Citizen Cartwright

Tanzania: Our yesterday, its tomorrow

Annie and I were sorry to leave Tanzania.

Our hearts were touched by the people we were getting to know there. And even by strangers we passed on the village's dirt roads, who warmed us with radiant smiles when we greeted them in our primitive Swahili.

On our last afternoon, we were caught in the rain while walking one of those roads. We passed a cool-looking young guy on his motorcycle, who looked at our drenched, muddy selves and said, "Pole" (sorry).

As far as the Jifundishe project Annie and I worked on, we hope what we gave in some way approaches what we took away in vastly increased understanding and appreciation of the Tanzanian culture and way of  life.

For example, as Americans we have the luxury of planning our day and complaining when little things go wrong. In Tanzania, so much routinely goes wrong — from the power (if there is any) going out to the risk of death from a single, malaria-carrying mosquito — and yet, when someone is asked how they are, the cultural norm is to always say, "fine."

We saw an often heroic struggle to learn in the face of elephantine obstacles. In the primary school, one book for every eight students. As many as 140 students in a classroom. In secondary school, fees per student of about $250 a year — in a nation with an annual per capita 
income of $450.

It became clear to us that Jifundishe has listened carefully to local parents and teachers. Jifundishe built a science lab at a secondary school so studies could expand beyond just theory. The Jifundishe Free Library includes in its stacks a full set of primary and secondary 
school books, so students have at least some access to the books from which they're supposed to be learning. The library also hosts after-school tutoring programs and educational enrichment competitions for secondary-school students, as well as evening adult literacy classes, women's cooperative projects and film nights.

Left to right: Library staff Elibahati Nnko, Elly Mbise, Jackline Matthew and Elizabeth Pallangyo

In its Houston Scholarship program, Jifundishe is covering all the educational costs of poor students as they progress through secondary school and beyond. It is focusing especially on girls and young women who are excluded from the educational process for financial reasons and because their families place a lower priority on educating girls.

Jifundishe volunteers teach all manner of subjects, from essay writing and math in the schools to bookkeeping and journalism at the library.

In the United States, kindhearts often fear that too much of the money they give to help others may be used for a charity's administrative costs. Jifundishe founder and executive director, Deb Kelly, and the group's board take no pay. That means that Deb occasionally must go to 
the United States and find a short-term job to finance her Tanzanian living expenses.

More information on Jifundishe is available on its Web site.

Tax deductible contributions to Jifundishe can be sent to:
Project ABLE
c/o Christina Burnham
317 Magnolia Circle
Southern Pines, N.C. 28387

Kwaheri (farewell), Tanzania

We're leaving soon on our two-day trip back to the United States, after a month of, to paraphrase one of the Jifundishe interviewees, learning "much and much and much."

Here is Annie's final interview writeup.

At the primary school

By Annie Dineen

   

Isaac Nanyaro is the head of Imbaseni Primary School. Often there are 130 or 140 students in a classroom built for about 45. Textbooks are in short supply as well; Imbaseni has one textbook for every eight students.

 

Students take advantage of the Jifundishe Free Library’s resources, sometimes laying their hands for the first time on a textbook they’ve been learning from. “Both the students and the teachers benefit a lot from the library,” says Nanyaro. “Books are expensive and most libraries in our country are in urban areas.” The accessibility of materials through Jifundishe has made a significant impact academically on the students at Imbaseni. “In fact they have improved academically - when I give them exams and tests they do better,” Nanyaro says.

Mwalimu Nanyaro knows how hard girls struggle to successfully complete primary school. Often, after reaching the age of 10 or 11, families begin to demand more work from young girls in the household and in most cases their academic achievement suffers. Jifundishe is in the process of collaborating with the school head in an effort to establish an after-school program for girls that will allow them to use some of their own time to reinforce the material that is being taught to them in classrooms.

Teachers use the library’s textbooks as well. Some use them to craft lesson plans. Many teachers go there to study for classes of their own; Tanzania is in the process of reforming the educational system, requiring teachers to pursue higher level degrees in order to continue to teach. The University of Arusha is located just one kilometer from the primary school so many of the teachers are attending classes there.

