Whadya Know? It Works!!!

The sewing saga continues. As many of you know, Joanne loves to sew.

When she was ten years old, Joanne’s mother taught her to sew on grandmother’s treadle machine. In September of 2009, forty-seven years later (when we first came to work with VSI in Tanzania) it did not take long for Joanne to assess the condition of the students’ uniforms and determine to help them. She started with a borrowed treadle sewing machine from a village tailor, mending torn garments and replacing broken zippers. It wasn’t long before she was making new uniform items: scarves, ties, trousers, skirts and shirts. Gary started making trips nearly monthly to the towns of Vwawa, Mlowoo and Mbeya to buy bolts of fabric.

When the time established for the borrowed machine expired and Steve Vinton saw the ministry being accomplished for the students, he bought Joanne a new treadle machine. The quality of machines available here, however, are much to be desired. She was constantly adjusting thread tensions or the bobbin or dealing with some other mechanical problem.

She decided in June of 2010 to bring her favorite machine (a Pfaff) from the States when we returned in September.

After promptly burning out the foot pedal using the electricity available from the diesel generator, we tried in vain to develop a treadle adaptation for the Pfaff; its machinery was just too stiff and heavy for the rope’s traction to turn the “wheel.”

One day a student gave us a car window crank that she’d found on the ground. We mounted the crank to a carved piece of wood and duct taped it to the wheel in order to turn the wheel manually. When we returned to the states in 2011, we had friends help us improve both the fitting of the wooden piece in the wheel and the quality of the window crank. (The initial crank was plastic, which wore out, the knob constantly coming off in the hand of the person “turning” for Joanne.) The joke around campus was that if you helped Bibi with her sewing, your arm would be either strong or aching.

As the time drew near for our return to the states in 2012, our thoughts turned again to converting the machine to a treadle operation. Some of Joanne’s favorite “turners” were busy with preparation for National Exams, so she was depending on Gary more and more to help out. Although he enjoyed the time together, it often interrupted other plans.

We returned to an earlier idea of using a bicycle chain to drive the wheel. Necessity is the mother of invention. We didn’t know if this had been done before, but we were certainly hoping to praise God for its success and the service it would bring to our beautiful students. In the states, we bought a pair of sprockets and chain.

Upon our return in September, we bought a used treadle cabinet,

cut and fitted a circular board to the wheel of the treadle for the mounting of the larger sprocket,

and mounted the smaller sprocket on the sewing machine’s wheel.

After some adjustments in the machine’s height and alignment and the chain’s length, the operation proved successful and Joanne became independent in her production. She estimates that she can sew nearly twice as fast as when someone was turning the wheel manually. She’s able to turn out two shirts in an evening.

Sewing seeds of kindness,

Gary and Joanne Grenell

Naming Children

Here are audio presentations, in two parts, in Gary’s own voice, about infant mortality, naming of children, and roles of the parents in raising the children.

(Toward the end of part one, at you will hear Gary, Joanne, and Gary’s son-in-law, Trevor, briefly discussing various names and how to close out the audio recording. At the very end of part two you will hear Trevor’s voice acknowledging the end of Gary’s spoken narrative.)

To play back the audio recordings, be sure to first turn on the speakers of your computer, and either scroll down the right side of the blog to reach the "Featured Audio Clip" or click on the "Audio Clips" tab across the top of the blog to open a new page that holds the archive of all the audio clips.

John Williams, Your Hands & Feet blogmaster (for the Grenells)

Leadership Elections

It was a day of excitement and enthusiasm on the campus of Idigima Secondary School. It was Election Day! With Form IV students graduating and moving on, new leaders needed to be chosen. Student government is much larger here than we remember from our secondary school days. In Tanzania, student government involves all aspects of the student body and campus, from the cleaning of classrooms and toilets to the greasing of the diesel generator. In addition to the Head Prefect (HP [Student President]) and his assistant to the Head Girl and her assistant, officers are elected to govern and organize work details, take care of the environment, monitor class behavior and duties, carry out discipline issues, schedule chapel leaders, make sure water and electricity is available, supervise sports and games, promote academic excellence and debate, and lead Bible, Arts and Science Clubs.


Prior to Election Day, candidates had to write a paper on why they wanted a particular leadership role and stand before the teacher board for a personal interview. As a result, only qualified candidates would be on the ballot for each office.

Election Day began with each of the candidates and their campaign team visiting each of the classrooms around the campus. Each candidate had five minutes to enter the classroom and present his or her speech. Choruses of cheers and clapping were heard all morning.


Following the afternoon break, under a cloudless and very hot sunny African sky, the students brought chairs from their classrooms and made long lines for the open-air voting assembly. The teachers walked the lines, passing out a square of paper to each student,

and after the office was announced and the candidates named, the teachers would again walk the lines with buckets to collect the ballots. The process took the rest of the afternoon, followed by teachers and select students tallying the votes. The results were posted the next day.



It is exciting to watch these new leaders, full of fresh ideas and enthusiasm, wanting to make their school a better place. It is a ripe atmosphere for our encouragement that all be done to the glory of God.



Join us in prayer that these new leaders will do well and give all of the glory to God. Pray specifically for our new HP, Elafasi, Head Girl, Scola, and Academic, Christopher.

Living by grace,

Gary and Joanne Grenell

" Idigima Secondary School Beginnings"

-an article by alumni student Stan Mwampamba

Stan Mwampamba

Stan Mwampamba is a 2011 Division One (highest National Exam scores) graduate from Idigima Secondary School. He served as a part-time teacher following graduation, prior to moving on to Form Five Advanced Secondary School education in the Iringa Region. We asked him to write about the early days of Idigima. He was with the very first Pre-Form One class, meeting under a tree for class, before any buildings were completed. He and his classmates have been involved in the building of their school, from the digging of the first foundation stones to the completion of twelve classrooms and other buildings. Since their graduation, ten more classrooms have been added.

(Editor's note: Stan’s article was forwarded as typewritten words in an e-mail, with edit helps by Gary & Joanne that are in parenthesis. It is unknown if Stan typed the article himself, dictated as it was typed, or written on paper and later typed out by Gary or Joanne. Assuming the latter, while maintaining it as unedited, for visual impact I took the liberty to change the font to simulate handwritten words and to display it on tablet paper images to better replicate what Stan's original article may have looked like.)

Pre Form 2007 studied under the trees

Headmaster Chaula

Boni

Ombeni

Building Idigima

On September 1, 2009, we arrived at the Village Schools Tanzania headquarters at Madisi Secondary School in the Iringa Region. After two weeks of training and living with students in their single room “ghettos,” we were sent to serve as volunteer teachers at Idigima Secondary School. We arrived on Saturday, September 12, 2009. You can pick up on the history of the students and campus growth through our archived blog updates.

God bless you for partnering with us in this adventure with God.

Your Hands & Feet in Tanzania,

Gary & Joanne

Social Skills

Here are audio presentations, in three parts, about social skills and how they differ from here in the United States, in Gary’s own voice.

(At the beginning of part one there is an 11 sec. delay before Gary’s voice is first heard. And, toward the end of part one you will hear Gary’s son-in-law, Trevor, briefly comment on the recording.)

To play back the audio recordings, be sure to first turn on the speakers of your computer, and either scroll down the right side of the blog to reach the "Featured Audio Clip" or click on the "Audio Clips" tab across the top of the blog to open a new page that holds the archive of all the audio clips.

John Williams, Your Hands & Feet blogmaster (for the Grenells)