TRIP UPDATES

June 15th, 2007

Floyd and I were honored to return to Tanzania the end of May in anticipation of being welcomed by the team from Friends and Family in California, Phil, Kevin, & Sean Harris and their friend Nick. Also to welcome the six Washington University Students arrival on June 1st. The California team had gone on Safari before our arrival, and when the WU students, Ashleigh, Lauren, Abigail, Jessica, Evan, and Tim, arrived we all went to Nkungi. Schools were visited, introductions were made, plans were made and remade. Everyone was settling in just fine, (could have been better with a few less bugs)!

Buzz Brenton from Des Moines arrived for a whirl wind trip, along with Gillian Gape from England. Gillian came to evaluate the Gunda Secondary School and decide if she would like to be a part of the administration there.

A new Medical Officer has been hired to take the Porta-Doc on its rounds in the bush. Her name is Naomi Madondola, she has worked at the hospital in Nkungi in the past, so is familiar with the area.

Outreach is working on a KAH feeding center in Singida town. This will keep the street children in school and fed.

We have been asked to help with a new 500 bed hospital, also in Singida. If you know of any hospital equipment which can be donated, please let us know. Also we have been asked to help with a cancer awareness center.

Back to the students - I hated to leave them, but knew they would be just fine. When we arrived home, we were just as anxious as all the parents for word from TZ! Thanks to all of them for giving their whole summer to help the people of Ilunda Ward! Here is their first written report...

Dear Friends and Family members:

If you're receiving this email, it's because you have supported us – monetarily, emotionally, and spiritually – in our summer project here in Tanzania. Please forward this to anyone else not on the email list who you think might be interested. First of all, we'd like to apologize for the infrequency of our contacts. Even if this is not the first time that you have heard directly from us, then surely we still do not update you as often as we wish we could. It's not easy to stay in touch living in a village with poor cell phone reception, no post office, and unreliable internet with an early 1990s-speed connection. At the moment, we are in Arusha, a city of about 2 million, where things are a bit more modern. We'll try to use this opportunity to catch you all up to speed on all of our programs, since each of you helped to make them possible in the first place. We also apologize in advance for the length of this email. Though we hope you enjoy the detail and the information, if you can make it to the end, it will truly be a task worth remembering.

It's been six weeks since we landed at Kilimanjaro Airport on June 1st, which amazingly means that the trip is already over for Lauren and Gabby, and for the rest of us there are only four weeks remaining. After four long days of flying and driving from America to Nkungi village, our time of working and living in the Ilunda Ward has flown by. Each day seems to be busier than the one before it, but in our short stay we've seen much progress on our projects.

We've been working mostly at three different locations throughout the ward. The first is Gunda Secondary School in Nkungi village. The school is only a few years old and is the product of a strong relationship between the local community and Floyd and Kathy Hammer at Outreach International. The school has about five buildings for classrooms and offices, plus a kitchen and two brand new teachers' houses. In the near future, more classroom buildings will be completed along with a dormitory for girls, which will keep them from having to walk back to their homes in the evening hours. Gunda Secondary School also owns land for a school farm, 5-acres of which is enclosed by fencing for seedbeds, a tree nursery, livestock, and a new farm workshop building. Water for the farm and the kitchen comes from a nearby well, which is pumped into a 2000 liter Sim-tank by a solar pump and treated for disease with an automatic chlorine injector. The school accommodates Forms 1, 2, and 3 – the equivalent of middle school or early high school years after seven "standards" of primary education. In the upcoming school year, Gunda will begin offering Form 4 as well.

From the time of our arrival through the middle of July, Gunda Secondary School has been on its Winter Vacation, but about fifty students have stuck around to work with us and to prepare for their upcoming Form 2 and Form 3 examinations. To help them study, we have been teaching one period for three days each week. Gabby, Jess, and Evan taught math to Forms 1, 2, and 3 while Ashleigh, Tim, and Lauren taught English. It's been a learning experiencing for all of us, dealing with variable attendance and students who are anywhere from 13 to 24 years old. Most Form 3 students speak and understand English pretty well, but Gabby and Ashleigh can attest to the low comprehension levels of Form 1 students. On some days, we've had teachers from Gunda in the classroom to assist and translate for us, but we've all experienced the intimidating feeling of teaching alone with nothing but broken Swahili and crumbly pieces of chalk to try and break the language barrier. As a result, each one of us have experienced days of successful lesson plans intermixed with days of special frustration.