In fact, the entire community seeks educational opportunities at the library. Aside from the students and teachers perusing the shelves (including members of Arusha University), adults frequent the library as well. Many participate in the adult literacy class, aimed at teaching basic English to adults who were unable to attend school or simply desire to learn. Many are there to catch up on the local and national news by reading the many newspapers available at the library.

 “We are so lucky to have this library close to us,” says Mwalimu Nanyaro. "Education is the weapon to fight ignorance."

 

Learning in Tanzania

Annie and I have learned many things here. A few quick observations:

 

•   Everyone has been extremely kind in helping us try to improve our ultra-basic Swahili, unlike many places where people just want to practice their English.

 

•   People buy second-hand clothes from abroad. We saw a woman wearing a T-shirt atop her kanga skirt that read, “Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.” A cool-looking young guy with dreadlocks wore a T-shirt reading, “Mitt Romney.”

 

•   Deb Kelly, with whom we’re staying, lives simply. She has a solar panel, but taking a shower is often an adventure in mainly-cold water. We discovered that a washboard is an invention that simulates applying 100 knuckles to dirty clothes.

 

As far as the formal education of young people in Tanzania, here is a writeup of Annie’s interview with the headmistress of the local secondary school.

 

 

Scholastic struggles

By Annie Dineen

 

Sophia Warioba is the head of Ngongongare Secondary School.

 

 

Although only 10 percent of children have a chance at secondary school, Ngongongare, like many government schools in Tanzania, has too many students for its resources. Its 373 students share the four classrooms and six teachers. An additional hundred students are expected to attend the school next year.

 

Not only that, the school lacks sufficient textbooks for the students.  Students meticulously copy any notes from the blackboard, which serve as their only source from which to study. Many spend long hours at the Jifundishe Free Library, where they have access to the textbooks they are taught from in class; sometimes this is the first time they are physically able to use the book.

 

“This organization has got a great help to our school,” Sophia says.

 

An additional difficulty for students is that starting in secondary school, courses are taught in English rather than Swahili. Forced to study subjects like biology and math in a language in which they previously knew only basic greetings and vocabulary, students struggle.

 

Jifundishe created the Houston Scholarship Fund in 2007 to help students whose families couldn’t afford to pay for their education past primary school, the approximate equivalent of a 6th grade education. Secondary school, similar to an American middle school, costs $1,000 per student for the entire four years. The scholarship fund currently supports 32 young people at several schools in the Arusha area.

 

It is especially devoted to helping girls, whose educations often are a low priority for a family. However, completing secondary school is the key to employability. There are 16 Houston Scholarship Fund recipients at Ngongongare. The fund pays their school contribution as well as additional fees for things like food and uniforms.

 

“Together with the help of that library, the volunteers, and the teachers which are also using the library, [the students’] performance increased,” Sophia says.

 

The success of these students is crucial to their future; failure means the end of the road educationally, unless their parents can afford hefty private school costs. Students have gained confidence in their academic ability and mastery of English due to the the library’s resources and Jifundishe volunteers who have taught English and math at Ngongongare.

Tanzania's wildlife spectacular

Annie and I have learned the limits of zoos.

 

We’ve just come back from a trip to Serengeti National Park, Ngorongoro Crater and Lake Manyara, where we watched cheetahs stalking prey, vultures fighting over a carcass, lions sleeping it off after feasting on buffalo, and migratory birds on the lam from the winter in Europe and Russia.

 

We also saw part of the wildebeest migration, with more than 1 million wildebeest and zebras following the rain in search of green pastures.

 

But our most up-close-and-personal experiences were with baboons. At Lake Manyara, some teenage baboons hopped on the hood of our car, where they gave the paint an exploratory lick and took a liking to the sound of their nails on the metal – leaving a souvenir of permanent scratches.

 

 

At a stop on our way out of Serengeti, Annie and I were waiting in the car for our guide, Jifundishe staffer Meleck Akyoo, when two baboons – one with a baby clutching her chest – hopped through the open window and instantly appropriated as their own our bag of snack trash.

 

Their speed in hopping in our car was exceeded only by Annie’s and mine in hopping out. A nearby driver became our hero when he drove the baboons away, using a two-liter bottle of water as his weapon.

