Paying our Dues

Today I wrote two grants to help us with the purchase of a 30-seat Toyota Coaster mini-bus. Recently in a search for such a bus for our primary school, we discovered just how difficult it is to find safe and reliable used coastahs (as they are pronounced here); that leaves us with having to purchase one.

When I read the pro forma invoice from the TZ Toyota dealership, the purchase price did not come as a total shock to me: $73,000 USD. What brought on my bout of apoplexy was the import duty and VAT: $38,000.00. Yep, you got that right: a 30-seat student bus costs $111,000 -- and ultimately we'll need at least four of them.

Gulp.

Advisory Committee

We had our second advisory committee meeting for St. Peter Claver High School yesterday. Present were three Jesuits from Dodoma, Sossy, Kiarie, and me; Sr. Euphrasia from the Jesuit primary school here; Veronica Sarungi, who formerly taught at Loyola High School, the Jesuit high school in Dar es Salaam; and Professor Funja O-saki, the principal of the education faculty at the University of Dodoma. Their interventions regarding such things as curriculum and development goals was invaluable.

I'm looking forward to working with Funja on some research projects in the future.

A highlight of the weekend was the chance to spend time with Veronica's father, the Honourable Professor Sarungi, a member of the Tanzanian parliament, which is in session in Dodoma right now. Bwana Sarungi has led an amazing life. He studied medicine and did his residency in orthopedics in Hungary and was the first orthopedic surgeon in Tanzania. He ended up in politics, serving as minister of health, education and welfare, and defense along the way. It was great to hear him talk about Julius Nyerere -- I felt as if I were almost "touching" history.

A very nice weekend. Today, I plan on walking the OLQP perimeter.

Progress

Here are some photos from a visit to the site today. In order: dorm, classroom, and multipurpose hall (x3). Exciting to see the progress -- and the beginning of Phase II has begun (library, administration building, second classroom wing, chapel --more like a church, given that it will seat over 1,000-- and Jesuit residence.

More Pics from the Visit to Zuzu

A tour of the family farm; a picture of Sr. Brigitte's parents and nephew; family members, neighbors and me; grandfather (babu) and grandson.

'Tsup?

What's up? you ask. I realized yesterday that I haven’t written much lately about my work, about St. Peter Claver High School.

I have spent considerable time working on a schedule. It was one of the things I most loved to do as the Assistant Principal for Academic Affairs at St. Ignatius (except for my first year when one very small error in entering the schedule – it was a missed “.” — caused incredible havoc.) It might seem any easy task, to schedule 4 classes of 35 students – even easier given that students don’t move, teachers do. But the problem is that different subjects meet for a different number of periods per week. English meets 7 periods; biology, 4; chemistry, 3, etc. And I had to figure out how to squeeze two PE classes per week, a study skills class, and a religion class. I managed!

I have also been working on some longer-term goals for the school – something more than surviving! They’re all pretty straightforward (for instance, the second goal states that female graduates of St. Peter Claver High School will enrol in science combinations at the advanced level at the same rate as male students).

I continue to refine the Student Handbook and related materials. And I have developed an admissions brochure.

I spent Easter Monday with the directors of an ngo, PEN Trust (Poverty Eradication Network) Mungwe Athman and Andrea Wall. They came for chai, and then I took them out to the OLQP site; we ended up at Twiga (Giraffe), the hotel/restaurant owned by Mungwe. It was a great visit, and I look forward to working with them. They have offered their assistance in working for Books for Africa to get an initial instalment of books and computers for us.

Incidentally, until last week I was doing my work on a table in a conference room (also used as a break room by parish office staff), but now I have my own desk in a shared office. Petit à petit l’oiseau fait son nid! (That’s French, not Kiswahili: little by little the bird makes its nest.)

Zuzu

Today I and some others went to a village 17 kilometres outside the city. We visited the family of our friend Sister Brigitte. It was great fun -- and her family couldn't be nicer. The video below depicts (1) a view of the family farm; (2) a presentation on millet, used to make the staple, ugali; (3) a race for the rooster, which was given to us as a gift by the family.

It was a wonderful, wonderful day.

Soko la Mbuzi

I went with Michel to the goat market on Saturday in order to by a goat for our Easter dinner. What an experience. The video below follows the progress of nyama ya mbuzi (goat meat) from slaughtering to our table at the market. Today's meal of nyama choma roast meat was wonderful -- I'm exhausted, though, after a very late night and up early this morning. I'm happy not to have to work tomorrow.
Heri ya Pasaka!