to browse through our newsletters, photos and historical and current info to find out more about the school, don’t bother logging in. Easy, eh?!  And if you feel that there is anything missing from our website or not functioning properly, we would love to know as this will be a work in progress for the first couple of months.

Join the Club!

Following their short midterm break, the children returned to school full of beans and ready for the second half of Term Two. We decided to harness all that energy by offering all the children from Standard Two up a chance to join a club. All the staff enthusiastically got behind the idea and seventeen clubs were planned – everything from academic clubs such as English, Science and Maths to sports clubs for Soccer, Cross Country Running, Netball and Table Tennis and activities like Scouts, Girl Guides, Drama, Choir, Drums or Art. The biggest problem for the children - which one to chose?!

Who knows – we may be nurturing the next Tanzanian Olympic gold medal winner, discovering an opera singer or about to unleash the next Will Smith, Bob Marley or Tinga Tinga! And if we don’t, we’ll be having a lot of fun trying!

Count down to Standard Four exams!

But it’s not all fun and games of course. Serious hard work is going on in the classrooms as we prepare for the National Government Standard Four exam at the end of the year. With over 120 children sitting for it this year, the teachers have a huge task ahead of them to ensure all the students do the best they can so they are prepared for the hard slog to the next government exam in Standard Seven.

Below, Head of Science Department, Miss Belinda, supervises an experiment for Standard Four – I’m relieved to say nothing exploded after I took the photo!

Sister Act!

Remember I told you that I have received word that the gorgeous Sisters of the Oblates of the Assumption have agreed to manage our boarding house for the children coming to the school? Well, currently they are working on the design and researching good examples in the area that we can go and check out.

So, our last meeting (pictured below) was very positive and it was quite exciting to hear their ideas and plans. The more I spend time with them, the more I am convinced that they are just the right people to be assisting us – their care and concern and eagerness to participate show just as much as their intelligence and wisdom in this area. It’s a great relief to have these wonderful women sharing our plans. Many thanks to the Sisters for taking on this massive project with us!

Checkmate!

A few years ago young Daniel Elibariki (pictured below) would never have dreamt that one day he would be able to speak English, use computers or be in the School of St Jude’s Chess Club!

Today, Daniel is often seen at lunchtime having a game of chess with other Chess Club members or with our wonderful Head of I.T. Department, Mr Bob. It is examples such as this that inspires all of us to work so hard to give these children a chance to make huge changes in the direction of their futures.

Celebration Time!

Two weeks ago we had a meeting with all the parents of the Standard 4 students sitting their National Government exams in November. We thought it was time to encourage the parents to help us in the process of preparing their children for the exam. We asked parents of students who are doing well to explain to the others what they did at home to help their children to achieve good results. One of the most common replies was allowing their children to do their homework before going to fetch water or tend to the goats – something the others were prepared to consider.

We also applauded Standard 4 students who are actively trying to help their peers by tutoring them during break times and encouraging them in class to do their work. It was a very positive meeting and really helped to motivate the students and their parents as we move closer towards November.

The Standard 4 students have been getting on average around 73% in their monthly exams but we all know that can be much higher. Now of course 73% class average is great but these children really do have a lot of ability and so I asked the students in the meeting with the parents what they could get in their next monthly exam. They exclaimed to the parents, their teachers and to the admin staff that they could in fact get an average of 85% in next month’s exam by working together more as a team.

So, was this all bravado? Were they just getting carried away with the moment? Could they really pull it off?! Mr Nestory handed me the end of month results last week – 86% average!!! That called for a celebration! A surprise lunch (see below) was arranged and the cooks provided a feast of tasty chicken and rice accompanied by yummy salads and fruit. And the real treat – a bottle of soft drink each!  Well done and keep it up, Standard 4!

Safari Njema! 

Leslie Smallwood threw herself into so many aspects of the school that when she left four people took over parts of her job! Leslie came over from California to help us for a year and enthusiastically embraced the roles of homeroom teacher for Standard 5 (encouraging book reviews and enjoying great love and respect from the children), being a part of the extremely efficient and hard working team who run the sponsorship department, coordinating all the website donations and heading the sports department.

She’s off to Chicago to study, continue her work for the underprivileged and be with Ed, the delightful young man who must be pretty special if he has convinced her to give up the Californian sunshine for Chicago. We will all miss her – except Kim who is still convinced she is just on holiday in Zanzibar …

As you can see below, she also made a great armchair for our smallest student in the school, Peter, during assembly … probably toooo comfortable as he fell asleep!

Jack Sprat!

