I suppose it's about time for a good old-fashioned Tanzania update, sans exciting adventures with visitors...for now at least.
Things have been more or less back to "normal" at school after our mini break ended early July. The students have taken two sets of Mock or practice national exams and we've gotten the results back. Overall an improvement in math from last year, though that is surpassing a prettly low bar. Of course after actually finishing the syllabus I have high hopes to see even better scores for the real deal in October/November.
A big thing these days is that we found out our school was awarded the grant we applied for to get solar power! We were among 8 schools/centers around the country that got one of these grants from the US Embassy, so it is a great success for Wilima. I'm particularly happy since I didn't really do much of anything for it, aside from download and email the application. So it's a good sign that my school has apparently developed skills to do things like this for itself. We are waiting to get the money deposited into the school account, and then will start looking for quality solar dealers and a good technician to install everything. The grant should be enough to get a solar system that can at least light the classrooms at night, and possibly also staff houses and a few laptop computers during the day. It will be a big help, since the generator has been having many issues lately and is very expensive to use and maintain.
The other exciting thing at school lately has been that we are now finally actually opening the library. Some of the students asked about it for studying for their exams, and that was my excuse to keep bugging the academic master about getting it opened. They had apparently lost the keys for the locks, but that's nothing a hammer couldn't fix! (finally a time when cheaply made goods here have worked to my advantage) So I've got a few good students as my minions / monitors and we spent a good amount of time organizing all the books and old exam papers that we have. I've made a few posters and diagrams to hang on the walls, and I would like to get a library card system going if possible. That way maybe it will encourage the serious students who are capable of not losing their cards to use the space for studying. The only problem right now is that, while we do have a lot of books (mostly math), none are for the Tanzanian syllabus, and the students have a lot of difficulty finding the topics they are studying in other books. I may look into possible ways of trying to get money for some Tanzanian textbooks soon, since it doesn't seem to be in the school budget.
Many schools are closing this week, but (I guess because mine is private?) we are staying open for two more weeks. It's fine for me because I didn't have any plans until then anyways, when Nick is coming to visit for a week. For now, it seems like we may try to do a safari and visit my school, which unfortunately may take up all the time for just a week's visit. But I am extremely excited to have another guest coming so soon!
The last week of August is our Mid-Service Conference in Dar, which is basically a glorified set of doctor's appointments, but still a great chance to see and catch up with everyone from my training class, most of whom I haven't seen since last year. The new group of Education volunteers is still in training and will be going to their sites in a couple weeks. There is one coming to Songea who I already got to meet while they were on their "shadow" week. None coming to Njombe though, which is disappointing since a good number of volunteers are leaving now. But I will probably get to meet more of them this weekend before they head back to Morogoro.
We had a fun weekend recently where a bunch of Njombe people went to spend the weekend at our 81-year old volunteer's house. John Clay Weekend, as it has been dubbed, included plently of board game playing, cooking delicious Mexican food, and some good old grandpa story time. He really is like a grandpa to pretty much everyone else here since all of us in Njombe are around the 23-28 age range. We even got a surprise welcome to a staff party of sorts at his school, where we were pretty sure they were getting ready to eat us, after fattening us up with snacks, locally grown juices, and a meal that must have had at least 10 courses. So it was an awesome time and certainly worth repeating.
One last bit of Tanzanian entertainment news: One of my best friends from my training group who went back to America in January, Eric Kehoe, has already recorded and put out a solo album since he has been back home. I have been able to download it here and I think it's awesome. I encourage anyone who's interested to download his album give it a listen: http://erickehoe.bandcamp.com/album/eric-kehoe He's living in Grand Rapids, Michigan now and apparently has a couple shows coming up too, if those of you who live around there would like to check it out. You can tell him Steven Anthony Bohomo the Three sent you and call him Bwana Harage and I'm sure he would be very excited. So there's my plug, and here are his shows: http://erickehoe.net/shows
Until next time.... please keep those updates of yours coming too!
