We’d like to introduce you to Catherine, mother of St Jude’s student Augustino who is in Standard 2. Catherine is a remarkable individual, a Tanzanian woman with immense compassion and resilience. Every day is a struggle for her, an upward battle against cyclical poverty. She is currently raising three children while also caring for her cousin’s child. This Mother’s Day we’d like to share the story of Catherine because her selflessness and great strength are an inspiration to everyone at St Jude’s and should be to the world.
Catherine, her husband and children live in dire conditions. The family of six rent one room in a shared compound with other families. It’s overcrowded and resources are scarce. The families share a water tap, toilet and wash room. There’s no internal plumbing, or electricity. Buckets of water for cooking, drinking, washing and cleaning are collected from a nearby tap for a small per-bucket fee. To support the family, her husband farms his plot of land in Babati which is three hours away, meaning during harvesting season he’ll be away from Catherine and the household. What he’ll manage to grow – maize and beans – and sell will be their main source of income.
Catherine is also pregnant and expecting her fourth child any day now. With the impending addition of a fifth child to her flock, she’ll need all the help in any way possible as every day she must think about where her family’s next meal will come from. One of her main concerns is having enough food for her children and herself. Like other Tanzanian mothers, she has more worries than most women around the globe. More than 12 million Tanzanians live below the poverty line and don’t have access to safe water, food or a proper education. The women then have to do menial work like selling vegetables on the side of the road; just to keep the family alive. Everyday, Catherine cooks a fish and peanut dish to sell in town and make a bit of money. She doesn’t have much but will use the few ingredients that she has.
It is a constant struggle for Catherine, but she continues on, and we do what we can at St Jude’s, which is to give her son, Augustino, a completely free education. It’s one less thing she now has to worry about. We provide her son hot, nutritious meals everyday, give him a safe environment to learn and expand his creativity and imagination. We want Augustino to teach his siblings what he learns, to help them with their studies. A proper education can transform lives and the success of our students is testament to that.
“I’ve seen a lot of difference since Augustino started studying here, he’s become smart, he’s more polite, he’s hardworking,” Catherine says. “I’m very thankful to St Jude’s.”
We fully support Catherine as she raises her family and love that we can help take some of the load off her shoulders. This Mother’s Day, we invite you to salute Catherine’s strength and all of the mothers of our St Jude’s students.
When Gemma first started building St Jude’s she searched for ways to create an identity and character that would distinguish the school from others. It had to be a school that students could feel a sense of ownership of and take pride in. One of the initiatives was to purchase a school bus, but because funds were spread extremely thin, purchasing a bus would have to take extreme sacrifice. Richard, Gemma’s husband, said to her, “You can’t have a school without a school bus.”
So Richard sold his Land Rover for a little white bus.
That little white bus would be painted royal blue and have “The School of St Jude” written in swirling gold across its body. For years “Little Blue” would carry hundreds of students to and from school battling unpaved dirt roads, four engine changes, countless tire replacements and numerous repairs. Little Blue would be retired in 2011 after nine long years of service. Its frame now rests proudly in the lower primary playground.
The St Jude’s bus fleet has grown in accordance with the expanding student body. With 150 new students every year for the last ten years, we’ve made it a high priority to maintain and expand our bus fleet, which currently stands at 22, serving over 1,600 students and more than 400 staff. Not only do the vehicles transport students and staff they also pick up produce, school equipment and building materials.
Every day our buses carry approximately 500 lower primary students and 150 staff to our campus in Moshono, along with 100 staff to our Smith Secondary campus in Usa River. Then on Friday, when about 500 upper primary students go home from boarding they are bused as well. Every six weeks, for mid-term break and end-of-term break, all secondary students go home too. These buses travel up to 45km away in some instances to get everyone home safe and sound.
For such a massive logistical operation, the buses go through 10,000 liters (2,700 gallons) of fuel per month. Our garage houses nine tradesman, a workshop supervisor, two mechanics, two apprentice mechanics, two panel beaters, one auto electrician and one welder. Thanks to numerous sponsors and donors over the past two years, we’ve been able to acquire five new Tata Buses that carry 50 percent more students and use 20 percent less fuel compared to other buses in the fleet. Most importantly we have 21 dedicated, responsible and safe drivers.
