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/
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!
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