The women carry the BIG stones

Mambo,

I got the chance to add a few more Photos as I am in Tanga helping with the new Peace Corps trainees arrival.

Tanga in on the ocean, beautiful cool breezes and fast Internet!

Here is a photo of a mama quite eager to show you that the women carry the granite stones in this village for new house construction/septic systems.

The men make bricks.

Also, look back and you will see I was able to get the fashion photos loaded and the final paint job on the new teacher house.

The teachers have moved in. I begged to show up with a bucket of water and cleaning supplies to help them prepare the new house to move in, but that would not allow it. I told them that my mama always showed up to help someone clean before moving into a new house. Pole, they said. I could come after, to celebrate together.

Update on Kongei Teacher House

Here are a few pictures. The house is finished as well as two septic tanks for the new and old housing units! There will be two teachers and their familes that will move in this week!

Fashion Photos from a Kongei Student Designer

Rehema is a bright, gregarious and organized young woman. Her talents are in leadership such as building trusting relationships, ability to see the big picture, and creative use of resources is strong. People rely on her and choose her to be “in charge” of a project.

I got to know Rehema when she asked me to lead the music club. The teacher that was their leader left the school two years prior and they have been on their own since. She and her friends wanted to learn how to play the recorders that the school had stashed away. Her dream was to have the band (recorders and drums) play the national anthem and the school song at graduation. Well, since then they have played the national anthem and this year will play both the national anthem, school song and Simple Gifts which was at Obama’s inauguration ceremony!

Last year’s graduation performances required auditions. The band made it in, but Rehema’s true love, African Fashion Designs, did not. I was shocked when she told me that her fashion show was not approved. Rehema had 8 classmates model outfits she designed from kangas and kitenges. She sews the outfits on the model and finishes the look with headdresses and shoes to make it work. The models were very professional in their presentation and “walk”. They even had music! Good music!

Looking back, I guess it is too much for an all girls catholic boarding school to allow sophisticated African women’s’ fashion into the graduation ceremonies, but I also did not forget that this young woman was talented. I did not forget when Rehema told me her dream was to be a fashion designer. She told me she wants to show the world the sophistication and beauty of African fashion.

So, when I suggested to her that I could take pictures of her fashions and make a CD that she could use as she wished to share her designs—sort of a portfolio of her work to date­ she did not turn me down.

After the Form IV Mock Exams in May, she and her fellow classmates had three weeks free. I was teaching during the day, so we planned time for photo shoots after classes and before the daylight dimmed. One day I brought kangas, kitenges and Massai blankets from my closet for her to use. She lined up three models and got needle and thread from the school tailor. In the backroom of the biology lab she dressed her models while I showed a movie, Akeeleh and the Bee, from my laptop to 30-40 other Form IV students.

The models are almost as amazing as Rehema when it comes to posing for shots. Rehema directed the shoot, but the young women were talented, striking a pose, holding it and looking natural for every shot! When I downloaded them at home I was amazed I did not have one bad picture.

The next day, they met to create the designs in the biology lab while I was vigilating exams. Then a second shoot. Now we had an audience of Form II students that called themselves “helpers”, moving plants to add to the settings and clearing the little village children from the background when needed. Rehema talked about having a web page of her designs and we talked about writing her story to accompany her design photos.

My time volunteering here is short and what will have long term outcomes only God knows. But this fun adventure, helping Rehema make a digital portfolio of her early fashion designs, may be something I hadn’t imagined as part of my service.