Having one school bus, let alone 22, is a blessing in Tanzania. Not only are we able to transport everybody safely to and from school everyday, there’s a sense of pride you feel when you see one of the colorful St Jude’s buses stroll along in Arusha.
As part of our Annual Appeal, you can support the St Jude’s bus fleet by purchasing a seat on a bus, or our new Flamingo or Colobus themed buses. Get your piece of the St Jude’s puzzle and help transport our students and staff safely everyday!
One of the most vital, if often overlooked, aspects of any school around the globe is the library.
Having a properly stocked collection of books and educational materials is essential for a student’s advancement outside of the classroom. A library is often the first opportunity for a young student to open a book and let their imagination and creativity be tantalized and stimulated by tales of wondrous adventures and history. Whether fiction, non-fiction, biographies or auto-biographies, the love of reading and writing will be nurtured in a library. And as we enter the 21st Century where technological advancement has progressed by leaps and bounds, it’s an educational institutions’ duty to keep up with the times, to give their students as much opportunity for career advancement through the necessary skills needed to prosper in this day and age.
Particularly in Tanzania, where most infrastructure is lacking and some children and adults will never have stepped foot in a library their entire lives, it’s crucial that we try and introduce the benefits of a library and its purpose at all levels to our students.
Here at St Jude’s, we have three libraries that act as central hubs on each campus. All are staffed with professional librarians and/or teacher-librarians who are there to help our over 1,500 students borrow books, work with computer programs, complete homework using the reference materials and find the right newspapers to read up on the daily happenings around Arusha and East Africa.
The majority of books are donated mainly from school and public libraries in Australia and the U.S. as well as from individual families and visitors. There are also a number of bookshops in Arusha that supply us with textbooks and small novels in Kiswahili. We have visitors from other schools come to see our libraries and students from the local teachers colleges will visit too. Our library staff will also visit other school libraries to share information and processes.
Each library keeps a list of novels or books they would like to see donated, in hopes that one or two titles will complete a series of a set of young adult novels, for example. This list is coordinated with the visitor and donor relations teams to help the libraries have complete volumes of series.
Here are a few snippets of information about our Lower Primary and Secondary libraries:
LOWER PRIMARY
Every week there are 19 classes that come through the Lower Primary library, from Standard (Year) 1-4. There are a total of 1,372 books that can be circulated during the week. Teachers will also drop in to pick up DVDs for classes.
Some of the ongoing projects include the Year 1 students modeling picture books from the style of well-known authors. Students also have been learning about the difference between fiction and nonfiction books, while the younger students concentrate on telling their own stories and describing their characters. Future projects include research projects about snakes and reptiles
UPPER PRIMARY
Throughout any week there are 20 classes in Standards 5-7 that come through the library doors, sometimes as most as 8 classes in one day. In the month of September, 3,938 books were borrowed by the staff and students. This term the Standard 5 and 6 students have been developing their map reading skills using atlases and researching countries outside Africa. They have learnt how to make a mind map and are presenting their information on posters. Lessons usually focus on thinking strategies, information gathering and honing literacy skills.
SECONDARY
Every day there are around six classes in the library. It’s a mix of English classes which come to the library for one period a week and additional classes where teachers bring their students to do research, reading and to use the resources available. Since the students board for the entire week at the Secondary campus for an entire term, the library is in constant use as students visit during break time, lunch and after school. Approximately 300 students come through the library each day, while there are often between 30-50 students in the library after school doing a variety of things. They loan around 1,500 books per month, around 70 per day and have 10,000 items in their secondary collection. The 10,000 items cover fiction, non-fiction and DVDs.
Secondary library lessons are linked with the English curriculum and focus on the use and writing of English using resources in the library. For example, Form 3 students have been using newspapers to study how to write articles, letters to the editor, and book and music reviews. Form 2 has been looking at hotels, facilities and furniture in hotel rooms and how to write reservation letters.
When St Jude’s introduced hot lunches in 2004 there were about 500 student and staff to feed. Fast forward to present day, and there are almost four times that amount: over 1,500 students, over 400 local staff and more than 50 international volunteers is the current St Jude's tally. That’s almost 2,000 mouths that need to be fed morning tea and lunch on a weekly basis, and then there are dinners for the students who board at Usa River and Moivaro. It takes an incredibly organized and efficient team to keep this process on track to avoid a logistical nightmare, ensuring our students are fed hot, nutritious meals to keep them motivated, energized and their minds focused on the tasks ahead. A supply of clean drinking water is readily available to keep everyone hydrated as well.
