Hi All!
For the southern hemisphere, September is spring; for the north it is autumn and for St Jude’s … it’s that chaotic ‘student-finding-and-classroom-building’ time of year!
As well as all that activity going on this month, we started building the security wall on the second campus at Usa River, hosted an inter-school football match, welcomed another hard working Rotary team, benefited from an artist in residence, enjoyed a long awaited visit from our great supporters, the Smith family, and one of us (no, not me!) got to the top of Mt Kilimanjaro! Read on for the details of another great month at St Jude’s!
Moshono Campus Progress
In last month’s report the Moshono secondary school classrooms were up to the formwork for the ground floor roof slab. Well, we now have the slab poured, the second story rising above it and the ground floor walls growing beneath it. We are well on schedule to have the classrooms finished by Christmas!
As well as being constructed, the classrooms have to be painted and furnished for the start of the new school year on Tuesday 9th January 2007, as ten classes will be using the building until the second primary campus is ready in 2009. So this frees up room for the 150 new sponsored students who will be starting next year (more on that progress later) and the extension of the administration office.
Below, Bruce Smith is astounded at the development on the land that, just two months ago, was a thriving banana plantation!
The lucky 150!
How I wish we could take thousands of new students next year! Every Friday afternoon this month we have had around 1,500 children with their parents or guardians waiting patiently at the front gate for the selection process to begin.
We are looking for children who are bright, very poor and have the right attitude to be sponsored to start in Std 1 or Std 2 at St Jude’s next year. Understandably, there are thousands and thousands of families who would love to get their children into a school that provides free, high quality education, hot lunches, uniforms, stationery and transport instead of attending the overcrowded, understaffed, government schools where they are stuffed into classrooms with few teaching aids and poorly trained teachers with up to 100 other children.
So, below is the sight that will greet us every Friday from now until we find our 150 children for next year.
You may think that it would be a quick and easy process to find 150 eligible children in this lot but from the five Fridays we’ve had this month (we start in September each year) we have selected approximately 80 children.
For those of you who are not familiar with the testing process, at 1.30pm on the Friday when the gates open (with crowd control from the security guards, drivers, volunteers, visitors and teaching staff and a loud hailer) we separate the children into seemingly endless lines of Std 1 and Std 2 and with seven or eight teachers and volunteers at the ready, the children file up to one of the invigilators to do a short, basic Kiswahili reading test (below).
If they pass that test they go into the hall where they are given another general test of 20 questions on English, maths and Kiswahili appropriate for their age group and their government schooling background. We now have the process down to a fine art with every available adult involved with either marshalling the hoards to the correct slot in the production line, supervising testing, marking papers or advising successful applicants that they have to return on Saturday morning with the paperwork that proves who they are and what class they are in. The saddest job is informing those who didn’t make the cut that they must return out of the gate to their expectant parents or guardians – those large brown eyes close to tears just break your heart.
Between 60 and 100 make it to the Saturday morning round up. After the paperwork is checked thoroughly the numbers are whittled down to about 40 children who have passed all the previous tests.
Then members of the sponsorship team, along with the children, head out to their homes in the near or far-flung suburbs and villages in a fleet of buses to check the family background of the children. This is where we confirm that the children come from either very poor or disadvantaged backgrounds and don’t have a sibling already at the school. Our one-child-per-family policy ensures that more families get a chance to have a well-educated child who will help all the members of the family when they finally finish their education and join the work force.
After visual inspections and a comprehensive set of questions for the family members our stringent criteria narrow down the list to that week’s winners – if we are lucky we have over 15 children.
But even that is not the end of the selection process. The children join the probationary class (below) where their behaviour, ability to learn, focus and follow school rules and attitude towards fellow students and staff are assessed.
And finally, when a child passes probation their name is passed to our Parents Committee Board of 26 active parents who do a final check on the child and family in their area to make doubly sure that they are worthy of receiving a sponsorship.
We feel that this lengthy, exhausting and stringent testing process is vital not only to ensure the ideals of the school are upheld but also it is important that our sponsors and donors are assured that their generous contributions are needed, appreciated and respected by all the children who benefit from them.
Long Awaited Visitors
It was a great moment for Gordon and Helen Smith from Washington DC and for all of us here at St Jude’s when the family finally passed through the gates of the school they have so generously assisted. For a long time Gordon and Helen have had to rely on news and views of the project from our newsletters and first hand reports from their daughter and son, Cindy and Bruce, who have managed to visit on previous occasions. And I was pleased to hear that the photos just don’t do the school justice – it was beyond their expectations!
They valiantly joined in the Friday selection process and at the end of a long and arduous afternoon Cindy, Helen and Gordon (below) were rewarded with a greeting from a group of potential 2007 students.
As the Smith family is in the building industry it was great to show people around who are actually as excited by concrete columns and cement pours as I am!! Below Gordon and Bruce are revelling being on the construction site of the secondary school, which they have pledged to support, and they are actually standing on the cement, sand and aggregate they have paid for.
But Gordon wasn’t satisfied with just paying for the materials; he figured he would have to make a more practical contribution to the concrete slab! This secondary school will definitely have his mark on it now!
We look forward to their return in the future to see these classrooms filled with hard working students.
Artistic Input
Mandy from Belgium added quite a splash of colour with her flaming spiky hair when she arrived earlier this year to contribute educational games to the school’s teaching aids. We didn’t realise that she wasn’t the only one in the family who could splash colour about!
