April Showers Bring.....
MUD! Lots and lots of Mud! In the last week we've had over 8000 liters of water collected in our water tanks at the school and no longer have to spend the money to purchase and transport water from the nearby (not so clean) lake! This saves us from 30 minutes of boiling and then purifying all the water we drink, and fresh, new-fallen rain water is quite a treat!
We spent our 1 week vacation over Mid-Term Break in March travelling to Dar to visit friends before heading up to Mombasa, Kenya on the coast to visit our cousin, Kendra and her son, Josiah. We were unfortunately not able to meet her husband, Monte, as we was on business travel. Having met Kendra for the first time, as she is from my aunt Barbie's side of the family, was very enjoyable as she and Monte have an apartment with a beautiful view sitting right on the Indian Ocean in historic Old Town Mombasa. We were a 2-minute's walk away from Fort Jesus, which is an amazingly huge structure used by the Portuguese and Omani Arabs built in the 1500s and is a great historical landmark and symbol for the Muslim culture that currently resides there. We also traveled down the coast to Diani Beach, south of Mombasa island and spent two days at a beach chalet snorkling and enjoying the beautiful, soft sandy beaches, while trying to avoid "beach boys" which hover tourists all day asking them to use them as a boat guide, buy a konga (wrap-skirt) or sea-shells of all shapes, colors and sizes. Fortunately, they are the only downside to this place! Since we were accustomed to "village time," which means rising with the sun, we got up one morning to enjoy a sun rise over the Indian Ocean (Ashley's first ocean sunrise!) It made us miss the Oregon Coast sunsets! We also enjoyed the company of the families of Blue Monkeys that swang from tree to tree next to our chalet and the Colobus Monkeys that lined the roadside pleasantly treating themselves to the overgrown vegetation...
After Mombasa, we headed to the large capital city of Nairobi, Kenya. Although it was nice being in a quite Westernized city, it is hard as a tourist (especially a white, female one) to feel comfortable as the city has a rediculously high rate of theft and muggings. 37% of Nairobi's population (excluding tourists) have been mugged in the last year, which has earned the city the nickname "Nairobbery." Though we were impressed with Nairobi's size and it's skyline, we were ready to get back into our home country of Tanzania.
At the end of our week, we landed back in Arusha and met our friend from Dar, Omar, and watched him play for the Dar Leopards in the Tanzanian rugby league's final season match against the Arusha Rhinos. Unfortunately, the Arusha Rhinos came out victorious but we were still able to enjoy the Rugby Ball that evening at the newly built New Arusha Hotel. On our last day of vacation, we enjoyed a great day at Arusha National Park enjoying the natural habitat of baboons, bushbuck, waterbuck, buffalo, giraffes, colobus monkeys, mongooses and flamingos. We also reveled at the awesome view into the Ngurdoto Crater, which is a section of the park that is restricted to safari vehicles and a protected area for wildlife. After, we enjoyed a couple hours at the Snake and Reptile Farm just up the road and viewed Black and Green Mambas, boas, vipers, crocodiles, tortoises and lizards. Since being in Tz, we've come to love the lizards that go running up the walls in the classroom during lessons, the small and LARGE bugs that come flying and creeping and crawling into our rooms at night and we've even began a bug collection- bugs of such size we'd never encounter in Oregon- they're almost starting to become cute!
Aang Serian Secondary Community School is doing very well as we tend to accept about 1 new student a week, sometimes 2 or 3. Because school and boarding fees are so low compared to many other local secondary schools, students come from all over to dorm at the school. Many students only see their parents and families about once every couple months, and during the rainy season, even less. Since the students are required to wear school uniforms by the government, we have made Fridays as school days to wear their traditional Maasai clothing. This includes bringing to class their walking sticks, 12-inch knife blades (and teachers can still feel safe!), red and blue rubegas and their unique sandals, made of truck tire tread and rubber straps. Though we've seen how affective the tire tread-sandals are in the mud, we've also been told that they are traditionally worn because, as the Maasai once believed God blessed them with all the cattle on the earth and used to pick other herders cows from their herds, the flat, square footprints the Maasai left in their get-away path gave no clues to the herder about in which direction the theif had fled!