Every week one of our Aussie volunteers, Jacky, (below) does the shopping for the school. Sixty kilos of meat to feed the students and staff are collected from the butcher in the market. And no such thing as neat plastic-wrapped identifiable cuts of meat - I forgot to ask if she was a vegetarian …

Running for St Jude’s

An enthusiastic young man with a great vision and determination contacted me last year to tell me that he had an idea that could raise money for our school … and create a lot of enjoyment into the bargain. They’re the sort of ideas we like! Ian Richards had heard about St Jude’s from his partner, Shannon Cassilles, as she went to the same school as Gemma, and the school’s motto, “Fighting Poverty Through Education”, resonated with his own beliefs. This was something he felt passionate about.

Well, over many months Ian’s plan has been thought out, working on, contemplated, negotiated and although the original idea of holding a marathon from Sydney to Brisbane and back has had to be modified, Ian has not been put off by obstacles and is currently negotiating with the Sydney Olympic Park Athletic Centre and the Guinness Book of records to create a world record attempt on the greatest distance run by a team of 12 runners in a week. No record currently exists, so it will be theirs! The runners will start and finish at Telstra Stadium and between times, spend the week doing laps of the athletic centre 24 hrs a day. Phew! I’m exhausted just writing about it!

In the meantime Ian and Shannon have been film directors/photographers/interviewers and shooting everything that moves and a lot that doesn’t to put together a video that we at the school can use for promotional purposes and they will be able to use for their marathon next year. I’ll keep you up to date with the progress of the event and let you know all the details when they are confirmed. Good on you two!

And below is a moment that a camera lens was turned on Ian and Shannon!

Welcome back!

Ms Coletha’s Prep class was well looked after by other members of our staff while she was away on three months maternity leave but it was still wonderful to have her back and the children gave her a great welcome.

Picture this!

Art class has usually been a paint and paper affair with instructions like “just paint a picture”. But this year we have been so lucky to have the wonderful Ms Suzanne who, with 15 years of teaching experience, has turned art into ART! Now it’s challenging as well as fun and the budding Rembrandts are honing talent that could well have lain dormant for decades.

Below, Kinder class models its works of art. Who needs to trek out to the Serengeti when we’ve got the cutest lions right here in our own playground!

The High Water Mark!

I dream of the day when we do not use a bag of cement, when there are no pieces of paper with orders for lengths of wood, tonnes of steel or gallons of paint stuck on the spike on my desk. Well, I guess I’ll be dreaming for a long time!

However, it’s a relief to see that one project is almost finished – our five-storey water tower/food store is almost finished after six months. As we are very land locked here, the five by five metre space squeezed between the toilet block, assembly hall and classroom block was a space that had to be utilised … somehow.

How about a food store.. in fact, how about a double storey one … actually, we could have a really high one and put the water tanks on top! So that is what we have done – cooking stoves on the ground floor (handy to the dinning hall for the cooks), food storage on the next three floors (good for keeping the cooks fit!) and our water tanks perched on top (a shower with decent pressure at last!).

Power Hungry!

As I write this newsletter we have no electricity in the school. Actually the electricity now regularly goes off at 7am and does not come back until around 7 pm and on weekends we are lucky to see any at all! Trying to run a school with no electricity is more than a small challenge – computers don’t work so three computer classes cannot function, photocopying is impossible, books cannot be logged out in the library, the administration team take the opportunity to tidy their desks (so it’s not all bad!), there is no hot water (and eventually no cold either as the water pumps don’t work!) and so the needle of the stress metre shoots into the red ‘Danger’ zone!

Thanks to donations, however, we have been able to get some small generators to keep the vital parts of the school operating during blackouts and further donations helped with their fuel costs. Amani, our poor electrician is only 27 but starting to look lined and grey and is nearing burnout trying to keep all the small generators in working order. Having a big, automatic and near silent generator would allow ALL parts of the school to have electricity instead of having to ration it out a few rooms at a time. We looked into buying two big generators to keep the school running but getting them here in East Africa was prohibitively expensive and the quality of those available was suspect.

Then, dashing towards us on a white charger came Rotary … yet again! Our knights in battle-scarred armour were our great friends and supporters and long-term members of the St Jude’s team, Lloyd Fleming, Ashley Tucker who together with the Rocklea Rotary Club and the Palms Beach Rotary Club, arrange payment for and shipping of two big beautiful 60KVA generators!

