Teacher on Duty

Hello again dedicated followers,

Cassie here…and this week we have some exciting information for you. I was a little slow to get to writing this week due to my ‘Teacher on Duty’ status and being down with Malaria that I wasn’t as organized as I usually am. But better late than never here is the update for the week.

The girls did a great job making progress on the library. We have finished all of non-fiction and reference materials and are moving right along with fiction. Also all the tables and chairs are finished. The teachers are utilizing the front of the library for a class everyday and love it. The children are so excited about the books they have asked for a special period during the day just for library time. We have been eager to integrate the materials in class. We use the National Geographics in class nearly every day. Starting this week I will sit down with every teacher to help ensure the use of the materials during lecture. Also the search for a librarian is going strong; I just hope we can get him/her here before I leave in September.

We have also been making astonishing progress on the shop. 99% of the wood for the shelves came directly from the crates inside the sea container. This saved us about $200 USD. The painting will be finished this week. Also this week we will buy some of our stock. This is incredibly exciting as it is our first project that will generate an income for the school. With an outside income we can be sure that the schools (FANAKA and ELA) can keep running without raising schools fees. Every year FANAKA spends about $12,000 USD on printing, typing and stationary goods. Having their own shop should reduce costs by an estimated $7,000. I’m so excited I can barely type!!! Without getting too carried away…we still need to find a proper Stationary Worker and finish up many details. My goal is to have the doors open for business by August 31.

Thanks to German donors the form IV’s were able to take a two day safari to Mukimi National Park. Eileen was able to join them and see animals, spend time with the kids and deal with their inevitable nonsense and noise making. Everyone enjoyed themselves….so much so the kids have been a little squirrelier the past few days.

Speaking of Germans…some of our German colleges who work at Olof are interested in getting their organization to pick up FANAKA as one of their placements. This would mean that two German volunteers would come every year. So this week we were preparing FANAKA’s application. Keep your fingers crossed as long term volunteers are great for keeping our projects running and communication flow.

As Teresa told you last week our paint job on ELA has been extremely successful. I met with another mother and a new pupil this week. She told me she knew about ELA before but didn’t think it was a proper school. Word of mouth spread and she came to inquire about the changes. I took her to see the school and now she was so impressed with the school she is sending her daughter in September. She even screamed when I told her about the library coming in the next few months! It feels great to have our first finished project be such a hit.

As always we are working hard on the documentary and website. I am doubtful of our goal of September 22^nd for both the documentary and website but we are still working little by little. Although we probably do not take as much free time as we should we have spent a day at the beach and an afternoon at the textile market, any little bit helps keeps our minds straight. We also took the night off of work last night as it was Eileen’s 23^rd birthday. Tomorrow Eileen and I will be tested tomorrow to see if we are all Malaria free.

That’s it for this week. As always we appreciate your support, prayers and wishes.