One of the hardest obstacles students face here is work at home and sickness. During the rainy seasons, many students must miss days of school to help work on their family's farm to ready it for growth and harvest or pasture their cattle from dawn to dusk. Since most students are helping out their parents while at home, it can be difficult for them to find time to study, especially girls, who help clean, cook and take care of younger siblings. We've also been surrounded by many cases of sickness and Malaria. One student just returned after being absent for 3 weeks with an illness and another has been absent for almost a month because he is in the hospital being treated for a serious case of Malaria. We ran into some travelers from Germany while in Mombasa and even though they were all on anti-malarial medication, after two mosquito bites, one of them had become infected. Another volunteer, Chelsea, who came for a week to Aang Serian and, after being on anti-malarial meds as well, started to feel ill and had a blood test done in Monduli and found she had also contracted the illness. Also, this weekend while talking with our friend, Penny, from Dar we found out that one of her roommates from the US, who was also on anti-malarial meds had contracted Malaria after being in the country about two months. (Did I mention we are NOT on anti-malarial medication?) We feel rather lucky......
Unfortunately, two of our volunteers, Mark and Saif, will be leaving at the end of April but we will be taking on a couple new teachers within the month of May. The school is still trying to get approved as an NGO (Non-government Organization) and become registered as a school. To do so, the government has instructed the school it must build another classroom (for a total of 4 buildings) to government-regulation size before it can become approved. The organization must therefore come up with $7,000 USD to build the structure and is trying to find donors and supporters to help with the project. Unfortunately, if the new classroom cannot be funded and built by December 2005, the government inspectors say they may force the entire school to shut down. (sounds backwards, we know!) But as we've mentioned before, the system is is somewhat designed for its students and in some ways, its organizations, to fail. The inspectors have no problem in shutting down a perfectly wonderful education organization because a classroom is not the exact geometrical measurements as stated in registering a non-profit organization. However, have no problem with using education materials printed in 1981 as the basis for their curriculum. (This can be quite frustrating, as you can probably sense!) However, we know this is a learning process and hope that we can only prove the system can be used for these students and their learning, rather than against them.
We spent our 1 week vacation over Mid-Term Break in March travelling to Dar to visit friends before heading up to Mombasa, Kenya on the coast to visit our cousin, Kendra and her son, Josiah. We were unfortunately not able to meet her husband, Monte, as we was on business travel. Having met Kendra for the first time, as she is from my aunt Barbie's side of the family, was very enjoyable as she and Monte have an apartment with a beautiful view sitting right on the Indian Ocean in historic Old Town Mombasa. We were a 2-minute's walk away from Fort Jesus, which is an amazingly huge structure used by the Portuguese and Omani Arabs built in the 1500s and is a great historical landmark and symbol for the Muslim culture that currently resides there. We also traveled down the coast to Diani Beach, south of Mombasa island and spent two days at a beach chalet snorkling and enjoying the beautiful, soft sandy beaches, while trying to avoid "beach boys" which hover tourists all day asking them to use them as a boat guide, buy a konga (wrap-skirt) or sea-shells of all shapes, colors and sizes. Fortunately, they are the only downside to this place! Since we were accustomed to "village time," which means rising with the sun, we got up one morning to enjoy a sun rise over the Indian Ocean (Ashley's first ocean sunrise!) It made us miss the Oregon Coast sunsets! We also enjoyed the company of the families of Blue Monkeys that swang from tree to tree next to our chalet and the Colobus Monkeys that lined the roadside pleasantly treating themselves to the overgrown vegetation...
After Mombasa, we headed to the large capital city of Nairobi, Kenya. Although it was nice being in a quite Westernized city, it is hard as a tourist (especially a white, female one) to feel comfortable as the city has a rediculously high rate of theft and muggings. 37% of Nairobi's population (excluding tourists) have been mugged in the last year, which has earned the city the nickname "Nairobbery." Though we were impressed with Nairobi's size and it's skyline, we were ready to get back into our home country of Tanzania.
