Communication At Last!

Very exciting news- I am writing this blog and posting it from the comfort of our very own campus all the way out here in Kitongo! Thanks to the generosity of the Bronxville Rotary Club in New York, we were able to purchase a satellite internet service a couple weeks ago on a trial basis, and everything seems to be working great. There are obviously little hiccups now and then (we are in the African bush after all), but overall, we are extremely happy with the service and it will definitely enable Kayci and I to stay in touch on a more regular basis with all of you.

Once again, the Rotary Club has come through in enabling us to build our organization’s infrastructure here in Tanzania so that we can ultimately serve more and more children across Tanzania. For those of you who don't know, the Rotary Club of Will Rogers in Tulsa, OK and Rotary International were the driving force behind our current water system on campus and are the reason we have permanent running water and great water pressure!

We hope that you all will stay tuned on a more regular basis so that we can keep you up to date on the day-to-day happenings here at JBFC in Tanzania!

Progressed as Promised- Kitongo 2011

Several friends of Margaret Paul’s, my aunt, approached me a few months ago about donating to JBFC for her 50^th birthday. We talked, behind Margaret’s back of course, about the various projects Margaret would appreciate on campus, and they started sending in donations. Thanks to their generosity, and my aunt getting old, we are now in the process of building a laundry area, tiling all of our dorms, and building a playground at the school.

All of these projects are helping keep in line with the theme for this year: re-organizing. We have been taking a step back, looking at what needs to be done, and maintaining what we have already before we plan to take the next step forward in June or July- our secondary school. It has been an incredibly busy time, getting all of these smaller projects completed, but our girls have been extremely excited, and we think we are going to have the coolest playground in all of East Africa- we are building traditional-looking huts on stilts, connected by swinging bridges, with a tricycle race-track, teter-toters, swings, and all of the other playground necessities.

We send a special thanks to all of Marg’s friends who made these projects a reality, and we would also like to share a short video sent to Margaret on her birthday to tell her about these projects. We hope you enjoy:

Donkey, Yee Haw!

Well, I’m finally feeling like half a cowboy, because we now have half horses on campus thanks to the Tulsa fundraiser in mid-April. And, by half-horses, I do mean DONKEYS. We went on a bit of a “donkey hunt” towards the middle of last week, and after much searching, found 2 families, each with 2 donkeys, who were willing to sell. The village was about 2 hours away from the JBFC campus, so we had to rent a truck, trick the donkeys into the bed, and start the treck back to campus, but everything went extremely smoothly, and now, Santa, Jack, Ethel, and Winnie are grazing happily around campus, taking their dust bathes and “eh-awing” as they see fit (even at 2AM). Training has begun for them to learn to plow and pull carts, as to reduce the great expense we use to do both of these things on campus.

I bring this new addition up because it speaks to the progress we are experiencing on our farm. Since restructuring the staffing and creating new goals, all of our livestock has been extremely prolific, we have been “passing” a great number of the young birthed on campus, and our livestock and farm are starting to turn into a real business. We are even registered for the state fair at the beginning of August in hopes of advertising this business as well as bringing home the gold for biggest hog and turkey-maybe even the prize for loudest donkey!

Furthermore, thanks to the Tulsa fundraiser, we have been able to start a new laying hen business, and have purchased 600 new laying hens in hopes of being able to supply the surrounding area as well as our campus with quality eggs. The first coop has been constructed already, and the second one’s construction is well under way. All of this progress just means we are moving closer and closer to our goal of self-sustainability.

6th Grade School Outdoors

This past weekend, we took our 6^th grade on a 2-day camping trip in the Serengeti to learn about the plains, animals, and everything else you need to know about the world-renowned Serenget National Park. They had approached us about this idea about two months back, and Kayci and I thought that it would be a great idea to get our kids out of the classroom and learn, hands-on. Plus, it would have the added bonus of bonding and character building, as any good camping trip does!

That is exactly what happed at the first annual 6^th Grade School Out of The Doors (the change in name is because of the slight misunderstanding of our accents). We left at 6AM last Saturday, headed to the Serengeti, and entered the park around 7:30. Our first stop was the swinging bridge above the huge Nile Crocodiles (there were 3 people too scared to cross). We had breakfast and ventured to the middle of the park, where, after lunch and a short stop at the gas station, we got word there was a leopard in a tree right by the road. So, we rushed from the visitor center where we were eating and learning about the history of the Serengeti, and headed to the leopard tree. We were extremely lucky, and caught the leopard in the tree, laying right next to his dinner, Mr. Antelope. It was an incredible sight, and yet another educational experience for our students.

