Stabilization before Progress

As my last days are counting faster than I can even keep up, the work still to do seems endless. I have this feeling every time I come and this is just about the right time for the panic to set in. We have worked days and nights to stabilize FANAKA so we do not lose another school. It was heartbreaking to lose ELA and I refuse to not do everything we can to keep the school open. Now that we have a proper management team in place, it is now time to reanalyze our priorities; starting with the resources we already have.

In order to get a working budget for some of basic needs (security lights, toilet repairs and light bulbs) we need to liquidate some of our excess supplies. From the sea container there still remains 80,000 sheets of large paper. This does not include the paper used for examinations, stationary needs or the needs of FANAKA for a two year supply. We have been able to sell some to a distributor that cuts the papers into school notebooks and sells them back to schools at a discount. The others we will be used in our advertising strategy. I have developed fliers and brochures for the school to use for advertising. We have a representative of FANAKA going from school to school with these fliers and brochures to try and get FANAKA closer to full capacity.  Once we can have a proper enrollment amount, funding our new teaching, management staff as well as the necessary academic changes (such as tutoring classes for those behind in subjects) will all be possible. In addition to letting our neighbor schools know about FANAKA, we will also be giving the extra paper to these schools as gifts. This means more schools can share in our gifts and is a strong move in making FANAKA known to everyone. Thanks to a generous donation from Sean’s high school, Dakota Ridge, as well as Metro State University, more soccer jersey’s and balls are coming to FANAKA. This means the excess jersey’s can be shared with our neighboring schools so we can really spread the wealth.

Although I would love to report all the progress we have made on self sustainable projects, the reality is the condition we found FANAKA in required TEP to adjust our mission this summer. It was necessary to focus our energy on organizational restructuring, prioritization, advertising and networking in order to put FANAKA on a plan for success. Countless hours were dedicated to the evaluation of past projects and research of future TEP projects; this allows our work from America to be as strong as possible. I will not allow TEP to break ground on projects until all business plans are certain and risks limited. If this means the TEP budget sits until these requirements are met, then so be it. It’s not only best for TEP donors but truly best for everyone. If we have no school, our self sustainable projects will be for not. Thus, stabilization is needed before we can work on the future.

-Cassie

As My Time Comes to an End

My time here in Tanzania is almost up, I leave for home tomorrow and leave the people of Africa behind. I hope in my brief stay that I made an impression on those that I met. My time in Tanzania has been an eye-opening experience and I will never forget. I have been witness to so much here in Bunju that I am grateful that I was able to capture much of it on my camera. The people here are so loving and accepting that it made it a joy to photograph the students at the school and the people involved in improving their education.

In my short time here I have made many friends, I couldn't go 20 yards without someone asking me how my day is going. So many of the villagers have never seen or talked to a white person that it is the highlight of their day. They stare with such amazement that you feel like you are in a fishbowl as people tap on the glass. The kids around the village are extremely heartwarming all they want is for you to wave at them and they giggle with excitement. The villagers and students you meet have so many questions about America that I am a little overwhelmed from time to time. It is hard to answer all of them but I do my best to dispel some of the rumors they hear about America.

Over the last couple of weeks I have watched the volunteers for The Tanzanian Education Project put forth so much effort toward making the lives of these students much richer. I hope that the pictures that I have taken for the organization will help improve the lives of the students here. My effort has been nearly nothing compared to the efforts of the volunteers and donors, all I do is click my shutter and hope my images tug at heart strings. Over the next few weeks I hope to post some pictures for the blog as well as my thoughts with them. This has been one of the most amazing times in my life; I will never forget the people that I met and the friends that I made. Goodbye Bunju, I hope to see you sooner rather than later.

Sean Leyva

8/20/2012

Mikumi Field Trip

I had the wonderful opportunity to make a day trip to Mikumi National Park with the Form 3 students of FANAKA to see some of Tanzania’s most famous wild animals. Every year the Germans who also volunteer their time at FANAKA take the form three students on a safari in Mikumi National Park.  It is a once in a lifetime opportunity for me and the students. Many of the kids have never left Bunju, let alone made the arduous trip to Mikumi in a bus.

They’re enthusiasm was unbelievable as we made our way out of Bunju in the morning. The students were hollering and chanting for the first hour of the trip. There wasn’t a soul in Africa who couldn’t hear us coming down the road. The bus ride was long, nearly six hours to Mikumi. Don’t let the time fool you, the park was only about 150 miles away but in Africa there isn’t a short journey to any destination. After a short stop in Morogorro for lunch we finally made into the park later in the afternoon. We rounded up the students got them all back in the buses and made our way into the park.

