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