After hitting the high seas, the saga of the containers went on for quite a while as bureaucratic wrangling and bits of official paper flew between Brisbane, Arusha and Dar es Salaam. Luckily my poor long suffering husband and a harassed agent in Dar took on the customs department and port authority and goodness knows how many other government departments who all get a say in how, when and why we are able to finally take possession of our cargo, and without too much blood spilt the containers lumbered across the Rift Valley, meandered through the corn fields and passed through the school gates one afternoon. I thought it was quite fitting that the semi-trailer bringing them from Dar was called “White Horse”!

Of course, it wasn’t just generators in the containers. There were hundreds of desks and chairs for the next enrolment of sponsored children next year, boxes of stationery and office supplies, teaching aids, cartons of library books, and a timely supply of building materials!

As it was ‘knock off’ time for the workers around the school there were a lot of willing hands to unload and cart the contents to various storage spaces around the school. It was better than Christmas for Peter (below), our head builder, when he discovered a motor driven cement mixer, wheelbarrows, ladders and armfuls of gardening and building tools!

With so much help, everything except the generators was unloaded in an hour … then the hard work began – especially as the sun was setting and there was no light on the work area! But it’s amazing what you can do with 30 sets of biceps, forty foot of rope, some old tractor tyres, a few steel pipes and a lot of grunt! I was happy to get out of the way and let the boys figure it out … which they did with the amazing team effort St Jude’s is famous for.

It was at this point (below) that I was able to breath normally again – no one injured, a generator in one piece and setting off into the sunset to its resting place in the generator shed at the back of the hall.

Once upon a time ….

This is a sad story with a happy ending for many of the donated items. A group of thoughtful, caring and generous folk from Sydney, on hearing of the dreadful circumstances of the sufferers of the tsunami in Sri Lanka, collected a container load of goods to be shipped there to relieve their plight. When it became apparent that all previously donated goods had become impounded at docksides or had fallen into the hands of unscrupulous ‘entrepreneurs’ in that area, Christopher Telford, the chief organiser of these compassionate folk sort an alternative worthy recipient.

When he discovered there was a container leaving Brisbane for St Jude’s he quickly whipped into action, contacted Ashley and with what seemed like minutes to spare before the ship left, had redirected all the useful items to the village of Moshono! Now, I know I’ve made that sound very simple but actually it took the equivalent of planning a military campaign to make it all happen. But with true Aussie grit and determination Christopher and Ashley (even though they’re originally Kiwis!) made it happen.

So, during the days following the arrival of the containers, hundreds of boxes were eventually opened and the mountain of kitchen utensils was sorted to make distribution easier. Below I am surrounded by just a fraction of them!

These items may have caused stress lines on several foreheads, pounding headaches and aching backs at both ends of their journey but if you could have seen the huge smiles, endless hand shakes and heard the continual “Asante Sana”s (“Thank you very much” in Swahili) as the old men and women of the village filed in to select items they never dreamt of owning, you’d agree it was all worthwhile. Some of the obscure paraphernalia such as lemon squeezers may take a little time to work out but nothing will go to waste!

Thanks to Christopher and his friends, there are mud huts in Moshono that now boast saucepans, kettles, frying pans and plates instead of hubcaps, tin lids or old oilcans scrounged from the rubbish tip.

For the Melbourne Mob!

One of our supporters, Mark Cubit, contacted me to say that he is organising a gathering for the friends of St Jude’s to be held in the parish centre of St Dominic’s Church, 816 Riversdale Road, Camberwell East at 8pm on Monday 21st August. (Melways reference is 60 E2.The church is very prominent on top of the hill. Entry and parking are best accessed from Dominic Street.)

As I will be over for a flying visit it would be great to catch up briefly with old friends and meet some new ones. Over the years I have enjoyed several trips to Melbourne and have met the most wonderful people. I think you should all get together and meet one another – I reckon you will quickly make new friends and who knows, this could become a regular social event on the Melbourne calendar!

Give Mark Cubit a call on 9889 5224 or email him on cubit@bigpond.net.au and let him know you will be there.

For the Sydneyites!

People to People International (www.ptpi.org) is a not-for-profit organization with World Headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri USA. The mission of the organization, founded by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, is to promote international understanding, education and humanitarianism and is celebrating 50 Years of Peace through Understanding. It’s exciting that they have chosen Sydney for their 17th Worldwide Conference in August with more than 230 delegates from around the world.

One of the elements of the conference is a morning of humanitarian activities around the Sydney area. This is a great opportunity if you belong to an organization or know of one that could use some help!  The project must take place on Friday, August 25 between the hours of 9.00 – 12.00 and accommodate at least 15 people.  Please contact the conference director directly at karenh@ptpi.org if you want assistance with a project!

