Is it a global phenomenon or is it just in Tanzania that May 2006 seemed to have lasted only a few weeks?! Maybe we just got caught up in the slipstream of all the dynamic people who passed through out gates and whose energy had us drawn into a parallel universe!
Yes, it’s been a whirlwind month of comings and goings, new plans and purchases, continuing developments and gladdening and saddening news.
I’ll start with the good news:
New Boarding School Land
Thanks to great supporters in the USA, we have been able to purchase seven acres of land about ten minutes walk from the school. This will be for our initial boarding facilities.
Ever since we started this school we have had so many requests from parents to become a boarding school but I have always been reluctant for several reasons. Mainly because we, the administrators of the school, need a life! Having boarders would mean being on call 24 hours a day. And I was very reluctant to consider the alternative arrangement - handing over management to someone else. Running any business in Africa is more than a little tricky but having the full responsibility of so many children adds even more problems.
However, over the past few months I have been speaking with some lovely African nuns from the Assumption Order, which has many projects here in East Africa. I asked them if they would consider running the boarding section and their East African Provincial has taken this proposal to the Assumption Headquarters in France. We are all so excited about this project as it will really benefit everyone – the order is looking for good projects in the area for their young graduates and the students of St Jude will really benefit from the care of these wholesome, ethical, loving and strong people. Already in the preliminary discussions I have been very impressed with their comments and questions that indicate they are perfect for the task.
The main reason for having the boarding facilities is to ensure our students from primary Standard Four to secondary Form Six will be assured of good nutrition, homework supervision and strong and mature support in their adolescent years. They will spend weekends with their families and guardians.
From the picture below you can see that the land we bought is producing a bumper crop of maize – next year it will be nurturing and nourishing the students you support!
It may seem as if we decided to build a boarding school, spoke with the Assumption Order, bought the land and drew up the plans this month – far from it! For a start, suitable land is very difficult to find in our village as the area is developing so quickly that we are more of an outer suburb of Arusha now. Land prices are soaring as rich town folk are buying up the corn plots to build large homes and trying to find anything bigger than quarter of an acre is nearly impossible.
Also, buying land in Tanzania is not a simple process as so many people are involved – all the family has to be consulted and that can take months of negotiations … and not with the buyer, just among themselves! We’re quite used to having our heart set on some land only to have the whole deal collapse at the last moment. However, success this time!
We got the land for a great price (around $10,000US per acre) and it’s taken a while to get the signatures (and thumbprints!) on the dotted lines as we had to deal with the many sons of the very happy and now rich Maasai man in the photo below.
I’m very delighted to report that this has been a win-win situation. As excited as we were, he seemed even more so! The family are going to use the money from the sale of the land to buy two tractors and some more land in the rural Maasai district for a quarter of the price he sold for – a great deal for all involved!
PLEASE HELP with development donations!!
Now it’s very exciting to get this land for the boarding school but we need buildings on it and much to the horror of Charlotte, our school bursar, this month we actually plunged to US$600 in the school bank account! I did, of course, eventually calm Charlotte with reassurances that St Jude has never let us down and sure enough he came through again and money arrived just in time to pay the wages. We’re quite used to running close to the wire and I am sure it will always be like that (otherwise it would take the fun out of it!). However, for the sake of our blood pressure and Charlotte’s nerves, it would be nice to have a bit of a buffer zone and take the pressure off our mate, St Jude.
I would like to get the first stage of the boarding house operating in 2006 and so I need your help. The only reason this school has progressed as far as it has is due to the help of thousands of people around the world doing their bit which makes it so unique - each member of the global team feels a real part of it all.
We have big plans over the next couple of years so be prepared for newsletters packed with building reports! As well as the new boarding house, we also want to start a new campus in 2009 which will be another primary and secondary school with boarding facilities and housing for workers. Yes, they are massive plans but we can do it! Look at what we have been able to achieve together since 2002!! Who would ever have imagined that we would have 700 children and 150 staff in four and a half years? It’s amazing what a group of regular people can achieve when we become united by one goal.
So let’s get together and get this boarding school up and running and another school built so we can continue to change the futures of thousands of children and their families.