Pictures From Unloading The Sea Crate

Organizing The Books From The Crates

Unloading African Style

Taking Out The Dummy Walls

2x4 Ramps

Routine Day-to-Day Taking Shape

Mambo everyone! Hope everything is well back there in the good old
U.S.A. Things here in TZ are getting smoother by the day and
everything is really starting to fall in place as far as projects go.
The library is really coming along and we have already started putting
the reference section to good use to benefit the students. We have
been working very hard to get all the books sorted and ready to move
onto the shelves but it’s quite a task. We are playing with different
strategies on how to shelve them and as soon as we have that figured
out it will be all downhill from there (or so we think, you never know
where or when a wrench can be thrown into the system as you have all
learned).
Our day-to-day has started to become slightly routine. We wake up
around 6:30, help around the house a bit and sometimes do a little
paper work until breakfast. As soon as that is over we head to school
and the day starts at 7:45. All day long Eileen, Cassie, and I teach
our classes and perform our duties just like any other staff member.
During the times when we are not busy with school-related things we
work on the library as much as we can. When the school day ends at
3:20ish we go home to have lunch and then we walk straight back to the
school to work more on the library until the sun goes down. When it
does, we return home and work on computer/paper
work/grading/documentary/website kind of work until we go to bed
around 10:30ish.
We are working very hard to get the library ready for these kids to
use. I can see how excited they are and it motivates me to work even
harder. One perk of being the ones to organize the books is that we
have been finding some pretty good stuff! We drool over the donated
books and wish we had more time to read them all. I have already taken
home and read books about science inventions, the culture of
Madagascar, a very nice animal encyclopedia, and I am currently
burning through the British version of Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s Stone just for fun. (Needless to say I am one happy
camper)
On Friday we allowed the students to take some of the donated soccer
balls out and play futbol. I couldn’t resist the temptation to join in
and it was great to play with some quality equipment. The kids loved
it so much and this coming Friday we will have a chance for them to
try out their new jerseys in the Staff vs. Student futbol match. It
should be pretty hilarious.
The weekend was really good. We woke up early Saturday and worked on
the library some more. Also, some young friends from Germany, who are
currently volunteering at Olof, came to visit Fanaka. Their names are
Maria and Emmanuel and they have been at Olof for almost a year now.
They came to see the school in hopes to tell their volunteering
company to send future German volunteers to Fanaka for entire years at
a time. Cassie showed them around the school, the house, and told them
about what future volunteers would be doing. Maria and Emmanuel loved
Fanaka and our house and said they couldn’t wait to tell their
organization back home to send more volunteers. There will be a lot of
paper work to fill out and Fanaka would have to be approved for their
program but if it all works out it would mean that Fanaka would
receive two German volunteers every year, each staying for a year at a
time. I cannot express how great it would be for the school and also
for the Tanzanian Education Project to have a steady flow of
volunteers, not only to teach but to work on important projects for
the school.
Speaking of projects, since ELAAP (ELA Advertising Project) has
commenced we have heard some really great news- the project is a
success! The main teacher at ELA, Frita, came to the house on Monday
to report that the school has enrolled four more students due to the
paintings on the walls and there were numerous others inquiring about
the school and possibly wanting to join. Our hearts leapt at this
success because the results were so immediate and so beneficial.
Things are really moving and shaking this week. Yesterday Babu and
Cassie went and purchased the copy machine, printer, and other
necessary items for the stationary shop so we are really making
progress on that. Since the sea container fees were less than we had
thought they would be I will have a meeting tomorrow to get a final
estimate on the futbol and volleyball field repairs/construction. If
we can complete this project the students will have a proper, safe
place to play and it will better advertise the school to potential
students and generate more income.
I have been particularly strained this week because I am T.O.D, or
teacher on duty. This is no easy task. The T.O.D is in charge of just
about everything from chasing students and teachers into class,
administering extra punishments, making all the decisions, writing
reports, etc, etc, etc. T.O.D’s in the past can be lax on quite a few
rules and generally clueless but this week there has been a new
sheriff in town. I made myself three schedules to carry around on a
clipboard so I always know where everyone should be at all times, I
have a notebook on my person to record students who are not doing
their punishments, teachers who are late to class, and other problems
to deal with. I also carried around a red, blue and black pen as well
as a pencil behind my ear, chalk in my pocket, and my lesson plans
with me so I can’t miss a beat.
This week has been running on American time, not African. Anything can
throw the entire school into disarray at any moment so I try to figure
things out before they happen. I get the teachers the exams and papers
ten minutes before the exam is supposed to start so there is no time
wasted finding out who is proctoring it, where the questions are etc.
I find the keys and get the brooms before the period ends so they are
ready for the kids to clean right away. If the kids have to assemble
at a certain time and I know they take 5 minutes to do so I ring the
bell 5 minutes early. Needless to say, all the Africans have been
thrown for a little bit of a loop, but I think they are enjoying
starting and leaving on time for once. The headmistress made it so
that the three of us are T.O.D consecutively and can teach the current
teachers a thing or two about order and discipline. Let’s hope at
least a few of our tricks will rub off on them. Ultimately the only
way to ease the load on the T.O.D. is for everyone to help, which is
not happening so far. However, we have a teacher meeting at the end of
the day tomorrow so hopefully we can discuss and solve this problem.
Bibi is doing much better so thank you for all the wishes and prayers.
Everything at the house is peaceful and we have been getting a little
rain and some water from the main line so the boys don’t have to fetch
it every day! My classes are going very well and every day I learn
more about the students and how to better teach them. Some of them are
stubborn but they are really starting to melt my heart when I see them
get excited about my favorite subjects. Other than that, we are just
cranking away at the website, documentary, library, and projects and
soon everything will start to really come together. Plans for this
weekend and next week are to visit Olof and give them a few gifts,
work on the library, start getting the shop ready to open, and of
course mold the minds with our classes! As always, thanks for reading!
Teresa

No Fork Lift = Unloading African Style

Dearest friends, family, and faithful followers,

Greetings again from the tallest white woman in Bunju A, Tanzania! Your weekly installment is coming to you again from yours truly, Eileen Moeller. We have an exciting week behind us, and lots of great things to tell you about, so settle in, and ruminate whilst I illuminate what we have been doing...

