Maasai Experience

We have been kept rather busy, our week has flown by and it is now over two weeks since we left home.

Thursday (2^nd December) was Awards Day or End of Year Assembly at the Moshono Primary Campus.  As at Usa River the previous day there were literally hundreds of parents there, all dressed in their best clothes and eager to see if their child received an award.  Those whose child did get an award were extremely proud.  Many of the parents arrived by school bus as it is several kilometers to the School from their homes.  The buses were running a shuttle service from around 7.00am for about 2 ½ hours.  We attended the full assembly and presented some class prizes again – the School makes good use of their guests.  In Tanzania it seems that guest speakers consider themselves higher ranking if they speak longer.  To us this appeared to be the case for an education ministry official who spoke at length in both Swahili and English.

The whole gathering which probably totaled 1,000 people were fed lunch – rice, pilau (rice cooked with meat), a boiled meat dish and fried bananas were on the menu.  The school cooks start at a very early hour to get the meal ready for such a large gathering.

We were at work on Friday morning – some more time in the library re-covering text books then cutting and gluing wooden blocks for classroom building block sets.  These are really needed in the classrooms and we are to make as many as there is wood off-cuts available.  The mitre saw at the carpenter’s workshop has been very handy as we have cut over 500 blocks so far.  We have sanded most of these and now need to paint them in bright colours.

As is usual at the School on a Friday afternoon at this time of year, there was another round of testing prospective new entrants which we helped with.  The testing process runs like clockwork each week but it is all hands on deck to cope with the numbers.  There were fewer children to test this week – another 300 or so arrived – but unfortunately only a few made it through.  Entry into St Judes is recognized as a lifetime opportunity for the children so the parents are desperate to get their child accepted.  Consequently many of those that arrive each week are well out of their comfort zones.  Next Friday is the last day of testing this year but there should be close to 150 children selected to start school next year at the end of the testing process.

We had an awesome cultural experience yesterday (Saturday 4^th Dec).  Our day was spend at Monduli – a village west of Arusha which takes about 1 ½ hours to reach by bus.  The School hired us a school bus and driver for the day together with Felix – our beloved African guide who we have come to know quite well.  He will do anything for us and has worked his way from a school bus driver at St Judes to be part of the visitor team.  He recognized that a job at St Judes would give him an opportunity to learn and get ahead and persistently applied for a job as a bus driver several times before being accepted.  Similarly he had to apply for the visitor team job several times before he was eventually accepted, being turned down each time because his English was not good enough.  Felix spent many extra hours in his own time taking every opportunity possible to learn English.  He is like many Africans who are desperate to get ahead where being able to speak English is essential.

We first went to a local Maasai market where we were the only “mzungu” – white people – and where the locals bought and sold food items, jewellery, hand crafts and livestock.  We sent Felix to buy a goat which was needed as a gift to the Maasai hosts we were to visit later in the day.  We kept well away while Felix negotiated the deal (41,000 Tanzanian shillings – about NZ$40) otherwise we would pay a much higher “mzungu price”.  The market was a very colourful spectacle with all the Maasai people dressed in bright traditional clothing. It was a unique experience for us to be part of a non-tourist market where the Maasai people were simply going about their daily lives.

A visit to the home and boma (a group of houses) of Lias (an ascari / guard at the School) was another highlight of the day.  His home was some distance off the road and the bus (4 WD) had to negotiate quite a rough track to get there.  Once there we presented the goat which had travelled in the bus with us to Lias’s extended family and were treated to Maasai dancing and a look through their homes.  These are round mud huts with a thatched roof.  The houses are cool inside which was a welcome respite from being in the hot sun. This way of life is relatively unchanged from their traditional way of living – no electricity or running water and where cooking is on an open fire. Lias has two wives, both with young children. His father also has two wives and his uncle, three – all of whom live in the boma.  They have a smattering of livestock – goats and calves which are kept in a thorny enclosure at night.

We also met Donald Mmari from the Monduli Rotary Club.  Donald told us of two club projects which have been undertaken through assistance from overseas Rotary Clubs and a Matching Grant.  One of these is the provision of school uniforms and fees for 24 children to enable them to attend a local government school.  The second project we went to see was a bio gas digester which is one of twenty that have installed in the village.  This particular digester was fed by the effluent from three cows which were housed and fed a mix of hay and silage and produced enough gas for the household.  This is a giant leap forward as many trees are unsustainably cut for fire wood.  Many more bio gas digesters could be installed if funds are available – each costs between 850,000 and 1,000,000 TS (about NZ$1,000).

A tired group ended the day back at School.

Today (Sunday) was a day of rest – a brief trip to the supermarket followed by an afternoon relaxing by the pool at a local hotel.  We are ready for another week which will include visits to the homes of two sponsored children – one by the Rotary Club of Stortford Lodge, an orphanage visit and more project work around the School.