By Maureen Mescall
The five graduates from NUI Galway who have been teaching in Malindi Secondary School for the past twelve months are due to return to Ireland on October 26th so I felt it was an opportune time to visit, meet with them and with the headmaster and the school board. I arrived at Dar es Salaam Ireland
Moody the taxi driver arrived for us at 5 am and we went to the coach station on the Morogoro road. Even at this hour there were many people on the road and as we drew nearer to the station everything was in full swing. Hundreds of people were going about their business; some with hand carts, some with goods on their heads, cars and motor cycles in abundance. The system for getting a ticket is slightly different to ours in that a person sits there at the side of the road and sells the tickets to Nairobi , Arusha, and Kampala
This coach is known as the “Dar Express” but I am afraid there is little of the “Express” about it. On the outskirts of Dar we stopped to take on people who dropped off about one hundred metres down the road. This continued for at least five miles and I thought to myself that at this rate we would never reach Suji but once we left the outskirt we moved quite quickly. The coach struggled on the hills but went quite quickly on the flat smooth roads. By 11.30a.m I began to worry if we were ever going to stop for a refreshment or toilet but ten minutes later the coach pulled off onto an un tarred side road and we arrived in a nice courtyard which had food, shops and toilets. Many coaches were either leaving or arriving at the place and there were lots of people taking a break, eating or just taking a breath of fresh air.
On the road again and the conductor asked my destination and when I told him Suji he said I must get off the bus at Makanya and when I told him I was meeting some people in Same he said “no you must get off at Makanya for Suji”. He was correct but my arrangement with my friends was for Same. He was extremely helpful and insisted that he must put the “Wazungo” on the right track! Anyway we finally settle on Same but when we arrived in Makanya there was the Suji mini bus so I hopped off. What are these Wazungos like? They don’t know what they want. I was greeted by Timo (the conductor) with a great hug and a “Karibu Tena” – Welcome Back! So we sat there and waited while some people loaded up their goods and themselves. Then a coach arrived from the same direction and who alights but Aisling, Aine, Sabrina and Peadar, the people I was due to meet in Same. Would this happen in Ireland Ireland
Arriving in the village after a year away was really exciting and it was great to see the building that we had constructed the previous year. The inside was now plastered and the floor was finished and both pieces of work were of a very high standard. The window frames were in place and the next job was to fit the glass and the doors. The Irish men who worked on the project will be delighted to see the pictures.
Rahema was there to greet me (the cook for the men and the teachers). She has looked after the teachers for the past twelve months and they all loved her and appreciated her very much. Some of the boys from the school were around the sitting room watching videos, chatting with the teachers and chatting among themselves. It was lovely to see such a relaxed relationship between the teachers and the pupils. George, Antonio, Eneza, Godfrey, Abihudi, Richard were all there and as the evening progressed more boys arrived. There were very few girls about and I wondered if the attraction for the boys was the girls, the TV or the computer.
Rahema was there to greet me (the cook for the men and the teachers). She has looked after the teachers for the past twelve months and they all loved her and appreciated her very much. Some of the boys from the school were around the sitting room watching videos, chatting with the teachers and chatting among themselves. It was lovely to see such a relaxed relationship between the teachers and the pupils. George, Antonio, Eneza, Godfrey, Abihudi, Richard were all there and as the evening progressed more boys arrived. There were very few girls about and I wondered if the attraction for the boys was the girls, the TV or the computer.
The new arrivals; Peadar and Sabrina were installed in the available beds in the teacher’s house so I asked the former chairman of the school board Mr Nyange if he had a bed for me. I moved into his house and have been there for the past week; treated like a queen, hot water for my morning ablutions, boiled eggs and coffee for breakfast and yesterday the best pancakes I ever had. More about Mr. Nyange later.
Mr. Nyane Relaxing
Aine, Belinda and I walked through the village to the vegetable shop to purchase the potatoes and veg for the dinner. I have to admit I felt a bit breathless going up the slight hill as we were at 8000’. Girls are now well able to make their purchases through the medium of Swahili and were greeting and were greeted by people all along the route. During the evening I had several chats with the girls who gave me the low down on the school year – the ups and the downs of things. There were many stories both good and bad.
Aine, Belinda and I walked through the village to the vegetable shop to purchase the potatoes and veg for the dinner. I have to admit I felt a bit breathless going up the slight hill as we were at 8000’. Girls are now well able to make their purchases through the medium of Swahili and were greeting and were greeted by people all along the route. During the evening I had several chats with the girls who gave me the low down on the school year – the ups and the downs of things. There were many stories both good and bad.
Throughout the last week I renewed many acquaintances including Mamma Nardi, Namchani and her parents, Benjamin, Richard, Amos and many more. I walked on the lovely hills, ate natural food, and walked for a mile to get coverage to call home. So a slight inconvenience for me – so poor me but what about the people who live here permanently? They may have electricity for four days and they may not have electricity for two days; they may have water for six days and they may not have water for two days so how do they cope? They manage and are organised. On the days they have water they fill buckets for the days of shortage. They do not waste a drop and re use water for toilets and for watering gardens and plants. When the electricity is off they use candles and some have gas lamps. One of the great sights here is to look over the valley to the next hill and see the lights of the houses. Last night the full moon came slowly up over the hill and was a sight to behold.
