Today we went back to Burka Primary School. Since we interviewed 10 students, the best way to assess need was to physically visit their houses and see their home environment. While this wouldn’t be appropriate in the U.S., Emanueli and Irene thought this was a great idea. We went to four students homes. I could tell all of them were definitely poor, but Emanueli and Irene really knew what to look for to assess the different levels. They had no problem ranking them against each other. Two of them really stood out to me. The first boy lived in a very dilapidated building where his mom rented two rooms. Her job was to sit on the ground all day and pound plaster (I’m still not sure what it accomplishes, but I see people doing it everywhere).
The second girl had a particularly compelling story. She lives in a one room square mud hut with her 2 older brothers and 1 younger sister, surrounded by banana trees and a few meager crops. After both of her parents died, her oldest brother kept the family together and cared for them. He only finished primary school and never got the opportunity to go to secondary school. He now shines shoes to earn money for the family.
The second oldest brother had an international sponsor to go to secondary school but lost his sponsorship after he didn’t have shoes to go to school and his grades dropped. He wrote a letter to the local government petitioning them to ask the national government for help to go to school and got a government sponsorship to finish secondary school. Now he is in Form IV, preparing for his national exams, and taking care of his younger sisters, with ambitions to go to university.
The applicant, a current standard 7 student in primary school, hopes to go to secondary school. Right now, primary schools are on holiday, but hold remedial classes that students who can afford the 300 TSH a day (less than .30 USD) attend. Today, she stayed home to wash clothes, clean house, and make meals for her family, but first and foremost didn’t attend remedial classes because she didn’t have the 300 TSH. Maybe tomorrow, she said.
After visiting her home, we looked at her grades and saw that, with an A average, she was one of the top students in her class.
Health Assessment: We are starting to review the objectives for the health assessment of the community that we will start in two weeks. We have a data collection manual that is very useful and helpful. However, it has a lot of words that Emanueli and Irene don’t understand. I had assigned us to go over chapter 1 and it was clear that they understood about half of it. We spent about 1.5 hours discussing data collection with me clarifying and giving examples that they could relate to. I’m glad we are doing this now and not waiting until the health assessment starts to figure this stuff out!
I also showed Irene and Clemens, one of my other brothers, the typing programs on the laptops that I brought (which were donated to Sustain Foundation). Learning “home row” brought back memories of elementary school and our typing exercises that we had to do in computer class.
The power went out again tonight and Emanueli told me that it’s because the power quota for Sakina went out. I jokingly said maybe they have an energy schedule for the villages and he said that they actually do! He doesn’t know when Sakina’s schedule is. He said all of the power is hydro powered in Moshi. So interesting. I want to find out more about this power “timetable.”
Word of the day:
Natosha – enough (when you say I’ve had “enough” food)
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