In addition to our teaching, we've also been working on the fenced-in portion of the school farm. When we arrived, Outreach had already cleared land for thirty 15-meter seedbeds and the workshop building. Since then, we've worked with students to clear an area a little bigger than one acre, pulling up dead sunflowers and hiring an ox-plow to till the soil. In part of this space, we've made thirty additional seedbeds that will be irrigated using drip-irrigation systems purchased by Outreach. For these thirty beds, we've built a row of irrigation stands, constructed out of Sisal and a forked tree trunk known in Swahili as Nguzo. We've begun to set up several of the drip-bucket systems, and will finish out the row in the upcoming weeks. Four of our new beds already house transplanted Chinese cabbage seeds, spaced out 12-inches apart each in preparation for the drip irrigation.

On the farm, we've also completed several new structures that allow the students to experiment with different farming techniques. Near the center of the farm, we built a sunshade to protect seeds from the elements until they grow big enough to be transplanted. The sunshade is about 3x8 meters and is built from Sisal, Nguzo, a reed called Fito, and dried sunflower stalks. We've made two small seedbeds inside the structure and have already planted a variety of seeds: tomatoes, cabbages, and sweet peppers, to name a few. In the new few weeks, we hope to build another sunshade in the corner of the farm to supply seedlings for a tree nursery. In addition to the sunshade, we've also dug four 1.5x1.5x1 meter pits for composting. Three of these pits are filled with alternating layers of weeds, moist grasses, manure, ash, and soil. Our hope is that the compost from these pits will be a cheaper and more effective fertilizer than the manure that the school currently uses.

Our work on the Gunda farm has been slowed by a limited number of students. Many are away on break, and those who remain are often more interested in studying during their vacation period. However, we've had a small number of extremely hard workers who have helped us to accomplish everything we've done so far. Now, the second semester has begun, so we hope to have greater participation from the school's 300 students. Using the seedbeds and drip-irrigation systems we've already set up, we intend to show the students how to prepare and manage their own beds. We hope that each interested student can take ownership over one or two seedbeds, and thus construct, care for, and experiment with them when we leave.

But all of this only describes one of our projects at one of our locations. We've also been working extensively at a primary school in Singa – another village in the Ilunda Ward. Singa Primary has about 900 students, many who walk to school at great distances every day. About 200 of these students live so far away that they do not have time to go home and back to take food during the hour-long lunch break. Furthermore, there is a borehole for water about 100 meters behind the school soccer pitch, but the pump has been broken for over a year and the well has fallen into disuse. As a result, the nearest functioning well – for both the school and the village itself – is almost two kilometers away.

With all of these needs, we saw Singa Primary as a prime location for our assistance. First and foremost, we tested the borehole and found that though the pump is broken, there is still plenty of ground water to sustain the well. With a nearby potential source of water, we have been able to begin a variety of projects to address the problems at the primary school. We're in the process of repairing the well – the apron has been rebuilt and a new submersible pump is ready to be installed. From the well, villagers have helped to dig a trench and lay 200 meters of piping up to the school. The water will be pumped to a 3000 liter Sim-tank using, for now, a generator to be turned on as needed. The school will have to batch-treat each tank-full of water with chlorine, as we tested the well water and found the presence of dangerous bacteria. The foundation and brick-stand for the Sim-tank is complete – we're only waiting on the concrete to dry. In the next week or two, the Singa Primary School will have a nearby and clean source of drinking water.

The water from this well will serve multiple purposes. Though the school will own and control access to the Sim-tank, it will sell the clean water to the community for the small cost of 50 Tshs per bucket. The revenue from these sales will help to maintain the water system and pay for gas for the generator. In addition, the well will provide water for a new kitchen that we are helping to build. The kitchen, which resembles the feeding center at Gunda Secondary School, is about 2/3rds of the way done and should be completed in the next week. Unlike at Gunda, however, the kitchen will contain several burnt-brick stoves to better contain the heat from the firewood. Lastly, the water from the well will also help to irrigate the new school garden. With the help of the Singa community, we've carried out many of our farm-related activities from Gunda at the primary school as well. We've cleared and plowed an area for the farm and constructed more than twenty seedbeds so far. In the upcoming weeks, we'll be building an exterior fence and helping to set up drip-irrigation systems and a tree nursery as well.

The progress at Singa Primary has been amazing to see, and much of it is thanks to the incredible volunteer efforts of the students, administrators, and especially the community. Villagers have donated their time and their labor to help dig the trench, build the feeding center, and prepare the school farm. Every time we return to Singa, we are astonished at everything they have accomplished in our absence, and it is really heartwarming to see the community pull together for the benefit of the school, the children, and themselves. Not only will the new water system provide the entire community with clean drinking water, but the feeding center will also help to support the 200 students who are unable to go home during the lunch hour. For the next few years, Outreach will supply Kids Against Hunger meals to supplement contributions of rice and beans from the parents of these children. In the future, we hope that the school garden will be able to replace the Kids Against Hunger meals as a sustainable source of food for all children at the school.

