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Published: October 10th 2007
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A Tanzanian School (1)
The schools have no posters and the walls of the classrooms are bare. 10th October
We have no access to a car today which is quite frustrating but an excellent opportunity for me to update this weblog. We spent Friday formulating our question sheets for the schools we are visiting this week. We are trying to find out more details about the schools to develop the level of information we have ready for our tour of 20 schools next week…
I’ve become a bit more familiar with the area after spending Saturday watching a rather tense game of rugby and Sunday afternoon relaxing on Bahari beach. I had my first swim in the welcoming waters of the Indian Ocean (I’ve been thinking about since I arrived here what I was told about being 500m from the beach is simply not true). The weather here is very warm, the sun scorches during the day and the nights here at Bahari are generally very humid. We get rain but it does little to cool the sticky atmosphere that permeates most hours of the day. The rain comes quite heavily in short bursts. Even on a wet day like yesterday the sun was blazing through by mid afternoon.
Monday morning saw us commencing our
school visit phase - my first experience of being in a Tanzanian school. I regularly see the school children and pass a few schools on the walk between the house where I sleep and the main volunteer’s house but I previously hadn’t been closer. The format of our visit is to interview the teachers with some who know about the history of the school and with the children to try to get more candid information about the sanitary conditions. We are welcomed into the schools to the headmaster’s office with handwritten notes all over the walls of seemingly class information, the school timetable and a picture of the Tanzanian president in a prominent place. We are invited into a classroom ready to speak with the teachers or the children in one of the classrooms.
The classrooms are basic breezeblock structures with a corrugated iron roof. Sometimes there are odd classroom buildings, other schools are arranged in a long rectangle plan and divided into rooms. The blackboard is usually the only notable feature and the furniture is usually metal framed wooden benches with a desk which can fit about four children at a push. It is not unusual for classes
Children's toilets
This simple structure is a toilet block which houses a few holes in the ground. to be merged for some lessons or for classes with no teacher. Some of my friends here who are teaching English have taught classes of over one hundred children. The primary school classes are divided into seven standards and are based on ability not age. That ability in one class can be quite disparate ranging from children who are very keen to learn and follow the classes well to children who can barely read or write and inevitably end up disrupting the class. The main teaching mechanism is rote learning and apparently everything that is written on the board is copied regardless of any learning. I believe it is illegal now but class discipline is usually enforced with a stick. I have been told that classes seem to play up more when they realise that the volunteers are simply not going to tolerate this as an act of punishment. In our interviews with the children we have inquired about the various punishments often given if they, for example, don’t bring water and just from four schools there is quite a long list.
The main problem here and, of course, the focus of our project is water. The schools simply have no or restricted access to water for basic needs. Often there are no resources for a health education class. The children all carry reed brushes which are used to clean everything - about 18inches long and bound at one end. From the schools we have visited so far it is common for children to be asked to bring five litres of water every day to school. We ask what this water is for and the answer is usually ‘cleaning’ first. Good drinking water is not easily available to all and often the children will buy water for about Tsh50 for cleaning and sometimes drink that. I think that is for quite a large quantity of water, I don’t have my notes here so I can’t be sure. Needless to say this water is not fit for drinking but when one litre of drinking water costs Tsh500 it is understandable.
Water for drinking is a major issue but water is needed for so many more reasons. The condition of the toilets is something this project focuses on seriously. The other members of this project are Carl, a volunteer for Art in Tanzania and Raphael, a Tanzanian who works for another NGO, Watoto Salama (trans. ‘Save the Children’ - the local organisation which initiated this project). Both Carl and Raphael visited all of the schools well before I got here and took plenty of pictures. Carl describes the conditions as simply appalling and from what I’ve seen I have to agree. From our questionnaire sessions we have learned that the children have to clean the toilets, every morning. Sometimes this is a rota system sometimes as punishment or a combination depending on the school. They have limited water to do this with and no more equipment than a reed brush - no gloves, no boots and have to do this in their school uniform which they wear for the rest of the day.
Some of the schools have access to ground water, often this is salt water so even if a well were dug they would need some way of treating the water if it were to be drinkable. Some schools have construction projects which have faltered; some have wells which are structurally unsafe. Many schools are connected to DAWASCO the local water company but often cannot pay the bill; one of the schools we visited had an unreliable connection and could get water from a tap on average only two days per week.
In this project we want to develop a sustainable water source, particularly as schools dependent on DAWASCO often go without. For example on volunteer organisation we heard about came to a school and put tanks in to catch rainwater. The only catch was the school didn’t see nearly enough rain for this to be feasible. That is why we believe an approach is required to cater to the needs of each school individually. Too many charitable projects around here seem to be started by a third party, completed and then they disappear. When the project fails or needs maintenance there is no course of action for the schools and an otherwise good resource is wasted. We welcome any ideas from anyone who would like to help this project and please feel free to contact me with any ideas or suggestions for this project.
The schools are very welcoming and the teachers seem to have a tough job considering the surrounding conditions. Two of the schools have generously given us drinks of bottled water and sodas, which I was reluctant to accept but did not want to offend. One of the groups of children (we ask for about two girls and two boys from each standard) applauded us as we went into a classroom which had four cushioned chairs, a table with a white table cloth and faux flowers on either side of the table. As we were all in the room the children started to sing what I can only guess was the school song. Considering the other schools we had visited it was an utterly surreal yet enchanting experience and just shows that here despite poverty and the absence of the things we at home barely think about there is a great pride and generosity here.
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