UPDATE: Kongei Primary Teacher Housing Project

UPDATE: Kongei Primary Teacher Housing Project
Part I
February/March 09
Kongei Primary School is my favorite place to go. Walking up the long hill to the first terrace, on the right is the outdoor kitchen with two or three huge pots cooking on tripod stones with wood fires – when there is food available to cook. Beyond the kitchen is the school garden that we made together last September which has expanded to 12 long matutas 1 meter by 6 meters.
Then, walking up to the second terrace, I can hear the lower grades reciting numbers , letters or vowels, or singing songs to assist the memory of some concept or pronunciation of new words. “Simama kaa, simama kaa. Ruka ruka ruka, simama kaa.” (Stand and sit, stand and sit, jump jump jump, stand and sit).
I enter the 1st grade class and the students stand proudly to say their school motto and speak one of the first English phrases they have learned, “Good morning Madame. How are you?” Every time I visit, we do something together. One day I explained where in the world I come from, using the cover of a pencil box with a world map drawn.
Yesterday, I came ready to teach them “Head, shoulders, knees and toes.” Their teacher, Sr. Alma had learned it the week before from me and asked me to come teach her class. The students’ favorite thing was when Sr. Alma tried to sing it alone after they had tried. When she made a mistake, all of us laughed together. This kind of excitement for learning and the appreciation of making mistakes is a breath of fresh air after working all week at the secondary school where the relationship between students and teachers is often more formal and for many teachers, distant.
For John and me, the students are free to be more casual. We are visitors to their culture. Both the secondary and primary students touch my hair, pinch my skin and run their hands up and down my arms to feel the tiny hairs - much like a baby exploring a new person when held while drinking their bottle. I might be focused on teaching one student when I realize another little hand touching my hair from behind or pinching the soft skin hanging from my upper arms.
Finally, I walk up to the third terrace where the upper grades and the Headmistress’s office are contained. The students look too big for the desks as they are scrunched into the small space between bench and desk top. Standard 7 students are 13-15 years old and emotionally ready to go off on their own. Most will not go on to secondary school because of the cost of school fees, but instead work on their own fields, get married, and start a family.
One Friday morning, I walked to the primary school to take pictures of community members (parents of students) digging the foundation for the new house for teachers. The lumber, cement, iron sheets for the roof and other hardware supplies were delivered by lorry and stacked by students in the store and the back of classrooms. The stones were quarried and carried by community women to the site. The bricks have been molded in a nearby village home, carried to the school and fired. One morning I had the privilege of watching a man build the line of fires inside the stacked bricks (a kiln made of the bricks to be fired) and then, find him in the evening stoking the fires where he remained all night. The following morning, the cracks between the bricks were chinked and smoke billowed from all sides as the bricks cooled.
I was told the master builder arrived last week, inspected the leveled site and gave instructions for where to dig the foundation trenches. Rueben Masenga, second headmaster, was wearing his gum boots and looking more serious than normal. He told me he has to be there to be sure the workers follow the directions correctly. He also mentioned that the rains have come, and heavy rains can stop work for a day or more. The excitement of receiving the funding for the housing has taken second chair to the worries of building a strong structure and managing on a schedule determined as much by the rains as the workers.
Part II
April 09
On April 4th I was invited to a School Community Committee meeting at Kongei Primary School. This meeting’s agenda included a report of progress on the teacher housing project and a request to consider applying for an environmental Peace Corps Volunteer for next year. Four people from Kongei Primary school including Headmistress, Sr. Shirima, Second Head, Rueben Masenga, and two classroom teachers spoke to the community chairperson, and two community representatives about the housing project’s progress.
· The master builder and his son (also an experienced builder) have worked with the community workers to level the site and lay the foundation. The master builder’s son will take over as the master builder to complete the housing.
· The foundation is completed and the walls are almost completed as of April 4th. The rainy season rains have been late, and this has helped the good progress (the garden has suffered a bit). It is anticipated that the roof rafters will be placed next week followed by iron roofing sheets.
· There were enough bricks provided by the community to allow the builders to make the rooms bigger than originally planned!
· There are not enough stones and sand to complete both septic tanks (one for the new housing and one for the older housing) so the additional stones and sand needed were purchased with part of the donation from Grace University Lutheran Church. The community leaders agreed to bring community women to carry the stones and sand to the building site.
· The older housing unit needs interior ceiling boards installed before the cold season arrives. The community has agreed to find a way to complete this. The funds needed are not yet available but will come from the school community. The school wants to preserve the remaining funds from Grace to assure the completion of the new housing and 2 septic tanks needed.

