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.

December 2008

December 2008
Merry Christmas!
We wish we could be with you this holiday, sharing hugs and laughs and good food.

One year has passed and still it does not seem like Christmas is here. Some things I will not get used to. I miss the change of seasons, the lakes and the snow.

Yesterday I washed clothes, hung them to dry in the hot sun. I was careful to hang my underpants on the line between two other lines with towels and shirts so that they are hidden from the view of neighbors passing by. That is the accepted rule in Tanzania.

John is fixing the latch on the bathroom door and putting a new plug on the electrical cord for our 2-burner hot plate. Having electricity is nice, but the last two days it has been out and this is not nice—back to candles, kerosene lanterns and charcoal stoves.

My garden is reaching a stage of harvest again. Soon I can pick cow peas, carrots, okra, sweet potatoes and leeks. Already I have gotten 9 huge Brandywine tomatoes from one plant. I have a "pet" that got into my garden today—one of our young school cows. She broke free from her rope and was feasting on my fresh cow pea plants. The leaves are some of the best tasting greens! I pulled her back to her feeding spot, retied her tether, and brought her a bucket of water. She was very happy, nudged me and accepted a pat on her nose and scratching behind the ears.

Two friends, Becky and Joan from Minnesota came to visit for two weeks, just leaving a few days ago. I met them at the Kilimanjaro airport when they arrived and we all flew to Kigali, the capitol of Rwanda. We were driven by a guide to the National Park (2 hours) to see gorilla. For two days we trekked into the forest finding a family of 12 - 20 gorillas, then sitting for an hour watching them. I will never forget sitting 6 feet from a giant silverback male and watching the 3 year old children playing "ring-around-the- silverback daddy" and beating their chests in play. One young gorilla came running towards me just as we arrived and grabbed my pant leg. He looked at me as if to say, "You're finally here! Come play!" In a family group there is only one silver back male that is the leader and father, then there can be 5-10 females (or more) and each mom has one or more children. The gorillas live to about 45 years. One group we watched had a one month old child that clung to her mother's chest as mom walked and climbed to the tree top into a nest.

Before we left Rwanda, we visited the Genocide Museum and talked at length with our guides about how the people are moving through the process to recover from 1 million people killed over 3 months. Their stories are hard and remarkable at the same time. They talked of the establishment of levels crimes and then levels of consequences, but that all that killed must do community service to rebuild the country. Also, there is a ceremony/gathering that happens once a year where people who have killed choose to stand and tell the people what happened, who they killed and what happened to the bodies of those killed. The guides talked about how difficult this is but how healing it is for everyone.

We had another 8 days together back in Tanzania bird-watching and living in glorified camping style at our site. It is always hard for me to say goodbye. We look forward to coming home for Christmas next year.

We will spend Christmas with four other volunteers and three Sisters from our village, at Amani Forest Preserve. There is a parish at Amani that has housing for volunteers from all over the world. There are beautiful trails through the tropical forest seeing chameleons, tree frogs, African violets, exotic birds and butterflies as well as Collobus and Blue monkeys.

I have enjoyed going to the Catholic Church and occasionally the Lutheran services available when school is in session. We have also been invited to celebrate important Muslim holidays with our neighbors. All services are in Kiswahili, so I understand very little. I can sing the songs but I cannot understand the sermons. When school is in session every Tuesday morning (6am) there is a Mass in English. But this Christmas, I will bring my English hymnal with us to Amani and sing Christmas carols together.

New Years will be back at our site. Our night watchman, Twaha, has invited us to his family home for dinner. Probably rice cooked in coconut milk, local spinach, beans and tea. We expect New Year's Eve will be drumming and dancing, and church bells heard from all the hills around us ­ as usual. Greetings to all of you and we hope you are well and content with each day.

