We've had little or no electricity since Sunday and while the convent has some solar power, COBET computer room has not.  So I took the opportunity to present two footballs and a basket ball to the COBET school. Pictured is the head teacher, two of her assistants and two of the lovely children.
The balls will be kept safely in the office each evening and they have promised to only pump them up with the hand pump kept in the convent across the road. Often balls are pumped up by the electric car tyre pumps and burst.
​ There was great fun at breaktime, even the teachers wanted in on the action!
​More photos to follow when I have better internet. 

Just over 8 years ago a certain Mr  Johnston arrived in Tanzania with a pile of money for a village that had no school. That village was Saku and that money was from the pupils of Creagh and Attyrory schools. The pupils had decided they wanted to pledge some of their confirmation money to sponsor a project in Tanzania. The village of Saku had at that time, no school. It was in a remote area and during rainy season especially, it was too dangerous for the children to walk to the closest school.
I visited that school yesterday and saw that first building which the confirmation children sponsored. In time, the government took over the school and it has expanded to over 3000 pupils! The Holy Union Sisters continue to be involved sponsoring two of the Kindergarten teachers. Without their continued support there would only be one Kindergarten teacher for the three classes of Kindergarten.
Each class has over 300 students and most classrooms operate a two shift day e.g. 150 children for the morning school and the other 150 children for the afternoon school.
Two new classrooms are being built and until then the kindergarten have no classroom. They are taught outside which is quite inconvenient during rainy season!
One of the older classes was taking part in a mock exam and since there is not adequate space in the classroom for testing, they sat outside on the ground spaced out from each other.
I have taken a lovely video and many photos to show Mr Johnston  and will upload when I get home or get stronger internet. It's hard to believe that this campus was once an empty piece of land. Food stalls and little shops line the entrance. The staff have no staff room and send out to the food stalls for their lunch between morning and afternoon schools. The children also buy their lunch from the stalls. With over 3000 pupils, this is school not only providing an education to the children but is the main source of income for the local people. 

Last Friday I presented the first batch of gifts from Ireland. 
5 basketballs, 5 rubber footballs, 5 leather footballs and a pump were presented at assembly in Debrabant Secondary School, Saku. Of course this would not be possible at all without the donation of the balls from Smyths Toys and the pump by Noel Mannion Sports, Ballinasloe. 
The equipment was well received and was very timely as the school sports league starts this week. All the pupils are involved and each class has a team. There is great excitement around the school as while the players are important, the supporters are just as vital on the sideline! Drums, songs and chants will be heard around Saku for the next few weeks.

To put in context the  value of these balls to the pupils. This is what the children can be seen playing with in the school yards.
The PE teacher is keeping a strict eye on these sets of balls as unfortunately if the balls are given out to pupils to play with unsupervised, they are often sold as proper footballs are expensive and extremely valuable. They will be kept together in their sets of 5 and numbered so they cannot get mislaid. With 5 in the set the Sports Teacher will be able to have proper football or basket ball training with the pupils. 

​Most of my time for the past week has been spent with the new computer room in the COBET (MEMKWA in Swahili) school.
First a little about the COBET project. Continuing Basic Education in Tanzania. This was set up by the government to support children who were unable to access school due to disadvantage and family circumstances. The pupils start at various ages and receive their primary school education in a condensed 3 year programme and are ready to join secondary school. For their first year in mainstream they are in their own class and the next year, they are integrated with the rest of the school.
The pupils stories are varied. Many of the girls are "house girls". They were sent out to work by their family as young as 6 years of age. Some have been lucky to have employers who let them go to school during the day. However they could be working from 4am to 11pm in the house before and after school each day. Other kids are orphaned, many due to AIDs. There are a lot of kids from broken homes or single mothers.
Unfortunately the funding for the COBET projects has been severely reduced but the Holy Union Sisters are intent on continuing the programme.  The "teachers" are not trained and are facilitators who are educating these children as best they can. All teaching is through Swahili and these kids will join the local government school where classes can be well over 100.
Sr Annette decided to try to install a computer room to give these children an opportunity and an advantage over their future classmates in the government school. With the help of the INTO Solidarity Fund, Folens overseas teaching fund, my own confirmation class and other donations, she was able to order 25 computers from Camara.

I have settled, I'm here in Tanzania and despite major wifi withdrawal, I’m OK! I’ll admit, there was a breaking point on Thursday and I paid the nuns IT guy to buy me my own modem, great excitement when he arrived yesterday but unfortunately it was not to be. So it’s old school desktop PC, bye bye whatsapp and constant notifications, I don’t know what to do now in the mornings without all my updates to trawl through!
Enough of my first world problems....Tanzania........