The Kongei Primary School Community welcomes you for tea and to see their school, the new teacher housing and the garden for yourselves.
The school community is very excited to be working together with their USA partners and so relieved that the rains have waited, allowing them to anticipate completing the new teacher housing on schedule.

I have pictures of the building progress and the gardens. These will be added to my Goggle PICASSO site when I go to Dar later this month where there is high speed internet available.

Thank you from our heats. Happy Easter. Peace

Randee

March 28th: Life in Lushoto

March 09 in Tanzania

My 56th Birthday in Tanzania
I just had my 56th birthday and realize I came at 54 (below the half way mark) and will return when I am on the other half of 50's. Mostly this is part of the thoughts that come from time to time in my imagining or rehearsing reentry into the USA atmosphere.

It has been a while since I have written, so I will begin with a story much like when I first arrived.
Our Neighborhood
I was biking back from Lushoto on my road near my house. A woman and her kindergarten age daughter were sitting in the ditch picking up kernels of corn, one-by-one. I stopped to help, as I had done before, but this time, it never occurred to me as an unusual practice- saving each kernel like it was a gold nugget. Instead, it occurred to me that this was an opportunity to chat with a mama much like chatting with a neighbor I meet at home in the USA. (Yes, I find that I am clarifying which home I mean these days as both come up often now.)
We talked and picked and sorted out the little stones, returning the kernels to her basket which she carries on her head. I found out that her daughter attends Kongei Primary and remembered me from the carrot feast I celebrating their first harvest of the new school garden. Soon, two young men stopped to join us in the task. They told me they are from the village near Chumbageni Primary school where we have helped with a school garden. They have completed Standard 7 (last grade of primary school) and are working on the family shamba (farm). We talked faming until we finished retrieving the corn. Mama headed to Lushoto to sell her corn. The young men escorted me, riding my bike to my house and invited John and me to come to their village on Saturdays to watch them play soccer.

Peace Corps Comrades
There are four health volunteers and three new education volunteers as well as two education volunteers that came with John and me in the Tanga area. That means that we are family. We keep in touch, sometimes help each other do projects at our sites, and somewhat regularly visit/party together. The parties are for any reason but are for the purpose of sharing time together cooking of meals (with food brought from our areas), discussing books and swapping books, hiking and biking, giving and receiving haircuts, and sleeping where ever one can find room on a mattress. This time with those that can understand best what life is like and those that chose this kind of life—voluntarily – is one of the significant things I know I will miss back home (USA).
The last party was March 28th, my birthday. Our local neighbors stopped by to visit our PCV guests. I really appreciate the discussions that happen because our younger PCV comrades have much better Kiswahili than we do. With their help to translate and with the cross fertilization of PC health volunteers and education volunteers, many ideas that I think about can actually be explored deeply with my Tanzanian comrades of gardens and HIV/AIDS education.
On a bike ride to Soni with Marielle and Sarah, we greeted folks while dodging mud holes and rocks. For Marielle and Sarah, this was a chance to bike in a climate that was cool. They have bikes but it is too hot at their sites to consider this as pleasure. Our job on this tour was to find tambi (local pasta) to make minestrone for dinner and to buy toilet paper, local fruits and veggies and coffee for them to take back to their sites. Then, of course, to “window” shop for kangas and kitenges (material). (There are no windows on shops).
On returning, Marielle was exhausted from struggling to keep her bike in gear. Both Marielle and Sarah had sore butts from little recent riding and because we traveled to three villages and back in search of tambi.
But it was a beautiful ride. It included a rich discussion on theology and the common struggle for productive farming in TZ with Fr. Attanis (where we buy coffee) and greetings from two youth from Kongei Primary boys that remembered fondly the lesson on fish anatomy with Michelle who visited us from St. Paul and taught fish biology for a week.