 

Back to more tame pursuits at Deb Kelly’s, Annie is putting final touches on the remaining interview write-ups.

Many things to be thankful for in Tanzania

We returned from the coast on Thursday (happy holiday weekend, America!) to hear that, while we were gone, elephants had been seen in the yard of the house where we’re staying. And that “100” mongooses in the yard fled as they heard the approach of our car.  

Those missed moments aside, we have seen in the yard a troop of a dozen black-faced vervet monkeys, including mothers with babies clinging to their chests.  

Annie has written up another of her interviews:  

Goodness' story
By Annie Dineen  

Goodness Massawe, 24, was born in the village, a healthy child. At age three, she became disabled due to unknown causes, and was confined to a “wheelchair,” a plastic garden chair equipped with bicycle tires. Her days were spent alone at home, able only to sit and watch as her siblings left the house every morning to work or study.  
 

  
Her neighbors mentioned the Jifundishe Free Library to her, and eventually she found someone to push her chair up the road – a treacherous ride over rocks and ruts – to see the library for herself. She discovered that the library had all the books she’d missed by being unable to attend school, and she began to study at the library. She learned to read and write.  

Goodness also joined the library’s knitting group and began to knit well, despite her handicap. She sold the pieces she completed to Jifundishe for sale to the public, earning enough from the sales to buy herself a real aluminum frame wheelchair, which takes more easily to the rugged road.  

Now, Goodness is educating herself with the help of the library staff and sees a future of self sufficiency. Her dream is to work in an office, despite the near impossibility in her culture. “Now she’s seeing different because she has something that she didn’t have before,” her sister says.  

There are many people in Tanzania in Goodness’ situation, trapped in a rural location due to physical or logistical barriers, who are prevented from learning because of the difficulty of traveling to an urban center, where a library, if there is one, would be located. 

Tanzanian seascape

Ah, the glories of wireless Internet. I’m writing this from a thatched cottage on the coast of Tanzania, looking out on the Indian Ocean. Jifundishe founder Deb Kelly asked Annie and me if we’d like to take a side trip here, and we jumped at the chance to see more of the country.

We drove for about five and a half hours here to Pangani, past Mt. Kilimanjaro and through a poorer area than we’re used to – where instead of houses made of brick with corrugated iron roofs, they’re made of mud mixed with cow dung and the roofs are thatched.

We passed plantations of sisal, traditionally used to make rope and rugs and now a focus of experimentation for biogas and biofertilizer. We saw lots of baobab trees – called upside-down trees because the branches look like roots – and termite mounds up to six feet high.

Annie has written up another interview of a Jifundishe program participant: Mama Laisser (women become known as “mama” when they marry).

 

An inquiring mind

By Annie Dineen

Angelina Laisser, born in 1951 in Arusha, has an adventurous spirit. With no husband and thus necessarily self-sufficient, she has unfearingly embraced every opportunity to support herself and her family.

In 2005, Jifundishe approached her about creating a library in a building on her property. A highly educated woman, Mama Laisser attended school through secretarial college, in a time when most women her age were unable to even attend primary school. Recognizing the value of education, she consented to Jifundishe’s request and refused to charge it rent for the first two years of the library’s existence. “We are really lucky to have Jifundishe here,” she says, “because everybody now is free to read.”

Even after the library moved to its current location, Mama Laisser remained an active part of the Jifundishe Free Library. She and seven other ladies began to bead jewelry as part of a project organized by Jifundishe. “It’s not a small project, it’s a way of earning money,” she says.

The library provides the materials and the women gather to bead and socialize. For each piece a member of the group completes, she earns a certain amount of money, and an equal amount is deposited into a fund collectively controlled by the group. The women’s first decision on the use of the fund was to go to the eye doctor, and Jifundishe split the cost of transportation, doctor fees, and, for some, glasses.

 

The women have also used money from the fund to buy seeds for farming, allowing them to plant twice as many crops. Jifundishe hopes the fund may promote microlending, with the women making small loans to each other for individual projects.

 

Mama Laisser continues to keep an open mind for new ideas. Browsing in the library one day, she encountered a book about pigs. She applied her readings to the pigs she owned, adjusting the way she cared for them based on what she’d read in the book. She currently owns around 30 pigs. She also has chickens, goats, and cows and grows products like maize and bananas.

