Disappointment and Jubilation - February was a tough month

I forgot to mention...They put new doors in the IEFT communications office. A much needed improvement! You can see Lisa with a triumphant pose. 

Lisa with the champion girls basketball team from the St. Constantine's tourney.

I havn't written in a while and it's mainly because life has thrown so much our way!  Let me summarize the past roughly four weeks:

Mathews/ Salzar Family Visit
At the time that Peter was here we had guests - 2 adults and 2 children. One of the children was a 14 year old who had already raised a significant amount of money for the school. I was apprehensive at first, but after just a short time I must say I was so impressed by the maturity of both kids. They both had such generous hearts and troopers for so many things. The new form 5/6 building was dedicated to the young boy. Not bad at the age of 14!

Moshi Basketball Tournament
We went to the Mosthi Basketball Tournament. I reffed, Lisa coached (don't worry, we're still speaking!). The girls team won and the boys beat the championship team but because of the way things were set up they were not allowed to play in the championship game...I guess we'll say they got third.  It was a good weekend and NO dislocated appendages!

Peter Departs at 1:00 AM!
Immediately after the basketball tournement Peter departed in the middle of the night which was a bit of a surprise for all of us since he had read his ticket wrong! Oh well...drove back to Monduli from Moshi only to immediately return almost to Moshi!

Arizona State Visit and Form 4 Results
Black Tuesday.  After Peter left we had a visit from the representative from Arizona State. She was so kind and seemed very interested in our school. The Mastercard corporation has developed a scholarship program for students in Africa. It's highly competitive and we're hoping some of our students will be eligible. Arizona State is one of 20 universities who received the scholarship money to dispense...so I felt the visit was terribly important.  I think everything went well and we were so thankful for her taking the time to come out.

I should back up a bit. There is a man in Tanzania who helps TZ students get into college in the US and Canada. He runs a program that partners with universities all over the world, brings them here, facilitates their travel, etc... Anyway, he has taken a real interest in our school and has been helping in many ways. He had encouraged us to apply with some of our students to do some of their higher level studies (called A levels) at the international schools in TZ. The hope was that they would be better equipped to get into university in the US if we did that. We took his advice and filled out the paperwork for a school in Dar Es Salaam. We knew the entry requirements were quite difficult, mainly due to the need for a high score on the form 4 national exam, which our students had just taken.   The man who helps students get into universities was very much in the middle of the process  helping to facilitate it.

As luck would have it, this man and the Arizona State rep visited us on the same day the results came out. Unfortunately, our scores were not very good.  In fact, the scores across the nation were not very good.  In fact, over 60% of the students who sat for the form 4 national exam FAILED!  Yes, 6 in 10 students in TZ who would have potentially gone on for further education are now basically done with formal education.  6 in 10.

On our side, we had slightly better luck. 75% of our students passed. Great right? Well, not exactly. But, it gets slightly more complicated than that. In order to go on at our school (any high school) to A- Levels (basically junior/senior year) you have to get a certain score. 6 of our students got that score and are able to go on.  So, where does that leave the rest of the students? Do they go to vocational school? Are they finished with school completely?   Short answer...we're gathering as much information as possible to help them.

So...back to those two students we were trying to get in to that international school.  Not only didn't they get marks high enough...but one didn't even qualify to go to A- Level... at our own school!  I was just sick!

Where is the logic/justice/failure in this?  How did we let these kids down? How did the nation let these kids down? So many people keep trying to lift our spirits by saying our students performed REALLY WELL compared to the rest of the nation. One fact is that we were somewhere in the top 12% of score in the nation. But, it's really tough to see that right now.  We are so sad for those students who failed.  We had such high hopes and it has taken a serious re-direction for many of that first group.

Nevertheless, we are quickly trying to make adjustments that will help future cohorts of students to achieve higher marks.   It's tough, but I'm so thankful we finally have some actual information. I think Orkeeswa will be stronger because of this.

Stuff Stolen
Right around the same time that the form 4 results came out, one of the volunteers things were stolen. It was some serious stuff! Some things were returned, but not everything.  Cripes...can't we get a break!

Exam Panic Attacks
Also, around that time, one student began having panic attacks about the national exams. I've found this to be common. We just talk to them and get them calmed down and teach them stress relief techniques. But, it's scary and takes a toll on the kid. Hope we don't see many more cases of that!

St. Constantine's Basketball Tournament
Just this past Saturday we went to the basketball tourney in Arusha. Again, our girls won, but the boys did not fare so well.

