Re-entry

We returned to Dodoma on Wednesday. I've been writing some observations regarding what I learned from the visit to other schools and addressing some of these matters as they pertain to our building. (For instance, I was confirmed in my initial judgement that we have too few classrooms).

What else did I learn? Some schools spend their days preparing their students for national exams, others spend them preparing their students for life. Starehe in Nairobi and Loyola High School in Dar es Salaam are examples of the latter. At Starehe, a nationally known boarding school for poor boys that is among the top five schools in the country, play is an important part of their program -- and they don't compromise on academic success in this regard. At Loyola High School, service is an important part of the curriculum. Other schools we visited -- very well known schools in Tanzania and Kenya -- were all about drilling facts into students' heads.

I am beginning to work a bit more on the school's curriculum -- not without some frustration. We have been asked to offer agriculture as a subject. When I was in Dar es Salaam, I went to the Tanzania Institute of Education, the government office where one purchases the syllabi for the government courses. They don't have a syllabus for agriculture. Arghhh!

This morning we had four alumni from Loyola High School stop by to visit us at the parish; given that I was headed out to the site, I invited them along. It was a very nice visit with them -- and they had some great suggestions for us.

While there, I took pictures of a truss being hoisted for placement. No cranes -- but after all, a pulley is a pulley!