Our first afternoon treated us to every animal you’d expect to see in Africa, except a lion. It was so incredible to see these animals in the wild. I am glad that I was able to get some great photographs of Elephants, hippos and the like.  After an afternoon in the park we stayed the night in a nice hotel in the town of Mikumi, the students were just ecstatic to be out of Bunju, they lived it up. Our journey home the next day was just as long ans drawn out as the day before. I was so glad that I had the opportunity to share this experience with the students of FANAKA, one that I am sure we all will never forget.

Sean Leyva

8/18/2012

The Countdown 8-8-12

The Countdown

Katie Poch

            Hello, Katie here! Well it is down to less than a week until I head back to America. I feel I still have so much stuff to do.We are really in the heart of our work right now. The changes we have been planning during the last two months for the new management at FANAKA are finally starting to take place. We have interviews on Saturday (11-8-12) for a new headmaster, new teachers have been coming to see the school and cleaning of the new offices has begun. It has been a long but rewarding process. The school is really starting to come together. It is sad to think that I will be leaving FANAKA, but glad that the school will now be in new hands.

            I have been busy trying to get everything done on my to do list. This is hard since one simple errand, such as going to buy books for the children I live with, takes a full day. It is hard to get anything done here in "American Time." Everything takes three times as long to do; this is just part of their culture. The traffic is a lot heavier, the roads are in poor condition, the vehicles are old and few and the people are never in a hurry. These is some of the qualities of why I love Tanzania, but also the reasons I feel so rushed during the last few weeks of my trip. Tanzania has been the best experience of my whole life. It is sad that I will be leaving but this place will have a special place in my heart forever.

To Bagaymoyo and Back

To Bagaymoyo and Back

Katie Poch

  

Hello everyone, Katie Poch here. I hope all of you are enjoying your summer; it is coming to an end very quickly. Yesterday I had the privilege of going on a field trip with the form four students. We went to Bagamoyo, about 45 minutes away, to the ruins, the old building where the slaves were traded, The Catholic Church Museum, and also to the beach.

 

The students learned a lot about their country and how it began. They saw where the first people that immigrated to Tanzania lived, they learned about the slave trade in the past, and also where the first Catholic Church was founded. They had learned about these things in their history classes, but to see the places that were talked about in their textbooks was very interesting to them. By their expressions, I could tell how happy the children became when they saw these places with their own eyes. We were not very far from the school, but many of the children had never been to any of these places before. Some of them had never even been to the beach! This was crazy to me as I have only been here for 2 months and have been to the beach many times. Seeing how excited they were to be able to go out and see their country was so rewarding.

 It made me realize how important, not only textbook knowledge is, but how essential to the children's education it is for them to get out of the classroom and do hands on activities. These kids deserve all of the privileges we have in America, and this field trip was just one small way of them being able to have them. 

In a Flash Everything’s Gone

Today, Saturday August 4, I (Cassie) was busying working on some FANAKA advertising at our stationary shop when Mwenda busted in the door. He said his classmate and one of my students who graduated in 2009 from FANAKA just called him to notify him of a family tragedy. I could tell Mwenda was upset because his English became extremely broken and he was moving the fastest I've nearly ever have seen from a Tanzanian. I finally got it out of him that the student was Kelvin and his family’s house burnt down just hours ago. We dropped everything and rushed to town to do our part to help.

We ended up meeting Kelvin outside his technical college where he is learning Tax and auditing. He explained that a week ago he paid all his school fees that allowed him to sit for his examinations that started in just two days but the University called him shortly before the fire to say he needed to bring his receipts to prove he paid, or he couldn’t sit for his exams. Although situations like this are stressful, he thought he could just go home, grab the receipts and everything would be straightened out. As he sat in his final lecture for the day, his friend sent him an SOS message. He stepped out not expecting to hear some of the worst news he could imagine; his family’s house burnt down with everything they owned inside.  He rushed home to find his house black as night with all his possession gone.

When we arrived it was absolutely heartbreaking to see what little possession they had to start, sitting in the yard ruined. With crying and prayers in the background, Kelvin walked us around his small house where his brother, two sisters and his mother stayed. Although the cement structure of the house remained, every couch, picture and bed was gone. Luckily, no one was hurt. But, in Tanzania there is no such thing as insurance. When you lose something, it’s gone for good. There is no government support, no insurance check coming in the mail and no means to recover important documents. Kelvin sat holding a folder of charred papers that included barely readable documents that proved his life accomplishments, including those essential receipts. He held it up with tears in his eyes and said, ‘madam, this is my life. This is all I have left.’

All too often I have seen how detrimental family tragedies have on students. They can shake a student so bad that they ruin their only opportunity for a future. In Tanzania everything comes down to an exam. In secondary school they have one shot, if they blow it, they can kiss their future goodbye. For Kelvin, these life changing exams started in just two days. Everything he needed to study from was gone. Not a single pencil remained. This is the most agonizing detail of Kelvin’s story and one that continues to keep me up at night.

I had given him as much money as I could so he could start to rebuild his family’s life but it hardly put a dent in the loss.