Al Snyder Visited!
Part of the reason the basketball tourney was so fun was because AL SNYDER VISITED US! It was so fun to have him here. He's been a good friend for a very long time. I think we always knew he would come...so it was very natural to have him around!  We took him to the tourney, around some markets, to a few bomas, to the school (of course) and then went on a 2 day safari.  In his time here he built a hand washing bucket for our house (something Lisa has been after me to do for a LONG time now) and also a demo for a solar oven.   We were both thankful to have him here and so sad to see him go!

Hamad's Mother Passed Away
Nearly the day after Al left, our driver Hamad's mother passed. She had been sick. We went to the wake. I don't know why it struck me, but I just felt awful  Hamad has been a good friend. We're about the same age and I just felt for him.  The funeral was yesterday.

Kilimanjaro 1/2 Marathon
Today Lisa and many students / volunteers were in Moshi competing in this years Kili 1/2 marathon and 5K fun run. Lisa finished well and was happy with her time.  She is sleeping now because last night they were on the classroom floor at ISM and consequently didn't get much rest!

Wyoming State Officer Passed Away
I recently herd that the Wyoming State FFA Vice President passed due to a car accident. I was again so sad and shocked to hear that. Of course our prayers go out to him and his family and the Wyoming FFA.

One month to go...
Just one month to go. I don't know what to think. I'm excited about the change and to see family and friends. But, I just don't feel finished here.  I feel deeply embedded and this extraction is going to hurt.  I doubt this school needs much more of me and Lisa...we have many good people here. But, in so many ways I've come to need that school and all of the associations it brings.  This next month are bound to bring a mixed bag of emotions.

The Week

Cheese
Jane and Brady continue to make cheese recipes with goat milk. They are perfecting their craft but need renit. We're hoping to develop something consistently good that can be sold to restaurants in Arusha.

Trucks
Had a bad day on Wednesday. First, the Land Rover has a bad starter. We had to push it up a hill seven times to try and roll start it. Finally gave up. Then we got the bus, which was out of diesel. We finally arrived at school about 20 minutes late. About mid-morning the Hilux arrived. It, unfortunately, was not in gear and rolled down the hill and crashed into the side of the Form 3 classroom. Thankfull noone was hurt! The truck itself wasn't even all that badly damaged. But, it's out of commission for a while.  So is the bus now - something with the bearings. This is a TOUGH environment on vehicles!

Peter
Peter's back for only 10 days!

Jane
It's Jane's birthday on Monday...which means we started celebrating last night! Today I think (pending the transport situation...see above) that we will go to Monduli Juu then to eat Indian food!

Goats
The goats are unbelievably cute. The twin babies are part skateboarder. They will run and jump off the side of the building and kick their feet in the air. They are a fun addition to the school atmosphere.

A-Level
We had a group come up from a school in Dar to interview two of our students about an a-level position. That is an exciting prospect as this school has great relations with US universities and would potentially position these two students for going on there.  So, just need to fill out the applications and see.

Squash
I love the game called squash. Basically you go in a concrete room with your opponent and hit a small black rubber ball against a wall and try to score points. It's simple enough, but requires lots of quick running, etc... I like it because you can hit that little ball really hard but it's not very bouncy so it sort of hits with a thud.  We played just last night after a long week of school. Great stress relief but here I am on the couch blogging instead of moving around very much!

Wageni means Guests

We had the week of guests!

Monday - 15 people including 5 with video cameras for a program called World Leadership School
Wednesday - Connie from Greenwich Academy, a private school in Boston
Thursday - no school due to Eid (you know, the Tanzanian snow day!)
Saturday - 12 visitors from Australia Rotary who are raising funds to build the computer / library building.

BUSY WEEK!

Oh, and by the way on Friday we elected our new student leadership with some of the BEST speeches I've heard. Best answer - when asked, how are you going to improve things in this position from the previous leaders, the student (who was running to be the time keeper) replied - "it's not that they did a bad job...I wouldn't change anything they did...but they are TIRED and I'm here to help them!"  He won, by the way!

Lota was selected as our president. I think he'll do a great job of leading the Orkeeswa student body this year. He's out of uniform here as he is in a drama of some kind in this picture.  He's one of the most positive people I've ever met. 

This Ole House

These are two of our students and one of our teachers who were selected to attend a three week leadership event in the United States through the U.S. Embassy.  This is the second time Orkeeswa has sent students on the trip.  Lisa and I were luck enough to be traveling through Denver when these guys were there with Bold Leaders. So, we stopped in and visited them for a while. It was strange seeing them in the northern hemisphere!  The man on the left is the director of Bold Leaders. 

