Blogs from Centre, Tanzania, Africa - page 4

Greetings from Tanzania, As much as we are enjoying our time here, we do miss all our family and friends back home and think of you often. School Life Life has resumed again here at the college for another school year. We are halfway through our 1st semester here at Msalato and routines are now well established. Jeannie is again teaching bookkeeping to the secretarial students along with English until another missionary arrives from Gr. Britain. Rob is busier than ever teaching foundation English along with Research Methodology to Diploma 3 students and Communication Skills to first year degree students. Along with his teaching assignment he is again involved in the Kazi (manual work around the college) program, work for a book initiative, and of-course the sports program. This year we were able to open the ... read more

Our Winter Break Vacation to Cape Town, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana More pictures than shown on this blog are available for viewing at: https://picasaweb.google.com/116573555722516782467 Greetings everyone, We had such a great time on our trip to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana; we are devoting our entire blog to it. We want to share with you what wonderful places there are to visit in Africa while at the same time record our travels for our own pleasure in future. CAPE TOWN AND AREA We began by flying from Dodoma to Dar es Salaam on Thursday, two days before our scheduled flight to Cape Town. It was fortunate that we had an ... read more

While discussing how we could assist Msalato and the nursery/kindergarten with the Rev. Canon Moses Matonya, who is the Principal at Msalato Theological College, Moses mentioned that the nursery/kindergarten had two teachers who are working on a voluntary basis. The school normally gives them a small amount of money every month just as a way of thanking them for their work with the children. The college normally ask friends from inside and outside the college community to donate whatever money they can as a way of encouraging these lovely women to continue teaching the children. The parents of the children who attend also contribute, but many of them are very poor and so they can't. There are 45 children registered with the nursery/kindergarten although regular attendance is between 30 and 35 per day as some fail ... read more

As mentioned previously Ernest & Ester's have two children, Gloria aged 8 attends the local government primary school and Donald aged 4 attends the Msalato nursery. The government primary schools in Tanzania are free to attend and it is compulsory for every child who has reached the age of seven years to be enrolled for primary education. While primary school tuition fees in public schools was eliminated in 2002 families still must pay for uniforms, testing fees, and school supplies. Evelyn & Jess have set up a sponsorship fund for Gloria and Donald to enable Ernest & Ester to pay all the necessary fees required to send Gloria to primary school & Donald to the Msalato nursery. The fund is utilised via an Australia Post Load & Go re-loadable card. This allows Ernest & Ester to ... read more

We arrived in Dar es Salaam at about 2.00pm on Thursday 15th March having flown in from Johannesburg where I had been attending a Cards & Payment conference. We were met at the airport by Pam who had flown in from Ethiopia 20 minutes earlier, God at work here. we arrived to a large welcome sign held by Pam and to the smiles of our driver Amani. We all stayed at the Blue Pearl hotel which was a bit up market, very modern & clean and close to the bus station. The next morning Pam negotiated a taxi to take us to the bus station because although it was close there are no footpaths. On arrival at the bus station Pam negotiated with the porters to carry our luggage to the bus and she made sure ... read more