Since we last were together in the magical, abstract world of the internet, we three volunteers for the Tanzanian Education Project have successfully completed the ELA Painting Project! The nursery school is now completely painted, and it looks wonderful thanks to the generous donors who have assisted us and made painting the nursery school a possibility. We worked at the nursery all last week, going there every day after finishing at Fanaka, the simple manual labor and messiness of the paint a welcome relief after the mental stress of being at the secondary school. On Friday afternoon, we were nearly finished, with only some detailing left to do and some pictures to finish.

Saturday morning, we rose early and trekked back to ELA and tried to finish all of the painting. There were just a few things left to do, but we were going to try to visit Bibi in the hospital that day, so we packed our things back up around lunch time and headed home. When we returned home, we were famished, so we quickly ate before cleaning our painting supplies. Cassie and I were sitting in the backyard, up to our elbows in sticky oil paint and paint thinner when Babu came home. He picked his way across the muddy yard and approached us.

“Girls,” he said solemnly, folding his arms across his belly, “I have some bad news.”

Cassie and I froze, holding our breath, preparing for the worst. After an extremely drawn-out pause, Babu finally continued, “The sea container is on its way here.”

After a stunned moment, we yelled in excitement and quickly scrambled to finish cleaning and put away the painting supplies. Babu cackled in delight, gingerly lifted his trouser legs, and picked his way back through the mud into the house. We found Teresa, and the three of us grabbed cameras, papers, and other supplies so we could go to Fanaka and wait for the sea container.

Of course, we had to wait. And wait.

Finally, however, after sitting on the stoops of Fanaka’s classroom and busying ourselves with other work, the container arrived. We were all deep in our work and this time, and jumped in surprise as Teresa started hollering, “SEA CONTAINER!” There was a mad dash to throw all of our work into bags, find our cameras, and assemble some sort of work crew. At the arrival of the container, students, family, friends and Fanaka staff had begun to gather on the compound.

After what seemed like an eternity, the truck backed up to the chemistry building and was opened. Cassie and the man from the shipping office made out a receipt, signed and stamped it to many cheers. Then the unloading process began.

Indeed, we had no forklift, so the unloading process was done African-style: there was lots of shouting, it took a long time, and none of it was done in a very logical or strategic manner. I waiting anxiously, holding a camera, as the men threw the dummy walls out of the back of the container, and then just started pushing and shoving the seven-hundred pound crates; preparing, I think, to simply throw them the six feet from the truck bed to the ground. Everyone was yelling; Cassie and Teresa were yelling in English, trying to devise a safe strategy, and the men were all yelling in Swahili, telling one another to move the crate this way and that. I suggested to Cassie that we just accept the fact that this unloading process would have some collateral damage, and that damage would be Jamesi’s life. She did not find this humorous.

However, after a little over two hours of heavy lifting, shoving, unloading, stacking and attempts to organize in the dark (the school compound does not have electricity right now), we finally got the container unloaded. I am SO thankful that all of those wonderful people back in the United States packed it so well and organized everything. The unloading process was chaos, with students trying to help, Masai having too much fun with our headlamps, and Jamesi trying to just throw the boxes out instead of handing them to people, but it would have been much, much worse if the folks at home had not organized things ahead of time. So again, thank you!

We returned home Saturday night exhausted, and soon went to bed, elated after all that excitement. We rose early again on Sunday morning, and I went back to ELA to finish some detailing and complete the painting while Teresa and Cassie went to Fanaka to begin working on the library process. ELA was completed and looks wonderful... If I do say so myself.

I went to Fanaka to help organize once I had finished at ELA, and after working there for a few hours, we returned home for lunch, hoping we would get to see Bibi that day. After lunch, we traveled by dala-dala to the hospital, and had to wait in the canteen for a bit before they would let us in to see her. We did eventually get let in, and got to talk with Bibi for a while and showed her the pictures of our progress. She was looking much better and was very excited about the progress we had made at ELA and the arrival of the sea container.

Monday was another exciting day: Bibi was finally discharged from the hospital and arrived home! Since then, she has been looking much better and is getting back to her old self. She still must rest a lot, but I think being at home makes her happier, and so it is easier for her to recuperate. Thanks to everyone who has been keeping her and our family in your thoughts and prayers, Bibi really appreciates it and so do we. After being elated that Bibi had returned home, we were also delighted to be informed by Babu that our port charges on the sea container were only Tsh 220,000/= (about $170 USD)! We had anticipated they would amount to almost $500 USD, but now we have extra budget to use for bolstering the efforts of other projects. Woo!