These are the first four recipients of the Orkeeswa Rural Entrepreneurship Development Program loans. They immediately began their small business with these loans and have already brought in their first repayments. Some of the money is going into a savings account for them as well for university.

We had a random layover in London on the way home. So, we stayed the night, ate some food and walked to a palace. We weren't expecting this (mainly because we hadn't looked very closely at our plane tickets!) but it was a nice holiday!

We moved into a new house. It's small but we are living on our own...which is nice. It's also right behind the other volunteer house, so we can have company if we want.  There's been a lot of other stuff happening too since we got back:

• our goat had a set of twins! Plus we added four new mama goats so now we're up to 6 plus three babies. They sometimes try to walk into the classrooms...they have no respect for boundaries
• we have a swarm of bees in one of the hives
• we are getting chickens (20) today (fingers crossed)
• our rabbits lived over the holiday and I think one of them is pregnant
• that garden still struggles (as does our ability to manage it successfully!) but we got some sorghum sudan grass as hay off of it, so that's good. Also, the fruit tree orchard looks great with all the rain we've been getting.
• classes are underway and going well. Honestly the first two weeks went really well. We have great staff and a really good group of students. We have something like 15 teachers now, which is GREAT!
• We're making progress on the entrepreneurship program. Brady, the other ag teacher received a $1500 grant to buy curriculum. We're going to use the ESI curruculum from Nebraska 4-H.
• Mud- had to walk a few times because of the mud and also slogged through it successfully a few times.  I think that's a fun element to the day...but it sure can eat up your time and morale if you're not lucky!
• Oh, we also got our form 2 (8th grade) results back and they were very good. We had NO students fail (first time for that) and also were around the top 11% of over 370 schools in the region.  Agriculture was 10th out of 90 some schools too, so I was proud of my kids for doing so well.

We've also had some struggles too..

• Lisa's had a bit of a chest cold...hopefully going to whip it soon
• New house has LOTS OF MOSQUITOES  The little buggers find their way right to your ears at 4 AM. I appreciate the music, but their timing is all wrong
• We had to make some tough decisions on managing some of our lower academically performing students. I'm learning a lot as a leader from these conversations and decisions, but my hope is we (I) can use any wisdom we have to help these students and also build a solid school with really high standards.
• Tough mentally transitioning our way out of here. We've been here for what seems like forever. But now, we find ourselves having to say "when we're not here, this responsibility is going to be done by so and so..." It's good to have this time and try to equip the new leadership as well as possible.  It's just tough personally because you have such a connection, etc...  

That's the happs around here!  It was SO nice to see family and friends at Christmas and we're really blessed with a few final months here in TZ.  I guess we'll see everyone at home around the first part of April!

Seth

Home

We're home.  I like the sound of that. The way it hits and resonates. Some people have no homes to return to. Or, if you're married you have some ambiguity of which set of homes are "home".  I'm lucky; I get two sets of solid, sink into the couch and get fat and just live kind of homes to visit.  I'm fortunate in that regard.

I haven't written in quite some time, so here's a run-down:

• We finished exams about two weeks ago and had our end of year celebration.  I feel we ended strong this year - much stronger than in years past. We have a lot of returning staff in January so I'm excited about the new year.
• I had an impromptu trip to Nairobi with Thomas to attend a conference with other NGOs doing work with youth in East Africa. I say impromptu because it was decided the day before that we would be the ones attending. It was great!  We learned a lot and networked a lot with like minded practitioners. But, it also meant being gone for two days right before the end of school.  Our staff was great though and they had no problems while we were gone. 
• Lisa was in Liberia for three weeks! She was doing agriculture research asking Liberian farmers about current practices.  She enjoyed the work and had quite the adventure in Liberia. 
• We went to sport's weekend after the last day of school and had a three day sports fest. Our teams took first in girls basketball, second in rugby (yes, rugby!) and second in volleyball.  We had a scare as one student fell and dislocated her elbow...bad way to end the tournament. She is OK now. We immediately took her to one of the best hospitals in the country just a few minutes from where we were playing.
• I was able to re-visit the hospital where I had been sick a year ago, almost to the day. Strangely enough when we were coming back from Nairobi, we boarded our bus right across the road from the doctor's office.  I ran across the street to pay him a visit, but he wasn't around.  It was strange to have the one year anniversary but also great to be in such a different place (mentally and physically) this time around.
• We said hello to new volunteers Ben, Melanie and Sara.
• We said good bye to our friends Allison, Lani, Lisa P. and Scott.
• We flew home! We took a cheap flight (Fast Jet) from Arusha to Dar, stayed the night in Dar, flew to London, stayed the night in London, then flew to Denver.  We did that series to save money...not sure we actually succeeded :)