The sounds of the night are wonderful. Here there are no cars or lorries, no street lighting so one can actually hear the flapping of the wings of the horn bill as he flies to the Guava tree for more fruits or the squeal of the bush baby. The baboons stay in the distance but when there is plenty food about they can be heard and seen but unlike other countries the baboons here are shy. The sound of singing is a constant both day and night and everybody seems to be able to sing. Esther, our little neighbour aged five has a beautiful singing voice and her sister Nati has a voice that brings emotion to the surface.
The day starts here in Malindi when the cocks begin to crow about 4.30 a.m. The first motor cycles may be heard around 5 am followed quite quickly by the mini bus and the lorry on their way to Same. Just before 6 a.m. we here the gentle singing of the people as they make their way to their places of work and their gardens. The children begin to walk by around 6.45 on their way to school carrying their bags and a stick for the fire at school in order to cook dinner. (Most of the cooking is carried out by sticks or charcoal). Classes start at 8 am but some children have long distances to walk to reach their school. The local shops close at 8 p.m. by which time the village is in darkness. The shops are small and carry the essentials and if they do not have something in stock it will be ordered from Same and be in the shop the next day. A cow is slaughtered in the Halal method ( meaning lawful in Arabic and the animal is killed by slitting the throat with a sharp knife and draining the blood) at 6 a.m. each Sunday and the people from the village go there quite early to purchase their meat. Aaron is a dab hand at the Irish stew now! There is an unhurried gentleness about this village which greatly pleases me.
I am getting a little side tracked so back to the teachers. The three girls and Aaron are in their early twenties and have grown up in an Ireland of the Celtic Tiger; electric cookers, fridge freezers, washing machines and dryers, liquidizers, electric kettles, washed and prepared vegetables and potatoes in the supermarket, pizzerias, chip shops and restaurants of all descriptions. Now here in Malindi vegetables were available if in season and were organic and much cheaper. Cooking was done in the open over a fire made of wood. Clothes were washed out of door in a bucket and dried on the old fashioned clothes line. No hot water in the tap for bathing so they had to boil some water over the open fire and wash from a bucket. There was one toilet bowl and one Asian toilet (hole in the ground) in the house. Now meeting the four teachers it looked as if they had been used to these particular circumstances all their lives. They were even getting their shoes repaired with the local shoemaker. Do we still have such people in Ireland or have we become too posh to repair our shoes?
It was also obvious that they had carried out great work in the school and that they were extremely popular with all the students whose standard of spoken English had improved enormously. The exams for the fourth form students have just ended and we look forward to hearing their results next February and hope that many students will go forward to fifth and sixth form. In Malindi Secondary School students are educated up to Form Four which means four years in the school. If students get good marks in Form Four the Government may choose them to go forward to Form five and six and will pay both their tuition and accommodation fees for them. Only the best students are afforded this opportunity. Some students if they are lucky may get private sponsorship or their families may be in a position to send them for further education. For those who do not manage to go forward the outlook can be bleak up here on the mountain with subsistence farming being the main option. Some will leave and go to Moshi, Arusha or Dar to seek employment. The girls will probably marry somebody locally and become pregnant quite early in life.
There is a private missionary school here in the village also called Suji High School. This school is both a day and boarding school and caters for pupils from all over Tanzania. There are over eight hundred pupils attending and around five hundred of these are boarders. My good friend Benjamin who helped us with the building last year is a pupil there and I look forward to following this bright boy’s progress over the years. This school is extremely well organised and run by a very efficient headmaster; Nicodameous Mashauri who has a teaching staff of twenty four. A big difference between this private school and the government run Malindi Secondary where there are only two native teachers. All pupils in both primary and secondary schools in Tanzania receive lunch which is prepared on site each day.
Professor Kilonzo and his wife Susan arrived in the village on Saturday evening following their long drive from Dar es Salaam. It was really exciting to see them here in the village as neither the building or the teachers would have occurred without them. They were the catalysts which inspired our charity to come here. On Sunday afternoon the village people held a party to say fare well to the teachers and as is the custom in Tanzania we had wonderful food followed by many speeches and presentations to the teachers. Peadar showed his film of the building of the extension, local farming practices and the teachers arriving in Suji to the locals and they all gave their opinion and offered much valued comments on the production. Peadar is now finishing off the film by adding footage one year later.
The three girls decided to take a few days break in Zanzibar prior to flying home so they invited Rahema and her family as well as Eneza’s family to dinner on the previous evening. Purchasing, preparing and cooking dinner took five hours. We had a most wonderful evening with the children translating for all of us. The Tanzanians sang their songs and the Irish sang theirs. This is what life is all about – sharing food, song and laughter. Many tears were shed by all and we were treated to the great warmth of Africa by each of us receiving a much treasured gift.
Oh I forgot to mention Aaron is now in the poultry business! Five hens and rooster and joy of joys five chicks.
There are chicks there under mother!
Cockeral and other hens
Goats and a cow next year?
Oh I forgot to mention Aaron is now in the poultry business! Five hens and rooster and joy of joys five chicks.
Goats and a cow next year?
More Later describing a trip to Same and return to Dar
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