Making sure everything is used
Everyone at the school is mindful that every dollar has to be stretched – nothing is wasted and cunning creativity is encouraged. So, I was really impressed yesterday when I found Said our head painter (pictured below with his assistants) carefully mixing all our left over paints to blend colours that would match the tiles in the new accommodation block we are building to cater for visiting groups and workers at the school. This effort has saved the school hundreds of dollars that I had budgeted for paint for this job. It’s great that everyone is doing his or her bit to help. Well done boys!
Clubs at the School of St Jude.
But it’s not just the building and development that are going well. This year we have seen a huge interest in the new school clubs which are organised after school hours. Enthusiastic teachers are planning school choirs, Maths, English, Kiswahili, Art, Science and Drama clubs as well as staff and student soccer, volleyball, netball and athletics teams. By Term Three we reckon we’ll be ready to enjoy some great sports days with neighbouring schools in the district. It should be a lot of fun and great exercise!
When the Cooma School of Music in Australia donated 100 recorders to the school, our Australian music teacher, Miss Emily, took on the daunting task of tutoring a keen bunch of amateur musicians. Well, we can all probably remember what the early lessons of recorder sounded like (Ahhhhh!!!) but thanks to Emily’s perseverance and patience and the naturally musical Tanzanian children (pictured below), we can now recognize the National Anthem and our school song in the Friday assemblies. Combined with songs and dances from various classes and contributions from the drama club, our assemblies are becoming very entertaining.
As the lunch time chess club became so popular it was in danger of causing crushed skulls as so many heads poured over the small board to learn the winning moves from Mr Matt. So before he left this month to return to university in Boston, Matt (pictured below with the club members) organized for a giant board to be painted in the Assembly Hall and designed these more manageable chess pieces. It looks like he’s devised a few new strategic moves as well!
Back on the farm ..
Thanks to the Rotary Club of Prahran in Melbourne, Australia, we have been able to purchase a tractor. It has been on our wish list for a long time but there always seemed to be more urgent purchases (bags of cement, loads of bricks) that took priority. But this little beauty was worth waiting for as we got a great deal and after her (has to be a ‘her’ – the women do the hard work here!!) extreme make over paint job along with her trailer and plough she can now proudly join the rest of our school vehicles.
She won’t be pristine for long though as we’ll have her fixing our school road, collecting rocks for all the buildings (cutting transport costs in half) and preparing our school farm for producing the corn and beans for school lunches. It was a wonderful gift and I would like to thank Richard Hardham and family and Adrienne Baser and family for the great fund raising they organised for this project.
Habari Internet Inspection
At the end of 2004 we were given 24 hours a day free wireless internet access by our internet provider, Habari. This company has a wonderful philosophy: “To provide free access to the Internet in order to catalyse an interest in, access to and familiarity with modern information technologies, as represented by the Internet, to the students who will be the future managers and decision makers in Tanzanian businesses and institutions.”
As we are one of the lucky schools to qualify for this great service, last week we had an inspection from three representatives from the company and received a glowing report.
Congratulations must go to Mr Nick, Head of Computer Department and his team of seven hard working teachers and technicians, as Mrs Charlotte and Mr Edwin from Habari (pictured below with Nick in the centre) were very impressed with our three computer laboratories all in full swing with innovative computer classes for all ages. It’s not an easy job to keep our 70 reconditioned donated computers going - considering our power failures, fluctuating electricity and generator power.
Can you spare us a year of your time?
As you know, it is thanks to volunteers bringing first class skills, qualifications and experience that the school has developed so professionally. Sadly, no one can stay forever so we are looking for some replacement staff in the near future.
These are the positions we have coming up soon for people who can commit for at least a year. (For details of conditions for volunteers, please check our website.)
Computer teacher: We are looking for an easy going person to teach computers to our children. Excellent computer skills and a teaching qualification are preferred. This person should also be prepared to do some administration as well to help manage the computer department
PE Teacher: This enthusiastic and energetic teacher will be teaching PE to 7-15 year olds and organize a comprehensive PE curriculum for the school.
Please say a prayer for our student Maureen Abibu
It is so sad to have to write that on the 8th of May one of our students, Maureen Abibu, died. Because of the recent rains the normally low river by her home had turned into a raging torrent and, losing her footing, she was swept away by the force.