Kongei Secondary School
This year I am teaching Form II and III – the same students I taught last year. Form IV lost their Biology teacher and currently has a teacher that is very busy with management jobs, so we are meeting off and on to cover material that they are missing and need to pass their exams. Form I does not have a Biology teacher yet so every week I check to see if a teacher has arrived and if not, I teach. Hopefully there will be a new teacher arriving in April after midterm break.
John is teaching Form IV math- the same students he taught last year. Form I does not have a math teacher so he is sharing the two classes with the physics teacher to be sure they are getting math.
The student peer leadership training on Life Skills and HIV/AIDS that started last year has evolved into peer teaching this year. On Wednesdays the peer leaders meet with teachers to prepare the lesson they want to teach. On Sundays, three peer leaders teach one class together. The students have expressed their appreciation and sense of importance in their life both as instructors and as students of their peers. The head nurse of the local health clinic continues to be an important guest consultant for the lessons.
The two new fun things started this year is a new room designated for a Biology and Physics labs and a computer lab. The school received 9 used computers from an NGO in Denmark. John is enjoying setting up this lab and helping teacher and students develop computer skills. My sister sent 10 flash drives and teachers are earning the chance to purchase one when they develop the skills and therefore the need for a flash drive.

The new Biology/Physics lab is yet without enough tables, no chairs and no shelves. BUT it has water and a demo table as well as a blackboard that is smooth! (I have borrowed chairs to use until the new ones are made.) Michelle, a biology teacher and curriculum specialist of MNAQUA from St. Paul, MN brought the materials and know-how to set-up an aquarium in the new lab. She and I worked with a primary school teacher/second headmaster to find the fish and found a welder in Lushoto to make the aquarium glass box supported by a steel bottom and corners. My Form III students had a week of lessons from Michelle on fish adaptations for movement in water and respiration. Every day, they take turns feeding the fish and are learning how to siphon to clean the aquarium. They say, “What will happen when they get big, will we eat them? “Will they reproduce?”, “Why do they eat at the surface?”, “Now I can see how they are breathing. I thought they were drinking.” This year the Science club is making a skeleton model to hang next to the digestion model they made last year. They are also hoping to complete posters to teach about global warming, destruction of the ozone layer and ecology concepts. We are considering a diorama of a Tanzanian savanna…. Mungu akipenda.

Gardens and HIV/AIDS Workshop for Primary Teachers
Gardens
In February, we developed two more school gardens developed in our area, teaching the biointesive gardening and permaculture methods Peace Corps specialist Peter Jensen has given us.

You may remember, last September Peter came and worked with Kongei Primary school to develop a school garden. He and I worked with the school to hire 5 community adults to work with him to teach the students and teachers. Two of those adults are my local friends and have children or nieces and nephews that attend two different primary schools in the area. Both talked to these schools about developing a garden and then asked me to help it to happen. The three of us together with a woman who has been helping me with my personal garden, worked with each school and developed two school gardens - 6 matutas (beds) and 3 guilds (fruit tree with nutritious greens and herbs below). These “home spun” garden initiatives have blossomed into 42 matutas at one school and 20 matutas at the other school. Now that the rainy season has started, the maize, beans, spinach and carrots planted are thriving! Also, Kongei Primary has harvested carrots, spinach and greens, eaten and replanted crops. They have added eight matutas to their school garden.