Through the library, Mama Laisser says, “We are learning much and much and much.”

View from the top

Annie and I spent the first part of this week at Kilimanjaro Film Institute, editing the interviews of Jifundishe beneficiaries with student videographer Ezra Kaaya and a student editor named Lightness Mollel.

 

 

We’d been told that the school’s students sometimes are hired to film tourists as they climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, and we asked Ezra if he’d made that video climb.

 

Our jaws dropped and bounced across the floor when Ezra told us that he’d made the video climb twice – but had made the climb 30 times before that.

 

It turns out that before Ezra enrolled at the film school, he worked as a porter as a way to help support his mother and his two siblings who still live at home.

 

Ezra, 24, said he’d made the 30 climbs over 18 months, once heading up Kilimanjaro again a day after he’d come down.

 

The porters carry all the supplies, from food and clothes to tents and chairs. Ezra said that, for example, six climbers typically would have 15 porters. He climbed with tourists from places including the United States, Europe, China, Russia, Israel, India and South Africa.

 

The pay: 5,000 Tanzanian shillings a day, about $4.40. Tips per trip ranged from nothing to once, $100 handed to him by an American. But they averaged $25 to $30. A problem, Ezra said, was that at times the tip was given to the guide to be divided among all the climb’s support staff – and sometimes the guide would keep more than his share.

 

 

 

What was it like? “You can face a lot,” Ezra said. “Maybe the guest is sick. You have to be flexible. You work under high pressure. You can go with clients who are not cooperative, and you can’t be angry because it will interfere with your ability to climb.”

 

He said that once a climber from France died, and the guide ran off because he felt he should have been able to save the climber. On one trip, two porters died – and the other porters had to carry their bodies down the mountain.

 

Ezra’s dream is to open his own company providing tours and videos of them.

 

We asked Ezra a probably typical American question: What was the lesson of the mountain?

 

He said he gained confidence that “it will be possible to solve any challenge.”

Villagers' stories

Annie has finished interviewing recipients of Jifundishe assistance. Here is her first writeup.

 

Debora’s story

By Annie Dineen

Imagine yourself in a nine-by-nine-foot space, the size of a bathroom maybe, or a small office cubicle. It’s dark, the cool cement cube allowing a sparse few rays, and many more mosquitoes, to enter through the door, the room’s only opening. At night, you sleep alongside your mother and five siblings, occasionally accompanied by a goat or chicken. When it rains, you cook what food you have inside as well. There is no electricity or running water.

Welcome home.

 

This situation is home to 17-year-old Debora Mnyawi.  Last year, her family couldn’t afford her school fee, declared by the government to be the equivalent of $20 a year but in reality closer to $250, due to fees for everything ranging from food and uniforms to hoes to cultivate school and teachers' gardens and the salary for the watchman. For a family like Debora’s, that could amount to as much as two years’ income. Unable to pay, she faced the fate of many impoverished young girls like herself: marriage. For Debora, this would have meant the end of her studies and a life of doing all household chores and all farming except plowing, as well as taking care of her future children.

Fortunately for Debora, she discovered Jifundishe. Selected to be a Houston Scholarship student, Jifundishe paid the entirety of Debora’s school fees for her remaining two years of secondary school as well as her medical bills when she fell ill later that year. Jifundishe also bought her kerosene so she could continue to study after dark.

Aware of the change in Debora’s life, Debora’s mother sought Deb Kelly, Jifundishe founder, waiting all day, every day, for a week at the Jifundishe Free Library for a chance to talk with her. She joined Jifundishe’s knitting group, receiving payment for each piece she completes. The money she earns helps her to buy food and pay the rent on her family's “apartment.”

Sitting outside their concrete cube, Debora’s mother in a beautiful traditional kanga dress and Debora carefully dressed in a skirt and a second-hand shirt reading “Purina Dog Chow Incredible Dog Challenge, Team California,” Debora passionately described her dream to become a doctor to bring improved health and kinder practices to the people of her village. As the family’s chickens clucked noisily behind them, Debora thanked Jifundishe in excellent English for changing her life.

