A Day at Awet

On Thursday, we spent an amazing and yes productive day at Awet Secondary School thanks to the superior organizational skills of Head Master Mr. Malle. We were 'warmly' welcomed, signed the guestbook and met the teachers. Then we moved outside to meet 600 school kids. They sang "Wonderful Day, Wonderful Time" to put us at ease and then belted out their school song and the very popular "Tanzania song" (Tanzania nakupenda) which describes how much Tanzanians love their country. Kambi ya Simba community members rounded up the program with rousing drumming and dancing. Then the heavy lifting began. The Algonquin group lined up to shift three large piles of big heavy concrete blocks from the ground to the hostel building. Then they helped to apply mortar and lay the blocks. The walls started to go up!! In the meantime, the schoolgirls watched from the steps of the adjacent girls' hostel. Pretty soon interaction stepped up between the guests and the girls to the point where all of a sudden, believe it or not, a little group was doing the Macarena...

Algonquin visit to UMATU Centre

Our wageni (guests) from Canada arrived on Wednesday and their first stop was UMATU Centre where UMATU women welcomed them with their usual flair. After a tour of the offices, kitchen/bakery and training/activity centre, some serious shopping took place. Our guests pretty much bought up UMATU's current supply of khanga bags and beaded jewelry. It was a very good day for UMATU's income-generating aspirations.

After the shopping spree, to everybody's great surprise UMATU produced a beautiful, uniquely decorated birthday cake they had whipped up for Sue Ellen. After Sue Ellen blew out the candles, we all shared the delicious carrot cake. UMATU women are really honing their baking skills. Next week -- banana loaf.

Awet Secondary School Girls' Hostel

The dusty road to Awet

School Secretary Samweli prepares for the students' return

The new girls' hostel at Awet (adjacent to the existing girls' hostel)

CPAR Tanzania is all set for a visit this week by climbers, students, faculty and community members of Algonquin College in Ottawa. This community of people has raised funds in Canada to construct a girls' hostel (dormitory) at Awet Secondary School, a remote rural school located in Kambi ya Simba (Camp of Lions)here in Karatu District.

The group is presently climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and will be arriving in Karatu on Wednesday. If they can still walk after their Kili ordeal, they will hike to UMATU Centre Wednesday afternoon to see the product of last year's adventure when another group of Canadians, under the creative leadership of journalist Valerie Pringle and adventurer Ben Webster, raised funds, climbed Kili and helped to construct UMATU's beautiful yet functional centre. Ben is also leading this year's tour.

In the meantime, we're getting ready for the group to participate in construction activities at Awet. By last Thursday, the foundation was close to completion, as you can see in the photo. By this Thursday, our visitors will be helping to raise the walls.

Boarding facilities for girls are crucial for girls to successfully complete their secondary education. Secondary schools are few and far between, so most girls live quite a distance from the nearest school. And, if a girl does live at home while going to school, homework and sleep take a backseat to household chores -- fetching water, looking for firewood, taking care of small siblings, cooking, cleaning, etc. -- so her chances of doing well in her studies are greatly compromised. The new hostel at Awet Secondary School is going to have a very positive impact on girls' attendance and performance.

UMATU Centre is buzzing with activity these days. Today, Hedwiga was making bread, Sabina and Witness were churning out colourful kanga and kitenge bags, and Subira, Anna, Theresia and Victoria were doing beadwork. Everybody's been getting lots of practice and we're now getting ready to do some serious marketing of all the beautiful handicrafts.

Haraa Primary School Update

With funds raised in Canada during CPAR's World Health Day Challenge campaign, work is well underway at Haraa Primary School to construct two 30,000 liter rainwater harvesting tanks. The community has gathered local materials -- rocks, gravel and sand -- used in the construction activities, and community members are hard at work digging the pit for the Ventilated Improved Pit (VIP) latrine to be constructed next. We delivered gutters to the school and met three boys carrying water, which is unusual and actually kind of refreshing since girls are normally sent off on this grueling chore. Both teachers and students are looking forward to having water on site.

Still Baking

The women at UMATU are really getting into baking. Today they made bread, buns and a carrot cake. After a bit more practice, they'll be ready to scale up and open their bakery to the Karatu public. Here at CPAR, of course, we've already dived into UMATU's mighty delicious and very filling bread in a big way.

Bread

What a great day! UMATU women (and CPAR staff) learned how to make bread, quite literally from scratch. We started out by visiting the local market to buy wheat grown in nearby Mbulu Mbulu. We visited several stalls before we bought a debe (big bag) of really good looking wheat. Our next stop was the milling shop to get the wheat winnowed (separating the chaff from the grain) and ground into flour. Then we headed back to UMATU's spacious kitchen. After carefully measuring out the ingredients, we got into some serious dough preparation. The result was six beautiful loaves of golden, fragrant -- and healthy -- bread! Nderingo says it's the best bread he's ever tasted. UMATU's bakery is officially launched!