29.06.07 Friday in Iringa

We hope you liked the pictures in the last post. We will be putting up some pictures of the two schools next. Today our group met with the Ulonge Primary School, the other primary school located in the Lundamatwe village area. This school is a newer school, just recently built in the last four years. The school ran out of money during building and only has classrooms for Standard One through Four. There is one unfinished classroom for Standard Five, which needs walls completed and a roof added if the fundi (carpenter) can be paid. The Ulonge school has 225 students, with one class of each grade. There are classes with nearly seventy students, and some smaller classes of about 45. We found out that the school only has fifteen textbooks per class. That means the english class for the Standard One has 68 students sharing fifteen textbooks. We are looking into ordering the needed books in town, which cost about $3.50 per book. Today I was able to provide the teachers with two teacher manuals that they did not have for teaching their classes. They were very appreciative. We will be sending teachers to their school to help teach classes in the mornings during the next few weeks. After our morning meeting, half the group went to hike back to the campsite, which is about a mile or so from the road. Elliot, Abbas and I spent about an hour walking toward town in hopes of finding a dala dala to drive us in. We were not very lucky, but eventually did get picked up by a large group headed for prayer services. We got to ride in the back of the pickup hearing the women and children sing a beautiful spiritual song... We made it to town FINALLY to be able to get some more textbooks and other supplies. We are pricing the supplies we need to see what Project Kesho can afford now and what we will need to fundraise for later. Please contact us if you are interested in helping us fund the classrooms' desks and shelving. We have a lot of timber to purchase and will pay local village carpenters to build the furniture. Email to: projectkesho@yahoo.com Please also let us know if you are enjoying our blog... ~Cathi