Maureen had been at the school for four years so there were many staff and students who knew this delightful little girl and were shocked and saddened by the news. It was also very sad for her sponsors, my brother Benn and his wife Bianca.
Her funeral was a lovely tribute to her and I was so proud of her classmates and fellow staff members who represented the school at her funeral. Her younger brother was given a sponsorship in her memory.
Visitors
To end on a more cheerful note, we have had a wonderful collection of visitors this month from all sides of the globe.
Lynette Pearson and her daughter Emma from Australia dropped by to meet their sponsored student and teacher during an adventure filled trip around Africa. Through some generous contacts in the medical world, Lynette was able to bring us a year’s supply of vital first aid supplies which frequently come in handy for all the bumps and scrapes that happen during the regular 50 aside soccer matches at lunch time!
We also enjoyed the company of Yannick Hall from Australia. Yannick and her husband Howard help the school by supporting two children and a teacher at the school and they really enjoyed meeting Yannick. Below, Yannick is pictured with Mary, our Visitor Co-coordinator from Ireland who works incredibly hard to ensure all visitors enjoy their experience at St Jude’s. It’s a huge job that involves answering emails full of questions long before people arrive, looking after them during their stay and often answering emails long after they have gone. But she loves her work and puts her whole heart and soul into it. We are very lucky to have her here.
You may remember from a previous newsletter that I told you about meeting Ruth Knoll who started the school for children with extremely high IQs. Well, this month she was over visiting us for a few days so it was great to be able to show her that the amazing cameras and printers she had sent to the school were working hard in the sponsorship department. She has got some great plans to help the school in many ways as she is an enthusiastic supporter. As well as the donations of books and equipment she brought over, she shares her knowledge of helpful internet sites and any other information she considers useful.
Below she is ensuring that our local butcher gives us a good deal with our weekly meat supply!
Accompanying Ruth was Anne Harper who is the Vice President of Education for Heifer International. Anne is working on a plan that could see a relationship between our school and Heifer International, which could be very exciting in the future. I’ll keep you posted.
Below is a very “Out of Africa” photo taken at Mt Meru Game Reserve of Ruth, Anne, our English teacher Felicity, a little fellow animal watcher and Becky Corcoran also from Heifer International.
And we were so happy to eventually see Lloyd, Norma and Tracy Fleming! Two previously aborted attempts to get here left us wondering if they were just trying to avoid us!
Lloyd has been a great supporter of the school before it even opened as his Rotary Club, Rocklea in Brisbane, Australia, has helped to send all the containers of donated goods from Australia every year. With their generous support we have been able to stock the school with hundreds of books, desks, stationary, and furniture and at the moment we are waiting for the two latest containers sitting at the wharf in Dar es Salaam with our two massive generators! We’ll be able to thumb our nose at the local appalling electricity supply when they are installed.
The Flemings really enjoyed their stay at the school, joining in with the volunteers and becoming quite part of the family. They nearly became a permanent part of their sponsored child’s family when they went to visit, as the trek to his home was a good hour’s walk up a steep mountain side and Lloyd and Norma wondered if they’d ever get down in the impending dark. Lucky for Lloyd, Norma is an Olympic gold medallist!
The photo below shows them with the bus that Lloyd’s Rotary Club bought. They enjoyed some fun rides squishing in with around 70 children in the official 27 seater!!
And last week it was great to welcome back Cindy Skarbek from the USA. And it wasn't just because she arrived with a fantastic 'care package' of some of the latest DVDs, books, chocolates, orios, books, chocolates, DVDs, chocolates, DVDs, chololates, books and a few other vital necessities of life. And this was all for the volunteers - what a pal!
Cindy and her family have been amazing supporters of the school and have enabled us to buy the boarding school land. Fortuitously, her visit coincided with the meetings with members of the Assumption Order and builders and architects so she was able to be involved with the plans we have for the land. As her family is involved in property development, she was to perfect person to bounce ideas off.
In the picture below Cindy is enjoying getting to know Vedasto Venance who is sponsored by her son, Carl, and daughter, Katherine.
With all the new plans for the future to be worked on, it’s going to be a busy month ahead and we know it’s only with your loyal support that our plans can become reality – thank you from all of us over here for being such great, great team members!
With thanks, Gemma