This update comes from Joanne! She usually lets Gary draft their updates, but not this time!
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Dear friends and family,
Greetings from your work in Tanzania. Thank you so much for allowing us to be your ambassadors in the Lord’s work among these eager students.
Every weekend I grade a small Friday exam that I give to my Pre-Form students. This past weekend I also had to write 100 names in 2 roster books for attendance taking. The cut off for new students was last Wednesday, but there are sure to be more that will try to squeeze in. In fact, on Sunday Gary had a shopkeeper in town say that he was bringing his daughter this week. I have 67 kids in “A” classroom, 86 in “B”, 53 in “C”, 55 in “D” and 55 in the newly formed “E” stream, for a current total of 316 kids! Wow! New teachers have arrived and I have been able to focus on my teaching with the A and B Streams.
There is no way I can get to all the classes everyday, so I assign the A and B classes to do their own lessons and get an arm load of books from the library for each class to “read” during the times there is no teacher in their classroom. (Streams A and B have been here for at least six months and are the best students in Pre-Form.) It’s working out quite well. We were informed today that VST is sending five national Form IV graduate students to assist with Pre-Form. Gary has also submitted his schedule of open periods to the academic office to be used when needed. All the classes (streams) are at different levels of the English course, so changing the classroom sizes is not what I want to do. I’m concentrating on the new students in C, D and E, so that some of them can pass the English exam in December. We hope that those who do not make it into Form I will return in January to take a full year of English and then pass the exam in the next December finals time. Many students here are quite small. Then, again, they can be 12-13 years old up to 20 and 22 years in Pre-Form, so, it’s quite an age and maturity range. I depend on the older ones to be the leaders, and they do rise up to be that and are often the more intelligent and focused students.
Oh, you would not believe the rags these kids wear to school! And their shoes are falling apart, sewn long ago with “thread’ from woven bags. No socks, short trousers, huge shirts, few buttons, no zippers, etc, but they still come, no matter what, to get an education. These new students (in C, D and E classrooms) are not required to dress in school uniform, as they have just come for a few months, and may not return in January. It’s a stretch for the parents to send their kids to school, pay for their ghetto (2-3,000 Tsh/mo), basic needs (a blanket, soap, beans, cornmeal, a small stove to cook on, charcoal and a pot or two, etc) and student tuition (10,000 Tsh, Tanzania shillings). As their teacher, I see all this and cannot let it affect me and my teaching. I love them as my children (an understatement) and want to fix all their clothes, etc. So, with their language limitations of English, I’m finding myself teaching more boldly and using more Swahili this time than last year. Giving them a small exam every Friday makes them (hopefully) study all week for the exam. It also tells me how my teaching is going; if they are understanding what I’m teaching, etc. It’s a real challenge to manage a classroom of 90 students (which was the case before we split out the newest students into the E stream), but I’m able to do it. I’m pretty strict and do a lot of pointing at students, if they are talking together, or NOT talking when I want them to be practicing words and sentences as a class. I ask them, “How old are you?” “Are you 4 years old or 14 years old?” And, “This is secondary school, not primary school.” “Putting a student down” in a “shaming” way, is what they do here, so using one or two students as examples and pointing at them, works pretty well for discipline and control.
The students just love to see pictures! I have a picture album sitting by my sewing machine for me to flip through anytime I feel like it. When anyone comes to visit, they will flip through and we’ll talk about everyone in the church and personal family. Gary likes to make the photos appear on the computer screen in the evening. It makes us feel like we’re with you more this year than last, and since we are seldom alone, a lot of the students and staff are getting to know you.
There were a few drops of rain on the roof the other day, so the rain is coming soon! I planted some seeds in the garden in hopes for the rain to wet them and get started! Our diet is quite limited: beans, rice, some leaves to cook for “greens”, a few bananas, cornbread, and potatoes. Avocadoes will be ready to pick in a few weeks.
I went to the ghetto “community” of 5 of my students after school last Wednesday. I took a deck of UNO and a “gift” of a small bag of cornmeal (their staple food). I sat on a little bench, shared their lunch of ugali and greens and played UNO for 4 hours. We had a “blast,” laughing and trying to teach them how to hold their cards, and learn how to shuffle them! The mother of the family that has the ghettos for the girls came to visit as well, and gave me an egg and 2 cups of fresh cow’s milk! Wow! It was really nice to have real milk. I let it go sour (1 day) and had Diana make it into cornbread. It was really good!
On Saturday and Sunday, we do our own cooking on a kerosene stove. I thought maybe I’d try something really different! (Sound familiar?) So, I took the Strawberry protein shake mix that Gideon had thrown out (I can see why, but we’re hard up for protein here) and made pancakes from it! Well, they turned out ‘not SO bad’, says I, but Gary made me promise to never do it again!
May God’s grace abound to you as you glorify Him in your lives.
Gary and Joanne Grenell, your feet on the ground in Tanzania
