News from Jenny in Tanzania
Hello Fr Graham an all St Joseph's Parish
I hope all had a happy and blessed Christmas and New Year.
Just a short update on life in Tanzania. It is almost 3 months, and I have settled in really well. Life has had its ups and downs. For just over 4 weeks I had a stomach bug that kept me feeling unwell, but not really sick. Thankfully that has passed, and I am back to normal now. Life didn't slow down over Christmas. As this is mostly a Muslim country, Christmas is not that big, and people don't slow down, with the exception of the usual public holidays. I was actually very busy over the Christmas week, catching up on heaps of work that I had expected to have done before then. School starts on the 9th January but the teachers cam back to work last Monday (2nd). It has been very exciting getting our classrooms ready for the new school year. The teachers, both local women, are some of my ups, and they have made their rooms look fantastic. The school has two classes, Chekechea which takes children 3 and 4 years old, and Pre-Primary which takes children 5 and 6 years old. Pre-Primary is a pre-requisite for entering Primary School, and believe it or not, the children must sit an entrance exam to gain entry into Primary School. Standards are high here in Tanzania - but achievement levels do not match their standards.
Also part of my role as Education Manager here is supervision of tuition, Community English and Mamas' English. Tuition here is almost compulsory, and most children go to tuition classes after school every school day. Kesho Leo, our project, also offers tuition to the children of the "Mamas" who live on the project, and also to the local children. They come in the afternoon for 1 hour tuition, and some of them come to us after they have been to tuition at their local school. After tuition, they go home and do their homework. Some of them really work hard. We also offer English lessons to people from the local community, and provide the Mamas on the project English lessons as well. At the moment one of our tuition teachers is on maternity leave, and we have one of the school teachers filling in, but she is not able to do English lessons as her English is not good enough, so I will be filling in for the next couple of months. Boy will it be busy!
I am sitting here in our outdoor community area that has lounge chairs under a banana leaf thatched roof, and it has just started raining. So far the weather here has been generally mild with only a few really hot days, so walking everywhere has not been too bad. The walk to the project from where I live is about 20 minutes each way. Some days I go back and forth two or three times, so I am doing plenty of walking. Unfortunately the middle of most days gets hot and the walk is not so much fun - I miss my car, but I couldn't have it here as the roads are dirt and in very bad condition. When it rains, the soil becomes very muddy and slippery. Walking on the muddy roads has its hazards, because as well as being slippery, the mud sticks to your shoes and you tend to bring half the road or paddock back with you attached to your shoes. I am not looking forward to the rainy season from late March when mud is part of life. Our home village is all dirt paths so our rooms and shoes and even clothes end up really muddy.
I have a pair of boots so hope that will keep me reasonably clean.
God bless,
Jenny
07.01.2012.
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