Her daughter, Elia, joined us for three weeks and after looking around for a suitable project that would make a difference to the daily life of the children at the school, she set about transforming the drab, depressing grey wall of the sick bay area into a glorious mural depicting the Jungle Book characters. I’m surprised it hasn’t caused an epidemic of ‘tummy aches’ just so they can lie back and enjoy such a cheerful, bright and jolly atmosphere. If we could entice her back for a year, imagine how the school walls could be transformed!
Friendly Rivalry!
I realised our soccer (or ‘football’ to you non-Aussies!) and netball clubs were training successfully when the leaders asked if they could invite a local school, St Thomas, for some friendly games one afternoon. The whole school enjoyed the spirited performances of all our teams and exerted as much energy off the field as there was on it with singing and barracking for the St Jude’s players! Luckily the scores were pretty even so the St Thomas team should be happy to join us for another great afternoon of exciting soccer and netball later in the year.
Midterm Madness!
We factor in a mid-term break so that the staff and students get a week off to recoup, rest and relax. Actually, it’s a chance for the office staff to get a lot of work done peacefully and without constant interruptions that arise from the general day-to-day running of the school.
Well, that was the original plan for last week ... and then the education department announced that the Std 4 mock exam (government run forerunner to the big end of year exam) was to be held on Thursday and Friday! So we spent three days trying to round up 130 kids scattered throughout Arusha - up mountains, in remote villages and in the seamy ghettos – with no access to mobile phones. Luckily the village grapevine works just as fast!
Most of the children made it to school for the exams and the general response was “So easy, Mrs Richard! I will get 100%!” – maybe not 100% but I’m sure they all did well and we look forward to the results next month. Now we just have to keep them focused on the big one in November.
So, while some staff members were either enjoying trips to the coast to feast on seafood or catching up on some quiet reading under a tree, Jackie and Sally, her friend visiting from Australia, relaxed with a quick trot to the top of Kili! Well, each to his own …
Still, I’m glad they went as I enjoyed doing it vicariously via stories and photos without having to collect the aches and pains and blisters!
New School Land Update
Hey, what a great team we are!! We’ve almost finished paying off the 30 acres of land for our second campus! As you can see from the progress of the arrows (below) almost all the money has been pledged and as it comes in we are able to pay off our debt to Moses and his family who have been extremely accommodating with this deal. Another cheque for US$50,000 was handed over this month so everyone is happy! And the plan to start building our new primary school in 2008 is now more than a pipe dream.
At the beginning of 2008, half the classes from the Moshono campus primary will move across to the Usa River campus and then the construction of the secondary school will start in 2008 along with the boarding school.
With regard to the ‘land titles’, Lonely Planet Publications in Australia has kindly offered to design them for us so please be patient, as they will be sent to you as soon as they are available.
And on the site itself, the corn has been harvested, beans picked and we are already making our mark on the land. In the photo below you can see that we have started constructing the security wall around the borders of the 30 acres.
I’m sure you will enjoy following the progress over the next 12 months as we keep you up-to-date with photographs of our exciting new project.
I still get a thrill when I think that this time next year we will be well on the way to providing another campus where free, high quality education will transform the lives of over 1,000 children.
Our Latest Robust Rotary Volunteer Team!
It was ‘Operation Desks and Chairs’ for 17 Rotarians when they arrived this month. We just pointed them in the direction of a wood pile, thrust tools into their hands and they churned out the components of 200 desks and chairs for the sponsored students who will start school next year.
Considering they had to deal with the glitches of third world living, such as intermittent electricity, it was a massive effort and they really worked hard to earn their 6-day safari. It’s no wonder they are all smiling so broadly in the photo below – they were looking forward to the only wood for miles being in the shape of a tree!
Running across a group of Hadzabe Bushmen is always an unforgettable experience on safari. Luckily the Rotarians had a travelling cook with a packet of pasta – it was going to take a few more lessons before they actually hit anything edible with those arrows!
Oh for goodness sake, will someone throw Mark a match – we’ve got to be home before dark!
They returned from the wide horizons of the Serengeti to knuckle down in their sweatbox of a shed and continue with renewed vigour to tackle the next load of wood.
We just hope that someone left behind the instructions for the jigsaw puzzle pieces so we can end up with lots more of these!
When we let them out of the shed many of the group enjoyed visiting the homes of the children. Below, Kim is off on the school bus to have afternoon tea in a nearby village.
On the weekend we ventured out to the colourful Monduli Maasai Market where lunch is the traditional roast goat. They were an adventurous lot but I didn’t expect to have to buy five sets of ribs to feed them all!
Jacob, my younger son, decided that a breathing, bleating goat had much more potential than a rack of ribs so rescued this one from the butcher’s knife. Billy probably thought he’d died and gone to goat heaven when he spent the trip in the bus being fed corn kernels by my boys!
The next stop was the Maasai village of one of our nightwatchmen and it was here that the boys had to part with their corn stuffed mate. Through gritted teeth Jacob begrudgingly handed him over to the local Maasai children but showed leadership skills in the job of showing them how to hand feed him. Corn fed goat was probably on the menu at the village that night … but don’t tell Jacob.
So another action packed month in Moshono and it’s thanks to YOUR support that such action continues.
Wishing you all happiness and good health. Until next month …
Hugs! G