The Galahganbone Girls

Galahganbone is a tiny picturesque town in the far north west of New South Wales, Australia with a population of about 541. OK, so I don’t really know the figure but it’s small and it was even smaller this month when Kerry Kelly, the mother of our librarian Taryn, and her friend Maureen visited.

Now ‘visiting’ may give the impression that they sat around sipping tea, shopping and sightseeing. Not a bit of it! Well, they did go on safari and had a whale of a time on Zanzibar (stories of watching sunsets on the beach that turned into sunrises could be a slight exaggeration, but not much!) but the rest of the time they buried themselves in the dusty back shelves of the library liberating teaching resources and transforming an adequate section into an exciting place for staff to find great teaching aids – an invaluable contribution for which we are truly grateful.

And at the end of the day when any normal person would deserve and be ready for a hot shower, a Bex and a good lie down, they were found bustling around in the volunteers’ kitchen cooking up gastronomic delights for the volunteers. If ‘Weight Watchers’ had a branch in Arusha it would have a few new members…

We are looking forward to your return visit, Maureen (below left) and Kerry, and so is your sponsored child, Elisha!

The Honeymooners!

We were so thrilled that Peter and Catherine Campbell from Sydney were able to slot in a visit to St Jude’s during their adventure honeymoon! They have been great supporters of this school and it was wonderful finally to be able to meet them and show them around the project that they have so generously helped us to build. Even though they could only stay for a couple of days this time (not everyone wants an extra 800 or so people sharing their honeymoon for too long!), we look forward to having them for much longer sometime in the near future. But next time it won’t be quite so romantic, with hurricane lamps and candles during the blackouts, as our generators will be up and running!

The 2006 Tour Group

It is July again and our group of Aussie visitors lead by tour leader, St Jude’s first Headmistress, Angela Bailey, have just arrived. Welcome to Emily, Daniel, Josephine, Bruno, Kellieanne, Joyce, Lorraine, Emma, Lyn, Priscilla, Albert, Daniel and Kim.

The first to arrive were a gorgeous couple from Melbourne, Emily and Daniel (pictured below), who were delighted and proud to be the first occupants in our new visitors’ rooms. I have been able to decorate and furnish these double and single rooms to a high standard mainly because the labour charges here are so minimal (and we pay above the normal wages!) and also I managed to do a great deal with a local hardware store on furnishings, fittings and tiles. These rooms are certainly a step up from the tents we used to pitch for visitors in the early days!

One of the many activities visitors enjoy at the school is joining in classes and obviously the topic in Mr Peter’s class (below) wasn’t a serious one!

Even though they have only been here for a couple of days, as I write this newsletter they have already stepped out of their comfort zones in more ways than one to absorb as much of the true Africa as they can. Not only have they kissed giraffes (watch those generous lips, Josephine!), they have taken trips on the school buses, stayed with some of our students families and run the gauntlet of the ferocious market sellers in the big central market in town!

I will include lots more photos of the rest of their adventures in the July newsletter as they explore and experience more of the local life while they are here over the coming three weeks.

Nothing ever beats the moment when a sponsor meets his or her sponsored child. Evan (below), a Rotarian from Melbourne Australia, was moved to tears when he finally met Adelfina Frank. After all the letters and photographs sent across the ocean, it was a special moment for two closely linked people to finally meet face to face and we all enjoy sharing that moment. As I write this letter Adelfina is patiently waiting outside my office to take Evan to lunch at her family’s home.

Emma (below), who is in property development in Australia, has picked up a few local carpentry tips from our builders!

A couple of nights ago the tour group dispersed to all ends of Arusha to experience ‘life outside of school’ with some of our students. They travelled home on the school bus with their chosen host, met with the family and neighbours, shared the evening meal and spent the night in their home. By doing that, our guests actually see the reality of our students’ backgrounds and the hardships they endure.

Below, Evan is getting some cooking tips from Mama Alex, Alex Elifas’ mother.

Over the coming month we have a lot of projects starting – the secondary school foundations will be laid and our first boarding school, which will benefit hundreds of students, will be on the drawing board. This means that we can start applying for electricity to these new sites, make access roads and put up fences – it’s always exciting when we can start to see progress happening!

We are also looking forward to having several volunteer working teams from Australia up to their knees in bricks and cement – that will help kick start the projects!

I really hope that one day you will get the chance to come and visit the school as it’s really only thanks to YOU that we are able to achieve so much.

Big hugs! Gemma