Our last major project is at another primary school on the edge of another village in the ward: Kinanpundu. The school is called Mdilika Primary, and of all the schools we visited, it was definitely in the worst shape. In each classroom – especially the lower grades – many students were sitting on the ground as they tried to read off cracked and faded blackboards. The concrete floors of the classrooms were treacherous as well, as many contained large cracks and holes several feet in diameter. The students and the teachers we met were friendly and positive, but the education environment was abhorrent.

To address the problems at Mdilika, we've undergone a substantial renovation project during their vacation period. With cement and sand donated by the school, we've helped to repair the classroom floors, filling all the holes and the cracks. We've also resurfaced each blackboard, smoothing them with new cement and repainting them with black chalkboard paint. Furthermore, we've been helping to construct about 85 new two-to-three persons desks, enough to seat the rest of the students at Mdilika. To build the desks, we purchased 450 pieces of a hardwood called Mtundu and had it shipped to Nkungi by truck. We then measure and cut all of the wood ourselves using a 110-Volt circular saw and a generator. After that, we drive the wood to Mdilika – a little bit at a time in the back of our pickup truck – where villagers help with the construction, sanding, and varnishing of the desks. So far, we've finished almost thirty desks, and we expect to be over halfway done by the middle of next week.

The students at Mdilika have returned from their vacation to find clean blackboards, safe floors, and a few new desks, with more trickling in every day. It's a powerful feeling seeing a classroom full of smiling children looking at a brand new chalkboard, with every student seated in a desk we helped to build.

This summarizes – maybe at a little too much length – the three major projects that have occupied most of our time in the ward, but we've been working on other small programs as well. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the past week, we traveled to the villages of Kinanpundu, Nkalakala, and Mwanga with a health education director from Iambi Lutheran Hospital in Nkungi. At each village, we gave a presentation covering HIV/AIDS, Malaria, nutrition, and basic hygiene practices. We also distributed mosquito bed nets in each location, and we gave away free condoms after a demonstration on their use. In addition to these presentations, we are also engaged in more individual or spur-of-the-moment projects on a day-to-day basis. For example, Jess has been teaching an extracurricular art class at Gunda Secondary. And just this week, Lauren and Gabby transported to the hospital two children of a mother with AIDS. To our great relief, the children were HIV-negative, but the nurse detected and gave them medicine for typhoid.

Our surplus of projects keep us quite busy, to say the least. We spend our days rushing from place to place on the rain-battered roads in our 1989 Toyota Hilux. We try to work together as a full group whenever possible, but often we find it necessary to divide our efforts to try and accomplish all our goals for the 12 hours of daily sunlight. Many times we have returned to our home at the Duplex well past sunset, left to cook a 10 o'clock dinner and pass out by midnight. The roosters wake us up too early every morning, but we're happy to be so busy and so productive. For the new experiences of a summer in Tanzania, we wouldn't want it any other way.

While we've spent so much time working, we've had time for fun as well. But to describe all of the exciting things we've done would take twice as much space as our project description, so the pleasure-update will have to wait for another time. It will suffice to say that in our time here, we've made many friends in different villages, visited some historical sites, and enjoyed every minute of every day. As if our time in the Ilunda Ward was not fun enough, we are now on our safari to Manyara and Ngorongoro National Parks. But it is truly impossible to describe with words what it is like to happen upon a herd of elephants in the middle of the truck path, or to witness a lone giraffe standing poignantly in a dry sand riverbed. For these experiences, you may have to wait for pictures, and even then still use your greatest imagination.

We thank all of you again for your support. Without your assistance, everything we have accomplished and experienced would have never been possible. We also send our thanks to Floyd and Kathy from Outreach, who traveled with us to help us get acclimated and have provided continual support throughout the summer. And perhaps most of all, we thank all of our new friends in Tanzania who have helped us endlessly along the way. Every day we work with students, teachers, villagers, and fundis (the Swahili term for "specialist" or "expert"), who have helped us with teaching, farming, repairs, and construction. Without their assistance we'd be a lost group college students in an unfamiliar land, but with them we've been able to accomplish so much.

On Monday, we lose Lauren and Gabby back to the Western world and to their families, but the four of us who remain cannot wait to return to Nkungi and finish what we've started. If we don't get in touch with you again during the final four weeks, we'll surely give you a final update upon our return. Until then, we'll sign off on this email in the way that our names are pronounced by the locals in the village.

With love and thanks for you all,

Ashel, Lolen, Gabriel(la), Evans, Jeska, and Timo/Timot