At the end of our week, we landed back in Arusha and met our friend from Dar, Omar, and watched him play for the Dar Leopards in the Tanzanian rugby league's final season match against the Arusha Rhinos. Unfortunately, the Arusha Rhinos came out victorious but we were still able to enjoy the Rugby Ball that evening at the newly built New Arusha Hotel. On our last day of vacation, we enjoyed a great day at Arusha National Park enjoying the natural habitat of baboons, bushbuck, waterbuck, buffalo, giraffes, colobus monkeys, mongooses and flamingos. We also reveled at the awesome view into the Ngurdoto Crater, which is a section of the park that is restricted to safari vehicles and a protected area for wildlife. After, we enjoyed a couple hours at the Snake and Reptile Farm just up the road and viewed Black and Green Mambas, boas, vipers, crocodiles, tortoises and lizards. Since being in Tz, we've come to love the lizards that go running up the walls in the classroom during lessons, the small and LARGE bugs that come flying and creeping and crawling into our rooms at night and we've even began a bug collection- bugs of such size we'd never encounter in Oregon- they're almost starting to become cute!
Aang Serian Secondary Community School is doing very well as we tend to accept about 1 new student a week, sometimes 2 or 3. Because school and boarding fees are so low compared to many other local secondary schools, students come from all over to dorm at the school. Many students only see their parents and families about once every couple months, and during the rainy season, even less. Since the students are required to wear school uniforms by the government, we have made Fridays as school days to wear their traditional Maasai clothing. This includes bringing to class their walking sticks, 12-inch knife blades (and teachers can still feel safe!), red and blue rubegas and their unique sandals, made of truck tire tread and rubber straps. Though we've seen how affective the tire tread-sandals are in the mud, we've also been told that they are traditionally worn because, as the Maasai once believed God blessed them with all the cattle on the earth and used to pick other herders cows from their herds, the flat, square footprints the Maasai left in their get-away path gave no clues to the herder about in which direction the theif had fled!
One of the hardest obstacles students face here is work at home and sickness. During the rainy seasons, many students must miss days of school to help work on their family's farm to ready it for growth and harvest or pasture their cattle from dawn to dusk. Since most students are helping out their parents while at home, it can be difficult for them to find time to study, especially girls, who help clean, cook and take care of younger siblings. We've also been surrounded by many cases of sickness and Malaria. One student just returned after being absent for 3 weeks with an illness and another has been absent for almost a month because he is in the hospital being treated for a serious case of Malaria. We ran into some travelers from Germany while in Mombasa and even though they were all on anti-malarial medication, after two mosquito bites, one of them had become infected. Another volunteer, Chelsea, who came for a week to Aang Serian and, after being on anti-malarial meds as well, started to feel ill and had a blood test done in Monduli and found she had also contracted the illness. Also, this weekend while talking with our friend, Penny, from Dar we found out that one of her roommates from the US, who was also on anti-malarial meds had contracted Malaria after being in the country about two months. (Did I mention we are NOT on anti-malarial medication?) We feel rather lucky......
Unfortunately, two of our volunteers, Mark and Saif, will be leaving at the end of April but we will be taking on a couple new teachers within the month of May. The school is still trying to get approved as an NGO (Non-government Organization) and become registered as a school. To do so, the government has instructed the school it must build another classroom (for a total of 4 buildings) to government-regulation size before it can become approved. The organization must therefore come up with $7,000 USD to build the structure and is trying to find donors and supporters to help with the project. Unfortunately, if the new classroom cannot be funded and built by December 2005, the government inspectors say they may force the entire school to shut down. (sounds backwards, we know!) But as we've mentioned before, the system is is somewhat designed for its students and in some ways, its organizations, to fail. The inspectors have no problem in shutting down a perfectly wonderful education organization because a classroom is not the exact geometrical measurements as stated in registering a non-profit organization. However, have no problem with using education materials printed in 1981 as the basis for their curriculum. (This can be quite frustrating, as you can probably sense!) However, we know this is a learning process and hope that we can only prove the system can be used for these students and their learning, rather than against them.
posted by Ashley at 2:52 AM
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