Our Purchasing Team plans the food purchases for each of the three terms throughout the year. They source all of the products from local suppliers and visit the local markets several times during the week to ensure the food is as fresh as possible. Since there is no refrigeration on the campuses, the meat is bought and prepared fresh, and the vegetables are only kept for two or three days. Trucks are constantly going in and out of the gates delivering fresh fruits, vegetables and bags of rice and maize.
The meals prepared by our 29 cooks are traditional Tanzanian and East African fare, which include staples like ugali (a stiff porridge-like substance made of maize flour) accompanied by beans, pilau (rice with spices and meat), and plenty of vegetables like ngogwe (described as an African eggplant) served with rice. Kachumbali - a salad made from tomatoes, onions, carrots and peppers - is a ubiquitous side-dish served with every meal. Every Tuesday our cooks make mandazi, an East African doughnut, to have with morning chai (tea).
For some idea of the quantity needed to feed everyone across the three campuses for one term, here’s an idea (items are listed in Kiswahili with the English translation in parenthesis):
Mchele (rice): 12,500 kg / 27,558 lbs
Maharage (beans): 4,500 kg / 9,921 lbs
Choroko (lentils): 800 kg / 1,764 lbs
Maize: 2,850 kg / 6,283 lbs
Nyanya (tomatoes): 2,065 kg / 4,553 lbs
Karoti (carrots): 2,905 kg / 6,404 lbs
Vitunguu (onions): 1,855 kg / 4,090 lbs
Nyama (meat): 850 kg / 1,874 lbs
At a time when so much attention is focused on the unhealthy eating habits across dining halls in schools throughout the world, we're proud to be serving plenty of fresh vegetables and nutritious meals that will aid in our students growth and development into the future leaders of Tanzania.
This will be our initial audio post, in which you, the reader, are taken through an aural journey throughout a typical day at St Jude’s Lower Primary Campus. Click on the links after each paragraph to sample the sounds of St Jude’s.
MOSHONO CAMPUS, LOWER PRIMARY, MONDAY
The first sound you hear every morning at The School of St Jude is the revving of the bus engines. The fleet of 21 buses is woken from their nightly slumber, ready for another long days work. Beethoven’s Für Elise – the sound some buses play when going reverse – fills the morning air.
Red, green, yellow, orange and blue buses head out the front gates of the Moshono campus, scattering in each and every direction looking for bright-eyed St Jude’s students in their spiffy blue uniforms.
Once the fleet returns, the students pile out and flood the playgrounds until the morning bell rings, signaling the start of classes.
As the sun continues to peak through the morning fog that’s descended upon Moshono from Mt Meru, the students shuffle between their Maths, Science, Geography, Physical Education, Music and Art classes, taking in new knowledge and ideas. A quick break for morning tea goes by too quickly, as the sounds of tiny footsteps hurry to their next class. Before you know it, lunch time has arrived.
The lower primary students are escorted by their teachers to the outdoor dining hall, where plates of hot, nutritious meals are waiting their arrival. Bowls of rice and beans – the Monday entrée – with a side of tomato, carrot and capsicum salad, with forks and cups of water are placed neatly along the rows. Before anybody has a bite, a prayer is said.
Lunch is devoured quickly, as the students want as much time to run around and play with their friends. Because this is Monday, the lower primary students will have their weekly assembly soon after lunch. The cooks and cleaners convert the dining hall into an assembly hall, rearranging the benches to face the stage. Students pile back in to the rows. To kick off the assembly, three things must happen:
1. The St Jude’s prayer must be recited.
2. The Tanzanian National Anthem, with students on drums, must be played.
3. The School of St Jude song, accompanied by its original dance, finishes the assembly introduction.
The assembly will include everything from different grades performing songs and acts on stage that they’ve been practicing, announcements, introducing new visitors, special guests and weekly awards. After assembly, the students will go to a few more classes until the closing bell rings. The students will line up and filter into their appropriate bus, ready to take them home.
Another Monday at the Lower Primary Moshono Campus comes to a close, the sounds of St Jude’s permeating into the atmosphere, rising above the clouds, past Mt Meru, spreading far and wide as the fight against poverty grows ever stronger.