This week has also been busy on the teaching front. We are still trying to arrange the timetable for Fanaka and juggle our teaching loads while still managing to do work for the Tanzanian Education Project. Every night, we do typing or other administrative work for the headmistress at the school, while still trying to tackle our TEP projects like preparing to set up the shop. Also this week, I was assigned the responsibility of being Teacher On Duty (TOD) for the school. TOD is responsible for disciplinary problems, for getting all of the kids to class, chasing them down after break, ensuring they do their morning cleaning, and getting them to assemble properly before and after school. This would be a difficult task even with the assistance of the other teachers. However, we still have some major problems as far as getting all of the teachers to work together as a team and assist one another. Cassie and Teresa are of course very helpful, chasing down students and even making sure teachers get to their assigned periods on time (which is more difficult than you may think), but at the end of the day, I am exhausted from being TOD. We have an open compound, with many places to run and hide behind, and chasing giggling teenage boys is exhausting.

All in all, it has been an incredibly successful and wonderful week and we have accomplished much. Thanks again to everyone at home who has helped TEP in the last year and who is continuing to help with fundraising and other efforts. Although Bibi is home, having her ill is still a major blow to Fanaka and it being able to run properly, so we need a lot of help.

I hope everyone is doing well in their respective lands, here, there and everywhere. I love and miss all of my friends and family dearly. Please don’t be mad I have been gone so long; I’ll bring you back a present, I promise (Andrew).

May the Force be with you.

xoxox

Eileen

Back To School

Hello again

Week 7 has been the week of physical labor. Eileen, Teresa and I have been busy painting ELA Nursery School for the ELA Advertising Project (ELAAP). We are painting one classroom with numbers and shapes, the second with sounds, vowels and corresponding pictures. On the outside of the building we are painting the alphabet with corresponding pictures. This has made ELA look like a brand new school and we hope it will attract more students. Also it is a great learning tool for the students as their supplies in the class are extremely limited. Every day we walk about a half mile, put in hours of painting and head home. Now with school during the day we have tried to squeeze some painting time in after the school day. We should finish this weekend (WHOOOOHOO) and hopefully we can get some pictures up for you to see. Also to prepare for the new term and the building of the new computer lab we had to move many of the classrooms around. This took 3 Masai, 3 Americans and 2 Tanzanians for a solid 5 hours as it was quite the large task. I think a little physical labor has been relaxing for us all and is probably the only thing keeping stress levels manageable.

The stress is largely due to the fact that the container still has not arrived. As of Monday we have had to pay $500 USD to cover port charges and we are still counting at 40 USD a day. The worst part is Babu has spent countless hours and hundreds of dollars on fuel going into to town to sort out the matter. Yesterday we went into town and spent all of 8 hours to sign a paper and leave. There were 13 people shoved in a barely functioning 9 person van and although we were very efficient it made for a seriously long day. They still haven’t been able to guarantee a delivery date or secure that we won’t have duties to pay. This process is making everyone crazy and its holding us back in our work. Although we remain hopeful that all of our goods will arrive safely, it would be nice if they would hurry up. My biggest concern is that for every dollar the port takes from us the more we have to cut projects from our list. This is heart breaking for everyone involved with TEP and especially for the people who have worked so hard here on the ground to get the projects started.

Since school started on Monday, normal school stress has kicked in. It has been crunch time to get all the documents we have been working on typed, printed and approved-retyped and reprinted. This process is always stressful as technology here is less than reliable and the printing process is a nightmare. Plus getting back into the normal time table can reduce our concentration on TEP projects. I have purposely limited my own subjects as I need to stay focused on TEP however T and Eileen have full loads. Despite any stress it feels great to be back at school and see my kids, old co-workers and get into a steady routine.

As Teresa mentioned last week we received two new volunteers here at Fanaka. In order to utilize Liz and Maranda’s teaching skills we are working on English as a Second Language (ESL) training program for tomorrow. Also a team building project called CHARACTER will be introduced by them to entice stronger leadership and citizenship among the students. Although their time here is limited they will be able to put these programs into place and teach us and the school how to use them.

We also had a great opportunity to spend the day with my 2^nd mother Aichi. Aichi works with TEP and African Children’s Haven with our programs at Olof. We spent the day swimming and enjoyed a game a Scrabble. Yes I won…no big deal. It is always great to spend time with her and get some Olof details figured out.

As for Bibi…please keep the prayers and thoughts coming. She is doing much better as she is talking and sitting up however her health concerns us. Also please send extra prayers for our Headmistress, our friends Mother and our teacher’s family as all struggling with health problems. As for the volunteers, we are all in good health.

As always thanks for your support,

Cassie

A Chance to be a Tourist.

