The school has several clubs to choose from including cooking, choir, rugby, football (soccer), netball (basketball), drum, dance, scout, running, and acrobatic. We weren’t able to see them all in our wanderings, but we saw a lot.
Drum and Dance clubs work together, performing traditional dances. The group was small yesterday, and it’s all girls, but still great to see. In a very strict society, it’s fun to see the relaxed side of the girls.
We got to see the school gardens, which are currently growing tomatoes, garlic or onions, and several other things. They also keep rabbits and the flock of sheep who love our front porch. They have a great chicken coop set up just waiting for a flock. The garden space is big and has a lot of room for more plants but there just aren’t the people or resources to bring it to its full potential.
Holy buckets! These boys can leap. They certainly had fun showing off for the camera and I had fun playing with quick shutter speeds trying to catch them mid-air. These guys were doing leaps, back flips, jumps, and spins – all in the middle of the woods with sawdust where a soft mat should have been. Using old tires and bricks for height and even climbing into trees and doing back flips off thin branches, it was amazing. Apparently they sometimes perform in the dining hall, a building with all concrete floors, doing high leaps with no mats. Scary!
We also saw some amazing and intense football, though I still can’t figure out how they knew who was on what team given the lack of uniforms. One boy was sitting the game out because he was in hospital just a few days ago with Malaria. Though potentially deadly if not treated in time, Peace House has a nurse on staff and got him help quickly. He may have been disappointed about missing a good game, but I can’t help but wonder if he would possibly have lived if still living in poverty. Peace House may be primarily a school, but they are also a lifeline for many of these kids.
Overall the kids have been curious and welcoming. The standards here are high and very few make it all the way through. It costs about $2000 per year for one student here, but that includes everything – meals, clothes, even school supplies. The school has exams each month and students must meet a minimum standard to continue. 115 form one students just started in January. Form three has only about 30 students. Unlike most schools they don’t simply kick them out and say “Sorry, no longer our problem.” I was astounded to learn that if a student doesn’t pass the exams, Peace House actually find them a new school and pays the tuition. If they get the funding needed to build the planned vocational school, those past students will have first opportunity to enroll should they not succeed academically.
I’ve been learning a lot about the Tanzanian school system. Pretty much all the primary grades are taught in Swahili, though English may be a class subject. Then when secondary school starts, the government requires that all classes be taught in English. Oh, and the national exams are in English as well. Imagine speaking little or no Japanese and then having to take and pass chemistry taught only in Japanese. Could you? And to add to the pressure, the national test results, given at the end of form 2 and form 4 (think 14ish and 16ish) are actually published in the paper. It’s crazy. Most of the classes here are taught purely as lecture with students copying the teacher’s notes and translating them later. They have no textbooks and so often come check out texts from the library. I just can’t fathom what algebra must sound like in a foreign language.
They are working hard to do something amazing here at Peace House, but they have to work within the constraints of the Tanzanian rules. It’s a tough road but hey, Tanzanians are used to tough roads. Perhaps one of the students here today will later be the politician to pave the way for a better system tomorrow.
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