We send our love and, of course, we think of you always. We send our prayers for a joyous celebration with family and friends this holiday. John and Randee

Reflections on our first year

• December 20, 2008
  Reflections on our first year
  Work and play has been a whirlwind since September. We are told by the volunteers who have just completed their 2 years of service that the 2nd and final year will go even faster.
  For this BLOG entry, I am telling you the things we have been working on with all the different kinds of support from people at home and here.
  SCIENCE TEACHING STRATIGIES
  (many of these came from Saint Paul Public School Teachers!)
  · The use of notebook organizational strategies in Form I. When we started revision for the annual exam, the students could see for themselves the topics covered and the pages in their notes that were helpful.
  · Lots of designing little experiments together to develop problem solving skills. Once students got the idea of guessing and forming a hypothesis, they were more willing to talk in class, saying, “madame, I will try. I think...” It has been a revelation to students that the facts they must memorize for National Exams were discovered by the investigative process they were doing.
  · Scavenger hunts to discover things in their environment pertaining to topics.
  · With all the colored pencils donated by many of you folks, students were highly motivated to draw biology diagrams required in the notebooks.
  · Teaching students how to write an essay on biology topics, then small group practice on writing different essays together.
  · Form I prepared short lessons and short notes (by lab group) on Form I Biology topics and taught these to Form II for their revision of Form I topics before the regional exam.
  · Preparing study guides for each new topic was very helpful to keep students working between classes, copying short notes, looking up and defining new vocabulary, drawing diagrams, and answering g summary questions. Also, sharing vocabulary words with the English teacher.
  · Giving a pre-test before each topic which students completed in small groups in class proved to be highly motivating and useful to me and the students to know what they needed to learn and what they knew.
  · Getting live or fresh specimens from the community for dissection was of high interest and allowed the school community to get involved with the teaching of students. The school cook got the fish, the night watchman went to the village to get the cow heart, lungs and trachea on the day we needed it so it would not spoil. The sisters got to eat it after! Eggs for osmosis were gotten from the school hens and many food supplies from the cook. The school tailor hemmed the rice bags to use for instructional posters.
  · Having students work in small groups to take practice NECTA EXAMS allowed me to correct only 12 exams per class and let them pool their knowledge.
  · Having small groups prepare lessons with requirements of visual aids and participation then rotate the small groups to teach another small group really facilitated more questions and discussions because they were small little classes with in a class. This also really helped the students struggling with English. They could talk in Kiswahili when needed for deeper understanding.
  · Small groups constructing models of different kinds of cells out of play dough and scraps of material and things I saved from my house (foil from Nido cans, bottle caps, rope, cardboard, etc.). The challenge of seeing cells as 3-D is huge and this really helped.
  · Doing a little Yoga and singing songs with students as a way to re-energize before class starts.
  Some outcomes:
  · Students at Kongei Secondary School have said to me, “I will always be able to say that I know these things because I was able to build the human body model, dissect the cow heart and see the anatomy movies. I can tell my family and my future children.” “Nobody has ever shown us these ways to protect ourselves from HIV.” “We have tried, really tried.”
  · The Form II Biology students performed 57% higher on their regional exam than the last Form II class. Kongei students told me that one of my students earned the highest score in the district on the Biology Mock Exam.
  · Form I Biology students all were able to write a good essay question answer on their annual exam and many were able to correctly answer questions about a scientific experiment and then analyze experimental data on their annual exam. The Form I overall exam scores demonstrated very good results.
  · With the help of John Olson, St.Paul Public Schools, I have completed an inventory of the chemicals at Kongei and prepared a folder with Chemical Safety Data Sheets for every chemical after a science department meeting generated interest in having this safety resource.
  · A science teacher from Gare Secondary School and I have been able to share lesson plans and teaching aids to teach biology and chemistry. We have agreed to work together again next year.
  · The teacher from Gare and met with the headmaster at Gare and together wrote a proposal for a basic science lab.
  · Katy Lee, PCV at Ubiri Secondary School and I worked together to teach 15 of her students how to conduct the experiments to test for food nutrients. These lab experiments are part of the Form II Biology syllabus and are part of the Form IV NECTA Exam. I met a student last week on the road and she asked if I could return next term to teach them more of the practical exam skills they will need.
  