It has been a very eventful week indeed! Last friday we made a trip to Posta and found out that yet again the shipping container’s arrival is going to be delayed. Now the new scheduled time is for this coming Monday. The reason that it is still being delayed is because of the government. The container is in the port in Dar, however the shipping company is waiting for the government to issue a check for the tax exemptions and the government is sitting on the check. They are waiting to issue the check is because everyday they stall is another day we have to pay port storage fees which amount to about 40 USD a day! Ughhh.

Basically corruption is going on here and there is nothing we can do. Every trip to Posta costs a lot of money for gas so we tried to hassle them as many times as we could but now it is in the government’s hands. However, we hope to only have to pay about 500 USD for extra port charges as of right now. As many of you faithful readers have learned, what they say can be very different than what will actually happen.

Needless to say, Cassie, Eileen, and myself have become extremely frustrated and it is really wearing down on us. We are trying to keep our chins up and keep it moving on other issues so we have been burying ourselves in work this week. We typed and proofread/fixed/printed/reprinted 15 separate documents for Fanaka alone along with the school time table which is by far the hardest to figure out!

We also did some more budgeting on the shop project and met with a couple of local stores for the equipment. We talked prices, specs, and expenses with the experts, so we hope to make some read head-way on that issue as soon as we get into the swing of things at school.

The new semester (or term as they say) starts this monday as well so it will be chaos if that is the day the sea container actually arrives. Don’t fret, we are prepared! We bought new lesson and teacher books for ourselves, and held a staff meeting to propose all the new reform systems we are implementing in the school so we are excited to start.

Some examples of the reform include shortening the time table, implementing an entirely new discipline system, changing the way the teachers receive their wages, holding teachers accountable for their bad behavior, and getting rid of some extra expenses that Fanaka had. By far this has been the most time consuming and challenging thing for us. We have really worked hard to get everything written up for them to see and made sure that all the rules were fair and easy to follow. We are crossing our fingers that all of it takes and they are on board because if they are we can really start to make this school function correctly and better than it ever has before. Cross your fingers everyone!

Another interesting thing we did this week was we met and spent an afternoon with a contact who knows everything there is to know about chickens and how to raise them. We had been playing with the idea of the students and staff at Fanaka raising chickens to sell in the market so it was great to meet someone who had all the information. He gave us some great resources as far as literature and know-how went, as well as offered his advice on where we could place the chicken coops and how many we should start with, what the prices should be, who to buy chicks from, and offered to help in any other way we needed. I actually was insanely interested so I read the literature he gave us back and forth 3 times and still was craving more! Who knew raising chickens could be so fascinating! (I swear I am not joking people, I love to learn!)

Yet another interesting thing about this week is that we have two new volunteers staying at Bibi and Babu’s home with us. I went to their hotel and picked them up on Wednesday morning, showed them around a little bit, and we arrived at the house around lunch time. Liz and Miranda are from Houston, Texas and work at a high school there. Since they worked at an inter-city school we feel like they can provide valuable insights on how to deal with some of the issues we have at Fanaka such as getting the students to behave and many other things. They are friends of Cassie’s contact Ed with the organization Africa Children’s Haven and he sent them to get some footage and information from Olof orphanage. Since Ed knows Cassie and knew we were here during the same time they got arranged to stay at Bibi and Babu’s with us. They will be here for about 3 weeks and while they do have to go to Olof a lot they also want to help with Fanaka so that’s very good.

Some not so good news is that Bibi’s heath is troubling her. She has had two trips to the hospital in the last week and everyone in the house is worried about her of course. This is causing a lot of work to fall on Babu’s shoulders and it is making things hard around the house both emotionally and as far as getting work done goes. Cassie, Eileen and I are finding it hard to not worry so that’s another reason we are burying ourselves in work. Despite all this, we have every reason to hope that she will get better soon. Please pray for her and our family here if you can.

Much to our luck we got a chance on Saturday to hangout and just be regular tourists! Bilo and Eve (Bibi’s son and his wife) took us to the ocean. We paid a hotel a few bucks to use their beach front, had lunch, swam, and just relaxed for half of the day. I can’t speak for the other girls but a few hours to let my body (and mostly my mind) relax was way overdue. I sat on a beach chair and just watched the waves with warm sand in between my toes and even caught a little tan. It was good for the soul and without that 5 hours at the beach I don’t know if I would have made it through the week.

That’s about all there is to say about this week guys. Overall, we made a lot of progress on things but it was definitely the busiest and most stressful week we have had here. I am sure that next week will be twice as busy and twice as stressful with the new semester and hopefully the sea container, but we are ready to go. I am really excited to see some serious changes at the school and make progress on the shop project!

Wish us luck! Thanks again for reading!