Yes, the suitcase arrived. Luckily Sr. Annette had asked me to have a letter from my school stating that all the contents were a gift to the Holy Union Sisters School. I was stopped at customs after the bag was x-rayed and sent to the red channel. I dutifully produced the letter and blabbered a bit nervously but with a nod I was let through.

​Sr Annette met me at the Dar es Salaam airport. Along with her driver, they had waited patiently for over an hour after my flight arrival time. Let’s just say the visa processing service at immigration is not exactly efficient! Our exit from the airport was then impeded by a car illegally clamped right behind our car. Finally the driver and his mother returned but they didn't seem to have the inclination or the means to get the clamp removed. Finally the space beside our car came vacant and our driver was able to manoeuvre the car out around the clamped, non-moving car!

​An hour later saw us at the Holy Union Sisters Convent, Mbagala. Right next door is the primary school and across the road is the COBET street children project. Little bit of freshening up and we were off again, this time to meet the teachers and see the schools. I was introduced by Sr Annette as a head teacher from Ireland who would inspect the teachers and play sport with the children?! School reopened after its month of summer holidays just this Monday.

​After dinner it was an early night, to catch up on a missed nights sleep.
Wednesday was to be a quiet day for me to rest and get acclimatised to the place. Also Sr Annette was away at another convent. However Sr Mairead took me under her wing and brought me on another tour of the school. This time, school was in session and I was introduced to the children. The school takes children from 3 years and teaches the Montessori Method of preschool. The children all get lunch in the school and instead of going home early; the preschoolers have a nap and go home at the same time as the older pupils. 

Next it was onto the computer room to see the computers funded by the INTO solidarity fund and the room prepared from the funds of my own confirmation class.
Rodney, the new computer tutor was there with a few students but unfortunately the electricity had gone and he could only tell the children about the computers for this class!

The next morning I met with Rodney and we discussed ways of introducing the children to ICT. He took a group for two hours and it was their second lesson on the computers. I took charge of the inside room and my little group started with MS Paint. We thought it might be a nice way to get the children used to using the mouse. Rodney had to translate for me as these children are taught through Swahili and have limited English.
It was hot and stuffy; the kids kept talking to me in Swahili somehow thinking that I'd magically understand them. I supposed they are used to the Sisters like Sr Annette and Sr Mairead speaking their language and as they assume I'm a sister too, of course I should be fluent!
We moved on to PowerPoint when I realised the class was not an hour long but two hours long. They got a great kick out of the transitions on the slides, however they really haven't mastered saving files yet and as soon as you would see a child with a nice presentation they would have exited out of it and not saved it!

​Yesterday I spent the morning with Rodney teaching the same group of children computers. I thought 2 hours were long the previous day, these kids were timetabled for 4 hours! But we got on fine, we continued with PowerPoint. I had taken photographs of them and their school and they prepared presentations about themselves and their school. We invited some of the teachers in to help on the pretence of assisting me because the children would be writing in Swahili. The teachers in this school are not trained and have no experience of computers at all. The children I realized as the day went on, are of various ages. They come from difficult backgrounds and attend COBET to basically rehabiliate them into school life. They will join the mainstream school in a few years but already some of these kids are 14 years and older. Their standard of reading and writing is very basic so they were very proud to show off their powerpoints at the end when we did a class show and tell. Their school day actually finished at 12pm as it was Friday but nearly all the children stayed on for the extra 2 hours. 

In other news, I’m here minding the house while the Sisters are at a seminar for the morning. I’m going to another convent later to pick up a nun who was away. The convent is great, really comfortable and airy. A different nun cooks each night and treats so far include freshly roasted peanuts and banana bread. A man arrived this morning with a bucket of honey and Sr Annette is very proud of the cows they have on their farm. We have mangos, bananas, oranges and pineapples every day.
The electricity goes a few times a day, it went twice yesterday during our computer class but you just wait until it comes back. To have a hot shower, you have to heat water separately and throw it over you in the shower. Everything takes a bit longer but nobody is in too big of a hurry either!
And eventhough every Tanzanian tells me it is cold, and the kids are wearing their school jumpers-it’s roasting!

One week to lift off and it is time to pack!
​As I posted over on my Facebook page I am allowed an extra bag on my flight over to Tanzania thanks to the Etihad Airways corporate responsibility programme. 
The Holy Union Sisters claimed a little bit of space for an icon they want to send to Sr Annette, however there's still plenty of room for the 10 rubber footballs, 10 leather footballs and 10 basketballs donated very kindly by Smyths Toys (There are great advantages to being part of Tribes Waterpolo Masters!).
I have some lovely pens already donated but I still have plenty of room for a pump, pens, pencils and (fingers crossed) USB sticks.
​Any of the above, greatly appreciated.