  SCIENCE CLUB
  · The eight students that constructed a display for the library including a 3-D torso model and accompanying instructional poster received recognition at graduation. We had five groups of 15 students watch and discuss the collection of human anatomy DVD’s produced through the Body Worlds exhibit author.
  
  MUSIC CLUB
  With the help of my cousin, Dianna, donating Instruction books and music, the music club students have learned how to read music and performed the national anthem at graduation. Since graduation and the purchase of additional flutes, the club grew from 7 to 16 students. Form III drummers have started teaching Form I students how to play to replace them when they leave at the end of next year.
  
  COMPUTER SKILLS
  · A biology teacher at Kongei worked with me to enter his grades on an excel spread sheet to calculate the final grades for the year.
  · A physics teacher used my computer to type his own annual exams. Next term he plans to use the new computers that have arrived at the school.
  
  Permaculture/ Life Skills
  · Student Peer leadership group had 5 Sunday seminars to learn about HIV/AIDS and develop life skills to have more choices and strategies to use in daily living. Next term they will be teaching their peers.
  · Kongei Primary School garden is growing well. and they have added another 6 matutas of carrots and kunde. They have sold mchicha from their garden to the community. After completing the garden,
  · The Kongei Primary second master reported that parents were coming to see the garden because their child had encouraged them to build a garden like it at their home. Also, he has a garden near the road going to the school that he and his son have constructed using the bio-intensive methods learned from the school garden.
  · Our neighborhood shamba worker and night watchman participated in the two workshops with Peter and asked to go together to bring the composting methods, perma-culture and bio-intensive garden methods to two other primary schools in the area (Chumbageni and Mchizi). We have gone twice to Chumbageni primary school. The head teacher instructed the students to start a compost pile at home. We have been asked to return in January and help them construct a demonstration garden.
  · When I returned to Chumbageni Primary to take the HIV/AIDS and Life Skills books, three teachers told me they needed a teacher seminar to learn more about HIV/AIDS and how to teach their students. The teachers came from Mchizi and Chumbageni Primary Schools. Kongei Primary and their teachers are also interested in a HIV/AIDS Teacher Seminar. We discussed the possibility to have a seminar in February hosted by Kongei Primary.
  · I was invited by a primary student to help her and her friends to construct a garden next to her grandparents’ home where she lives. We completed one bed together with her friends and the second will be constructed with her uncle.
  · I have started nursery beds at my site for “guild” plants that are hard to find here and seeds for popular vegetables (papaya, aloe, lemon grass, avocado, mchicha, Brandywine tomatoes, vitungu kitamu rangi ya carroti).
  · My counterpart has expanded the garden by my house, adding beds of cabbage that he has transplanted to another area to raise for profit. He has requested to add more beds of his favorite vegetables. This has brought more local people into my garden to help, learning the techniques of bio-intensive gardening.
  · In Lushoto two women’s groups developed a gardens at homes. In January, they have asked for help to develop a garden at the primary school in Lushoto where one is a teacher.
  
  PCPP Funding for Teacher Housing at Kongei Primary School
  Kongei Primary School has successfully written a Partnership Grant proposal for teacher housing. With ALL your donations and support, the funds have been raised and on December 3, 2008 we had a meeting with the leadership team to start the process to build teacher housing and septic tank. The school committee met on December 5th and has planned for the site preparation to begin in January.
  
  Mathematics and Technology
  John has been teaching Form III and IV Mathematics. Here is a brief summary of his work. Go to his BLOG for more details: johntanzania.blogspot.com
  · The math students have made huge gains in their exam scores through his teaching (77% improvement). The Math scores in Tanzania in general are extremely low and so it is difficult to convince students that it is possible to succeed in math.
  · Some of the strategies he is using are: spiraling homework assignments so students would have constant review, building math skills and confidence; approach new material from a problem-solving perspective; and having students’ working in groups to discover solutions and strategies.
  · He has designed a one week Math Camp the week before January term begins for Form VI students that are struggling with Math.
  · With 10 rebuilt computers that arrived from Demark, John hopes to make more progress in teaching computer skills to teachers and students. His efforts so far have been limited to one computer and one afternoon a week available to show teachers tools for calculating grades. He has also used his own computer as a visual aid in the classroom. The new computer resource can significantly change his ability to facilitate learning and enthusiasm for technology tools.
  LANGUAGE
  · John works diligently every night to practice Kiswahili. His vocabulary is huge, often impressing teachers because he knows words they have never heard before.
  · He has been teaching English to different village folks that ask him.
  
