First day at the nursery

Today I met Äsa and she took me to the St Margaret's Nursery in town to meet Mama Tesha. Mama Tesha set up the nursery in 1993 purely for orphans. It continued this way for a while, with only a handful of students, but then she was struggling to continue the operation with no income, and had the idea of combining paying students with orphans. This continued and she built up a reputable nursery, which parents were keen to have their children enrolled in. She carried on this way for a while, and had volunteers helping her run the school. Some of these volunteers from America paid for a return ticket for her to visit the US and try and raise funds for St Margaret's, which she did very successfully.
With this extra funding she was able to buy some land outside of town and start building a primary school, and it is the primary school that we visited next, as Mama is keen that I help out in both places, in the nursery helping directly with the children, and in the school setting up a library.
I really want to do a mix of both of these, as originally I came out here to volunteer for Shika, but presently they are in the process of setting up a new after school centre so I can only be of limited use. I can see my time being 3 mornings a week at the nursery (which closes at midday) 2 full days at the school, and 3 afternoons trying to help set up the new centre.

The nursery is very central and is behind a very unpromising looking door. Mama T managed to rent the rooms which were originally being used as a brothel, and converted three of them into classrooms. She now has 4 classrooms and 2 toilets, and a small kitchen where someone prepares food for the children. All the classrooms look out into a courtyard where, when we arrived, they were doing the morning dances. 20 minutes of songs like 'The Hokey Kokey' getting the children energised ready for learning. The children all wear a uniform provided by the school and all look very smart – green and yellow for this school. It was the first day of school for a few of them, to varying degrees of success. I met Evan who spent about 2 hours crying before being brought out to Mama T and sitting with her drinking tea and eating cake, at which he seemed very happy, only descending into tears again when he thought he was being sent back to class. When we left he was still wandering around with his backpack on ready to leave!

The school is on a different scale all together and is pretty huge. I was shown around by the head teacher and shown every class with the same greeting in each, all the children get to their feet and say 'Good Morning teacher' to which I said good morning, how are you?, 'We are fine, thank you, how are you?' I'm fine also. All exceptionally well behaved.
In the science class we went into, it was children of around 8 and they were learning about HIV/Aids and how it is transmitted and what the virus actually is. The government in Tanzania has a policy that children should be taught this from a young age which is great.
They seemed a little more like English school children when it cam to lunch time and the bell rang. I was standing near the serving area and was nearly crushed! But they are asked to line up and everyone makes sure that their laces are tied and then they pray thanking God for the food they are about to receive, and then they are allowed to get a plate and their lunch.
The teachers eat the same food at lunch so Äsa and I also ate, it was rice and beans and was pretty good!
Not all schools, public nor private, provide food for the children, but as St M's was set up in order to help children, it is part of the philosophy that providing a decent meal for the children is as important as the rest of the education they receive.
For the past 10 years or so, St M's has never been below the top 6 schools in the entire country, which has approx. 14,000 schools, so it is definitely doing something right. I asked the head teacher what he thought contributed to this and he agreed that the food definitely helped, but it was overwhelmingly the management of the teachers that was the key. Making sure that they are well chosen, that their pay is fair so that they do not need to have another job and that any conflicts are sorted out at cause.

They are building new classrooms and have nearly finished a new canteen and are clearly getting good funding from somewhere.

After lunch we were dropped off at the Shika centre where Äsa introduced me to everyone. Although they do not have any children yet, they have the building and have almost finished preparing it and are currently entangled in Tanzanian politics about how to find the children who need the sponsorship. Michelle (the founder of Shika) would like to continue with the children they have been sponsoring so far, but some obstacle has come up and this is seemingly not possible. The new centre is supposed to open on 1st June, so hopefully it will be resolved by then.

I met Lesaley who is the assistant manager (Äsa is the manager), Edward is the teacher and Shaolin the guard. All are of Maasai descent, though Edward is the only one that I could tell from his features. And Lawrence, the dog. There used to be two dogs, but they got out one night and Star was stolen and sold, so only Lawrence remains. Apparently they have not yet told the children about this, which will be hard. Dogs are not generally well treated in Tanzania, so part of the centre was aimed around teaching the children to care for animals.

After this Äsa and I got a daladala to a hotel where we said goodbye to Michelle and Rob who were flying back to the UK that night. A daladala is a communal minibus where you just jump on and pay 200Tsh (about 10p) to go somewhere along the route. This is how I hope to get around mainly (during daylight hours) as it is obviously the cheapest option, but want to feel a bit more confident about how to tell where they are going before just hopping on. Arusha isn't that big though, so I should have it sorted pretty quickly.

At the hotel I also met some other new people, Elisa and her baby Jacob who live next door to me, and Jacob's father Chris who is from a local village as well as another Aussie women who has a baby and is living here.
Elisa gave me a lift back to the house and we had a good chat, and she is going to wander around town with me to help me orientate and work out the daladalas.