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| Pre-primary classroom |
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| Shoe "fundi" (means repair person) fixing shoes |
We thought you would like to know a little more detail about
what day to day life is like here for the two of us. Recall that at every
Rafiki village (there are 9 others in sub-Saharan Africa and we all operate the
same) there is a Village manager who is called the village administrator, a
headmaster for the school, a child care director and a director of the teacher
training program. Our village administrator is farmer from Illinois who
has been here with his family for going on six years. His wife teaches in the
school and directs the Widows program that provides products for the Rafiki Excange in Florida. Our headmistress of the school is a retired school teacher from Florida
and our school goes up to the sixth grade-each year we add another class until
our orphans are ready for the university. Our school has about 160 children in it
which includes some day students to make for a normal class of 18 students.
This would include three levels of pre-primary since school starts here at 3
years old but they only go half day, leaving after lunch. The classes also serve as training sites
for our student teachers. We are fortunate to have with us for this school term
a music teacher from the States and her husband who assists me as the director of the teacher training institute.
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| Buying fruits and vegetables at local market after night of rain. |
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| Line up for marching to school. |
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| One Mama shaving heads |
We have about
45 national employees which includes cooks, maintenance personnel, guards,
mothers for the resident children (our orphans which numbers 60 at the present
time), assistants to the mothers called “aunties”, teachers for the school,
grounds maintenance and administrative assistants. This last category is
important because they help us relate to the parents of the children who are
not residents in the village and take care of purchasing and procurement. Can
you imagine how much food these growing kids eat each in a week and how many
clothes and shoes they go through? Nearby there is a large market
where we buy many of the clothes and shoes which are shipped in bales from the
States as no longer fashionable. The clothing items are good quality and
hardly used, if at all. Cloth is reasonable and we can hire street seamstresses to
make clothes if necessary and they usually produce good products. The children
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| Children working in the garden |
have three sets of clothes for school, play and church. Our site is fifty
acres directly viewing Mt. Kilimanjaro, is totally fenced and patrolled for
security, including about 30 acres which is usually cultivated. We are hoping
to soon have a chicken house and there is a large space for the mothers and the
children to do their own garden cultivation. Our site is furnished with a 100
meter deep well which gives abundant pure water, our own generator which we try
not to use unless necessary and a water tower for pressurization.
My morning begins about 4:30 when I get up for some time
with the Lord and prepare for the Bible study which we have daily (not
weekends) for the student teachers. We just finished a wonderful study on
Colossians and are starting the Gospel of John. This study has good notes
which we pass out to everyone with adjustments considering education level and
English skills. Peggy uses the same study for training the child care staff.
There are sometimes in the notes complex vocabulary so we have to spend a lot
of time explaining the English. One requirement for joining the national staff
is at least modest English skills. Visitors are usually surprised at how well
the children speak English and of course they have regular instruction in their
native language Swahili. It is still dark when I go down to unlock the gates. (Because we are only 2 degrees below the equator, our daylight is mostly 12 hours with 12 hours of darkness. The sunrise and sunset times only vary 20 minutes a year). The guards do not have keys to the night locks so I make another trip to the
guard house after dark and take advantage of the opportunity to speak some
Swahili with them - they laugh hilariously at all my mistakes and kindly
correct me. Breakfast is about 6:45 and we get ready for the day. Just before
going off to school at 7:15 the gardener comes and gets his instructions for
the day. Peggy often goes over to breakfast for the children, to see if the they are
behaving and there is no disorder. Peggy’s days are much more irregular than
mine because of all the unexpected things that happen like warts which need attention,
abscesses needing lancing, colds, rashes, fights, and school discipline. The
kids are usually well behaved but occasionally waves of things happen like
sassing teachers and violating dress codes with new ideas of what is thought to
be fashionable. She spends time training the young women who act as mothers, shaving heads and thinking of ways to make things run more
efficiently.
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| Sunday morning Bible Study for kids 10 and over |
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| Sunday morning Bible Study kids |
Peggy also has significant responsibilities in tracking
finances all of which come through free will offerings from the States. She has
to make trips to town almost every day to get some kind of supplies. A good
example would be a whole bag of shoes which all need repairs (we make them last
as long as possible redoing the soles of shoes and are constantly amazed at
what the shoe repairman can do). Many trips to the bank are necessary because
there are few electronic features and most of their operating procedures are
like the States in the 1950’s.....all in CASH! My day is spent coaching the student teachers
after our morning Bible study. Right now there are about 18 but with the new
building coming on line soon there could be up to 180 divided into ten levels
of training. The instruction is by computer and all kinds of unusual things
happen like accidentally resting an arm on the keyboard while the computer is
turned on. Sometimes I can’t imagine how the student gets the computer into
such odd configurations. If it is really bad, Peggy often helps me figure out the
problem after I get home. I usually get home around 5:30 after a one hour
Swahili lesson. The day at school ends with sweeping and often moping the
floors and checking out books for the students to use at home for the evening.
I usually try to work outside for a little
diversion and have just finished after months of working a drip system to
irrigate all our growing shrubs, flowers and young trees. Darkness falls around 6:30 pm. We have planted a lot and realize we may not get to see the full enjoyment
of our efforts even though we are still hoping that God will give us 7-10 more
years of work out here. We sleep well at night :).
This gives you a glimpse of our days but the real way to see what we do is come and help us for a time. The weather is great and the company fun!! As they say in Tanzania "Karibu sana" .. Very Welcome!
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| Kent's "fun"... orchids on our porch |
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| How to get a chicken "home"... front seat of course |
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| Mama and baby at the market |
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| Wells Fargo donated RED shirts!! |
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| RICE building construction for teachers training institute |