Kongei Primary headmistress has made about 15 matutas in her personal garden for a family project she has in mind from her yield. The agriculture teacher at one of the other school’s has started elder groups that learned the methods from the students and have started gardens at their homes.
This area is a farming area and the people appreciate the opportunity to learn new methods to try to improve their yields—to have more food, more days for their children. For example, Ali’s wife (one of the adults teaching biointensive gardening methods with me) has invited me to visit her garden to learn how she terraces the steep land in the area. She offers classes on terracing which she learned from a program called Farm Africa. This is a fertile area for learning and developing ways to grow more food.
Primary Teacher’s Workshop on teaching about HIV/AIDS
I visited Chumbageni Primary School in September to deliver books on Nutrition and Caring for PLWHA (People living with HIV/AIDS) and Life Skills (for children of primary and secondary school age) which they had ordered from the PEPFAR office in Dar es Salaam. After greetings and tea, I discussed the content and my personal experience using the books to teach secondary students with the two teachers present. One was from Chumbageni Primary and one was from Mshizi Primary. The woman explained, “We need these books, but first we need to know more about HIV/AIDS for ourselves.” From this conversation grew the plan for a teacher workshop on HIV/AIDS for the three primary schools in our area developing gardens, too.
On March 6th, three interested teachers from each school and two village mosque leaders/teachers met at Kongei Primary School to discuss the facts and myths of HIV/AIDS and to introduce new ways to teach primary students effective life skills and facts about HIV/AIDS pertaining to their lives and their family. Also to provide time to discuss questions of the teachers and possible solutions to needs identified.
The meeting was facilitated by John and me. The instructors included us and Peace Corps Health Volunteers and local Tanzanian presenters from Lushoto and the immediate Kongei community that are trained in teaching Life Skills and HIV/AIDS. After a full day of presentations, group work on lesson designs, panel discussions to answer questions and evaluation needs the decision was to have another meeting. Representatives signed-up to be the next planners.
Since this meeting, the two village teachers have shared stories of classes they have started for youth at their homes on Saturdays. My discussions with them have been about their idea to design a meeting for young men and women of their area that have finished primary school Standard 7 but will not go on to Form I-IV secondary school. These are youth that do not have future formal opportunities to learn about HIV/AIDS and life skills strategies.

SHOES

Two friends from USA came in December to visit, bringing 2 suitcases of shoes that students from Farnsworth Elementary in St. Paul, MN collected and donated for Kongei Primary Students.

The Kongei students have been on holiday from November 28th until January 14th. I brought the shoes to school last week, and the teachers fitted students who needed shoes most. ALL the shoes were gone, the suitcases empty, and donated to two of the teachers that needed these.

Thank you to Becky and Joan for their long journey and to Cecilia and her students at Farnsworth Elementary!

We have Begun! Kongei Teacher Housing Project

24 Jan 2009
Greetings

I am posting a short message to let you all know that I have received the funds for Kongei Primary School's Teachers Housing Project from USA. Last week Mr. Masenga, second headmaster and I went to Lushoto and purchased all the building supplies needed, including such things as metal roofing sheets, re bar, toilets, sinks, cement, nails, and lumber. It took three trips by lorry from town to deliver the items. The doors and windows are being made and will be delivered later.

The community met on Dec 5th to organize the work for when the funds arrived. On January 9th, they began clearing the site. Currently, there are bricks that have been carried to the school grounds and fired on the spot. They villagers build a kiln out of the bricks to be fired, leaving 2 holes at the bottom to build fires and then use mud to seal the spaces between the bricks on the outermost layer.

Women have started carrying granite stones to the school from places in the community where granite in mined. A lorry has delivered sand collected from the river bottom.

On last Thursday, I visited the home where more bricks are being made. This is a place 1 km from the school where the soil is best for making bricks. Also, early Thursday, many people arrived with jembes (hoes) to level the site. Next week the master builder will arrive from Tanga to begin construction.

Thank you all for your generosity to help make this possible. With the extra funds received beyond the initial proposal, we are able to complete a septic system for two other houses already built but with out toilets. It is our hope that we may have enough funds for electricity to be added. We will access as things go.


It may take a while but I will add pictures when the internet connection allows.
Remember to double click on the picture above and it will take you to my album of pictures of the events happening with the building of the house and two septic tanks.