 

***

 

As far as the Houston Scholarship, the anxious waiting is over, and the results of Thursday’s fundraiser in Washington are in. Enough money was raised to avoid pulling any of the current students out of school, but not enough was raised to take those students to the next level or to help additional students.

Sending a student through four years of high school here costs about $1,000.

Tax-deductible contributions can be sent to:

Project Able

c/o Jifundishe Treasurer Chrissy Burnham

317 Magnolia Circle

Southern Pines, N.C. 28387

 

Getting answers, some easy, some hard

Annie is well into her project in the villages here, working with Jifundishe staff and a local film student to interview recipients of Jifundishe assistance in their homes. The project includes videotaping the interviews, editing them to three minutes each, and writing up the recipients’ stories as well.

 

Left to right: Jifundishe staffer Meleck Akyoo, Kilimanjaro Film Institute videographer Ezra Kaaya, Jifundishe staffer Elly Mbise, and Annie.

 

No interviews were scheduled for Thursday, and Jifundishe founder Deb Kelly asked Annie and me if we’d like to go with her to Arusha to sit in on one of the trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

We drove through lush savanna, with coffee, banana and rice farms. In the distance were palm trees; exotic species such as purple jacaranda trees; and other large trees with crimson flowers appropriately called flame trees. Women in their colorful “kanga” dresses, balancing the traditional heavy loads on their heads, walked along the highway. 

Arusha, population about 500,000, was our first experience of the chaotic bustle of a rapidly growing African city.

 

The Rwanda tribunal was created by the U.N. Security Council in 1994 to prosecute alleged perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda.

 

We watched the trial of Jean-Baptiste Gatete, a former Rwandan mayor and political party leader, accused of genocide and crimes against humanity. Gatete allegedly urged civilian forces to rape and kill Tutsis: to “rid themselves of the filth by killing the children and raping the women before killing them.” He also allegedly killed people with his own hands.

 

We listened as a woman described through her tears being raped multiple times and losing many members of her family to the Hutus’ machetes.

 

Now, as I write this with rain pouring down on the tin roof at Deb’s house, we’re back to more mundane occupations like wondering about the results of Thursday night’s fundraiser in Washington.

A Monday morning in Tanzania

After 15 hours in the air, my daughter, Annie, and I arrived at Kilimanjaro Airport at – you guessed it – Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

 

We’re staying with Jifundishe founder Debra Kelly at the four-room house she rents just outside Arusha National Park. And when I say just outside, as I write this I’m looking about 25 feet out the window to a hedge, on the other side of which is the park. When we arrived, Deb told us it’s not safe to go outside after dark. Where we’re from, such a warning might be about the threat of urban crime, but here it’s because wildlife from the park – even elephants – tend to stray in.

 

 

 

Deb’s four-room house looks nondescript from the outside, but inside it’s charming Tanzanian rustic. At night, its rooms are graced by five-inch, celery-green-with-blue-spots house geckos, beloved because they eat insects including malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Another nightly attraction is the bush babies, little bug-eyed primates that scamper across the tin roof and wake us with their screeches.

 

We’ve arrived at a time of potential crisis for Jifundishe and the young people it helps to educate. The global financial crisis has led to a decrease in funding, putting in jeopardy some of the scholarships that are the recipients’ only hope for education.

 

A fund raiser is being held in Washington on Nov. 12. Here’s the invitation.

 

TANZANIAN STUDENT SCHOLARSHIP FUND EVENT

at Annie and Andy Houston's home

 

Please mark your calendars for

Thursday, November 12th from 5-9

907 East Capitol Street, SE

Washington, DC

 

Learn about the scholarship fund.

Talk with Chrissy Burnham and Ann Lawrence who have met the students and their families.

See a video of Tanzanian life.

View and buy Tanzanian crafts.

Partake of refreshments.

Have an opportunity to contribute to girls' and orphans' education

 

If you cannot attend and would still like to contribute, checks can be sent to

PROJECT ABLE

c/o Chrissy Burnham

317 Magnolia Circle, Southern Pines, 

North Carolina,  28387. 

 

No gift is too small.

 

Many thanks to those who have already contributed to the scholarship fund. 

You have made a difference in many lives.

 
RSVP: annihouston@gmail.com