I am asking for your support. Anything you can give will allow Kelvin to at least replace his school materials. For additional questions please email me at cassie.parkhurst@yahoo.com. All donations can be made directly to National Exchange Bank or sent to N5205 CTY S Beaver Dam WI 53916. Thank you in advance for your warm thoughts, prayers and contributions.
-Cassie

Through the Dust

The three of us have been busy tearing apart the Academic office at FANAKA. This office should be the backbone of the school, used to develop teachers as well as students’ academic performance. Unfortunately, for the past two years it has served as only storage pit.

It has always been on my ‘to do’ list for this trip as the condition of the room when I left was less than functional. As we jostled the keys to get inside, I knew we had a project on our hands. The first creak of the door let in blurry light and a spider web hung from the ceiling. Stacks and stacks of dusty, dirty copies of past exams piled from every inch in site.  The room smelled of musty paper, it pierced your nose with every breath.  Creatures of all kinds starred up at us but we pushed on. It didn't take long to develop our own filthy assembly line of organization. Biology papers went here, geography there and the ‘I have no idea what this is’ went to the far right-we’ll get to those later.
 

As grubby as this project was, it was nice to break from the mental work we have been doing day and night for the last two months. It brought me back to the ‘TZ3’ when Eileen, Teresa and I spent months trudging through piles of dusty books and soggy boxes to build those libraries.

Physical projects give your mind instant gratification. You can see the before and after. See where your sweat was left to make some sense of the mess. The message was clear, work hard and you can SEE the results. A struggle of mine as the president of TEP (and most people in the field) is that most donors push for these physical projects. They want to see the results of our time and money spent. Unfortunately, most projects that make the greatest impact are those that the results take months or even years to see. They don’t present themselves in perfect before and after pictures.

I hope that our donors will understand how much mental work has been poured into FANAKA to try and save the school. I am confident the physical results will show one day through higher enrollment rates, higher examination rates and a stronger institution being able to speak to it all.  

-Cassie

Trip to Zanzibar

My name is Sean Leyva and I am interning with the Tanzanian Education Project. I arrived here in Tanzania on the 26th of July and will be in Bujnu taking pictures and documenting life here at Fanaka memorial school for the next couple of weeks.

I’ve been in Tanzania for almost a week and I have to say that it has been quite the eye opening experience. The country is a far cry from my home in Colorado, the air is thick and filled with pollution and there are people all over the place. The streets are filled with every type of vehicle you can imagine and they are all moving in different directions, passing each other by mere inches.

Cassie, Katie and me spent the first couple of days on vacation in Zanzibar Island off the coast of Tanzania. You have to take a short ferry ride to the island and once you disembark you find yourself under a barrage of shouting from taxi drivers wanting to take you to your destination. Fortunately for us we had arranged a private taxi to take us to the other side of the island to a resort town called Nungwi.

The ride to the other side of the island was quick and the landscape was straight out of National Geographic, the forest was thick with lush palm tree and burst to life with an array of green plant life. The road to Nungwi was lined with street merchants and farmers selling their goods and when we pulled in to Nungwi I was shocked at how dead the place seemed. We had forgotten that we arrived during the height of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Since much of Zanzibar is Muslim most of the shops and restaurants closed their doors for the holiday. Despite the holiday the resort town was still pretty busy, we stayed at the Nungwi Guest House, where we were welcomed with open arms.

The innkeeper was a very nice man who kept us entertained and thankfully spoke English very well. Most of time in Nungwi was spent on the white sandy beaches enjoying the sun and the crystal clear water. To keep costs down we ate our meals in the in only shop in town that kept its doors open during Ramadan. To avoid offending the locals we ate our food in our hotel, where our innkeeper didn’t mind that we ate in front of him. Since Nungwi and Stone town are filled with tourists the locals take every opportunity to sell you just about anything. I learned really quick how to say no thank you in Swahili. Aside from the constant pestering from the local merchants we walked the beaches barefoot and enjoyed the beautiful landscape that Zanzibar has provided us.

 After a couple of days in beautiful Nungwi we made our way back to the main port city of Stone Town, stopping to enjoy a spice tour on the way. IT was amazing to see just where the everyday spices I eat everyday originate. Once in Stone Town we checked into our hotel, Cassie Katie and I began to walk around town and discover what Stone Town had to offer. Much like Nungwi, Stone Town was pretty much closed down for the Muslim Holy month. The narrow streets of Stone Town are filled with people and cars whizzing by and any shops that where open were filled with tourists. The town has a very old feeling to it and the Arabic architecture adds to that aura. We splurged a bit in Stone Town and had a few nice meals and a hot shower or two. The following day we hopped on the Ferry, which was a nightmare, the ocean was rather rough and made the boat and our stomachs jostle in every direction. Once back in Dar Es Salaam we got our sea legs back and began the journey to Bunju.

Sean Leyva

8/1/12