  Sharing English Story Books and other things with Neighborhood Children
  · With all the different children’s’ books you have donated, neighborhood children, 3 years to 12 years old come weekly to “check out” a new book to read.
  · The Banana Word tiles are very popular. Children come to our house and spend an hour or more making words and practice their English.
  · The calendars you have sent are great, too. We have neighbors stop by to use our calendar! The MN scenes give us a chance to talk about home and comparisons to Tanzania weather and landscapes.
  · Family pictures, especially of the grandchildren doing things in America are special to people here. The children love to see the school work that Kelsey and Kole have done!

Developing Gardens at Two Sites

Making Gardens at Kongei Primary School and Rose’s House

On September 2, Peter Jensen, Katherine, another PCV, and I drove from Dar es Salaam to our house in Lushoto. Katherine and I had spent the weekend at Bagamoyo Beach Hotel, swimming, eating fresh fish, and celebrating the service of three year volunteers now returning to USA. Katherine and I spent Sunday and Monday at Peter’s house, having pizza while watching Frasier with his family, having breakfast and dinner conversations at the dining room table (and bare feet on carpeted floors) as the girls went off to school and Elise was getting ready for work. These family conversations, playing with the family dog and guinea pigs and helping with their garden was truly a time we both missed being home with our own families.

Peter Jensen has been working in Tanzania for 8 years, working with people all over Tanzania as well as training Peace Corps Volunteers about ways to grow more food in small spaces. His work with the Peace Corps is especially for People and families living with HIV/AIDS. The biointensive gardening and permaculture methods are a way for these folks to be able to have very productive gardens close to home and that take minimal energy to maintain. He was making his second visit to our area to develop a demonstration garden for our primary school , working with the students, teachers and community adults—learning by doing and working together to meld what Peter knows works and what the community knows works in their area with their cultural priorities and preferences for food and planting.

Arriving Tuesday afternoon, we met with the school adults to lay out a logistic plan to rotate students during the week to work and learn from the garden. We also had to find out how to bring adults from the community into the work in a proper way. We looked over the school grounds and the school made a decision as to where to put the garden. The school had already brought many buckets of manure and water for the garden.

Wednesday morning started with Peter showing his new movie of Tanzanians from different climates using the gardening methods successfully. The movie also has tutorials and graphics showing the methods we would be using during the week to develop their garden. Excitement was in the air. Students (grades 5, 6, &7), community adults and teachers all watching the movie, (about 200).
The garden started first by sprucing up the guild we had built during the Girls Workshop and constructing the double dug planting beds (6 total in the end!). At 1:30pm we stopped to have a celebratory lunch together with the school leaders. Sister Shirema welcomed Peter into their school family as we began our week together. Another 1.5 hours working in the garden and then Peter and I went to Lushoto to visit Rose.

Rose is a member of a group of women in Lushoto living with HIV/AIDS. She and I met when Nice brought Rose to the Girls Leadership Workshop as a guest speaker. Nice is the program director for an NGO serving women, teaching them computer skills to enable them to find jobs to support their families. Rose participated in the Permaculture demonstration we did at the Girls Workshop and said to me then, “I and my group and the people that really need to know these methods!” At that very moment, Nice, Rose and I started planning how to work together to start making gardens at Rose’s house and teach all the people of the group that wanted to learn.