There's been some talk about what Lisa and I will do when we more "permanently" return to the U.S. As many know, we are returning in January and will be finished at the end of March to return in April.  We'll return to the U.S. after that.  Rest assured, our answer is still a resounding "we don't know what we'll do when we return."  Lisa will work part time for IEFT for sure and beyond that, we are still making some decisions.  My hope is that we use whatever wisdom God affords us as we look ahead. For now, we're just happy to be home.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE AND I HOPE OUR PATHS CROSS VERY SOON.

Exams, Fish & Frogs

Preform Student Kipara by his Boma. He's in my woodworking club!

Form 2 Student Solomon looking very Maasai.

Students battling it out in intramural football. 

Exams

This entire week we’ve been doing Form 4 national exams and an internal Form 2 mock examination.  To say the least it’s been a lot of work. Every morning I pick up Thomas, the exam proctor and two armed guards at 7 AM to take the actual exams out to the school.  Students are tested all day. The form 4’s still have another week of this fun too! Spirits seemed to be high the whole week.

Fish & Frogs

As a part of the exam, students taking biology, agriculture, chemistry and physics have to do a laboratory practical.  The biology one involved A LOT of prep work to find specimens, etc…  This week alone we’ve had to find (and kill) frogs (thank you to our local motorcycle taxi driver on that one), cockroaches (no comment), fish (bought at local market, almost made Lisa vomit…) and crabs (preserved in some salt…stunk like death…stored in our freezer…didn’t end up using them anyway!).

Clubs

We started clubs this  past Thursday. I’m excited to be doing WOODWORKING club again! One of the volunteers did a fundraiser and was willing to pay for the wood, etc… so we can do that this term.  Lisa is doing BASKETBALL club with the new pre-form students too and apparently they are loving it. 

Andy & Ming Say Goodbye

Computer teachers Andy & Ming fly out today. In their 6 month stay, they’ve set up the computer lab and taught classes. They’re heading back to Cambodia to continue their work there.

Sports

The boys and girls are part of a soccer league. So, every Saturday we load up and take them somewhere to play. Yesterday, Saturday, Lisa took the girls and Mzee took the boys.  They learn a lot.

Drip-line Irrigation

Brady and I went to a short presentation about drip-line irrigation yesterday. IT WAS AWESOME. I can’t wait to figure out how to get a system up and going at the school. There is so much potential I think for this. As per usual though, we need to find where to get the systems, get some funding, etc…! Never a lack of ideas.

No more Laguna Beach House Study Camp

For the past several weeks all of the female volunteers have been staying at the school Monday through Thursday nights with the Form 4 girls. They called it Laguna Beach House Study Camp.  I think it’s really helped the girls have precious time/location with which to study. It’s also nearly exhausted the female staff. So, with the near completion of the Form 4 exams, we all said good-bye to the study camp. I think it will be a bit of a welcome relief.

Lots to celebrate, no energy to do it!

By Friday of this week we had a LOT to celebrate! We had successfully pulled of most of the Form 4 exams (including ¼ of the practicals), offered reviews, finished a several month long project in LBH study camp, held school improvement meetings, taught the rest of the kids and did the normal great things that happen here.  However, it was one of those weeks that no one had the energy required to do the celebrating! The thing which we were celebrating was to much! We’ll have to wait for another day. Or some Red Bull.

What's been happening not so lately...

Students learn how to keep our new rabbits from Meshak.

A small group of students prepare the hang our new bee hives. 

Form 5 & 6 buildings under construction. 

Our new bus!

Lots has been happening!  Here's the run down:

• We have new volunteers!
• We finished the goat house, got rabbits, and hung the bee hives. 
• We got a school bus.
• I turned 31 (so old now...)
• Form 4 students take their exams next week.
• Got 37 new kids learning English; our new pre-form 1 kids

I've had to try and grow as a leader to transition into less teaching and more administration. I've struggled a bit because I really love teaching. But, I also am enjoying learning how to help other teachers grow and also work in ways to improve the overall school.

Lisa has been REALLY busy wearing hats of : office manager, volunteer coordinator, life skills coordinator, and sports and activities coordinator. 

I'll try to keep this thing updated more frequently! Please forgive my tardiness.