Rose was not home as she needed to travel to Moshi Health Clinic, but she left instructions with her children to welcome us and help choose a garden spot at their house. Nice, Peter and I visited her house. It is truly amazing to see a landscape through Peter’s eyes! I had visited Rose’s House a week before to look at garden spots, but through Peter’s eyes, I learned how to look for the information that the soil, erosion and plant life that is their can teach. We left with a plan and Rose’s daughter ready to do her part before we returned to build a garden on Saturday!

Thursday through Friday, the Kongei garden took shape and the community’s ability to teach their children through showing then stepping back and letting them do was awe inspiring. Peter was family as the week progressed, that was clear. Three guilds, three banana trees added, a fresh compost pile started and 6 beds of vegetables planted happened by Friday afternoon. A guild is a Papaya tree, matembele below (nutritious perennial), lemon grass, and aloe vera planted in a group. This is a power packed grouping that is of plants common to every house in Tanzania. The beds planted are 1 meter wide and 6 meters long. There are two beds of carrots, two of kunde (beans), two of an orange sweet potatoe together with a local greens that covers the soil and is harvested once the potatoes come up.

Another important feature of the garden is the holes and shallow trenches to control the flow of water, directing it into the beds and slowing it down as it runs down the mountain side. This garden is a beautiful from the shape, colors, food it will provide and the engineering of structures to maximize the water that flows naturally.

After all cleaned up and the garden site, too, we all gathered to watch the movie again. But, in Tanzanian style, the generator created a electrical surge and the projector became toast. So, the students sang a song they wrote for Peter and we handed out the books on nutrition and life skills in kid language and a carrot to eat. A factor we did not consider when we invited parents to come on Friday was Ramadan. One parent came to look at the garden and then he and the adults working in the garden watched the movie. (Since this day we have heard testimony from a variety of folks that kids have told their parents about the garden and parents have been, now, stopping by to see the garden and have said they want to try one at their house.)

Saturday, Peter and I headed to Lushoto. Rose’s garden began. There were 14 friends of Rose that joined her to make a garden. The Lushoto Community Development Director, the secretary of another local NGO for controlling AIDS, and three teachers from a secondary school came. Peace Corps has 5 new health volunteers in the area and all were there, too, along with another PCV teacher. Then, of course were the children that easily made up another 6 participants.

The garden took shape, the first bed done slowly teaching the methods and building a sense of family between us as we built a garden. After chai, bread and bananas in the welcoming warmth of Rose’s home, we all put to use our knowledge. The women eagerly started another bed. Peter took small groups to construct three guilds in spots where the water runs naturally. Then Peter’s eyes became ours as he showed us where to dig holes to stop the water and where to dig inclined trenches to move the water down each bed. By 1:30 Rose’s Garden was a fact and we walked together with Peter to see other possibilities along the path to the dala dala that took us to Lunch at the Tea Room in Lushoto. Jackie served us all a delicious lunch of greens, beans, rice and meat. NyaKoki, community Development director then lead us to a meeting room where Peter showed his movie, questions were discussed and books and directions on the methods taught, nutrition and life skills were provided. I headed back to my school early, as we had Parent Day going on, but I heard that Peter was able to visit another secondary school of a PCV in the area, seeing the guild they had built and the papaya seedlings begun before taking his rest that evening.

These events of this powerful week are alive. I continue to work in my garden with my neighbors that are teaching me as I teach them--, harvesting potatoes, transplanting leeks, thinning carrots; harvesting g sweet potatoes from my matembele I did not realize were growing. I have reworked two beds by adding my 4 month old compost to the top! It is true, we did not have to double dig again, and they are still deep and loose!

Nice and Rose have told me that we are going to develop a garden at each woman’s house in her group. It is the spirit of a quilting bee I think. The group came to Rose’s house and built a garden, now we will continue the rotation until each woman has a garden. I told them, “I will be there.” Ali and Twaha, two of the adults at the Kongei garden have asked me which day I am free for us to go to another primary school and develop their garden—a school where their neighbors children go and have heard of the Kongei garden. They also ask, “Will you garden like this when you return to America?”

Food. Water. This is one way I know I can participate in this struggle with my neighbors here. We share the knowledge, work, food and spirit of a family.