When we arrived at the campsite, we had a short lesson on tent building and spent about half-an-hour writing reflections on the day and answering a worksheet full of questions (when the students proposed this “educational experience” I don’t think they thought there would be any education involved). We started dinner, the campfire, and talked about what we had seen, what we learned, and played a variety of games. In our conversations, we learned that only 6 of the 29 students had ever been to the Serengeti, and only our JBFC girls had ever been camping!

Overall, it was an extremely successful trip (minus the two flat tires), and our students walked away having a greater understanding of the Serengeti, their nation, and what wildlife is. As we continue to better our school, giving our students a more hands-on curriculum, we hope to be able to provide more and more experiences just like the School Out Of The Doors.

Well, we are finally back in Tanzania after a very short, whirlwind tour in the States. It was a great time, but I know there were many more of you we wished to see, and didn't have time. I will write more about Boniface's impressions and feedback from the trip as a follow up to the previous post, but I wanted to make sure that I got this video that Ashli and Jonathon put together. This is our new promotional video, and I encourage you to share it with anyone and everyone you can to get the word out of what we are doing. This footage was taken while they were working on the documentary, Little by Little this past February and March. Hope you enjoy...

Eyes Wide Open

As many of you know, we were fortunate enough to have a US visa granted to our principal, Boniface, and we are now in the middle of our American safari. It has only been 5 days since we landed in the US, but I can tell that this is going to be a life changing, eye opening 3 weeks, in so many more ways than I could have imagined. Of course, there is the culture shock for Boniface; the freezing weather, the huge highways, the nice houses, and commodoties at our fingertips, but there is so much learning taking place that I know Boniface, and therefore the Joseph and Mary Primary School will never be the same.

Even though we have only visited one school (Bronxville Public School in New York), I can tell that Boniface has an entirely new appreciation for what it means to be an educator. He said to me that after almost 40 years in education, his eyes are finally open to what education can be, and he is excited to get back to work with a new fervor and drive. He is amazed by the teachers drive, the way that a class is controlled without the use of harsh language or corporal punishment, and how much FUN learning can be for a student when a teacher is excited about the subject. Of course, these are all things that we have discussed in our countless staff development days over the past year, but I am hopeful that Boniface having his eyes opened here will mean a new commitment by our entire staff to changing the education system in Tanzania by being an example at the Joseph and Mary Primary School. There are still so many more schools to tour, and so much more to see, but if we continue in this direction, I think this trip could possibly change what it means to be a teacher and student at JBFC!

Our Farm and Livestock

Every business, organization, or even individual reaches a point in their lifespan where they need to step back, evaluate, and re-organize. At JBFC, we had reached that point in our livestock and agriculture department last year, and we felt it was time to make some significant changes.

I should probably diverge for a minute, however, and talk about this department and why it is so important to the JBFC model. The first reason is that we at JBFC are constantly working towards self-sustainability. We hope, once all of our income-generating projects reach maturity, we will be able to provide for all of our operating expense in-country, allowing us to focus more of our budget on expansion and helping more children. A large part of these self-sustaining plans are reliant on our agriculture and livestock programs. However, this department also plays a big hand in life education for our children. By having our girls and students involved in learning how these projects are run, we are setting them up with invaluable skills to succeed later in life. We are showing them, by example, how to lead a sustainable life.

The first thing we have done, is to evaluate the various pieces of our farm, and looked to see which were the most productive. For instance, turkeys, pigs, and ducks are much more productive and profitable than milk cows and local chickens. So, as we looked at the business side of the farm, we realized a need to put more effort into those areas. Secondly, having struggled with the accountability of our workers in this department for some time, we figured it best to divide all of our workers, and put each one of them in charge of a different piece of the farm, creating an easy way to keep workers accountable.

We have only been trying this new system for a month, but it seems to be working. We have already seen tremendous improvement in the cleanliness of our farm, the livestock has begun to fatten up, and the vegetable garden is incredibly organized and weed-free! We are hoping this new system will continue to show improvements in the coming months while we continue to evaluate the different aspects of the farm and livestock ares, so that JBFC-Kitongo can move even closer to our self-sustainability goal!

A Brief Update on the School

First of all, I would like to apologize for the long silence. Slow to no internet is one of the many challenges of living in the Tanzanian bush!

Anyways, I would like to take a minute and discuss some of the major improvements at the school, following up on a previous blog about the challenges we are facing with the current education system. At the end of last year, we made some major changes in our teaching staff, bringing in some more qualified teachers with a greater understanding of English (since we are an English-Medium school). We were fortunately able to find these teachers due to the growing popularity of our school.

Thanks to these staff changes and continuing staff development, school is running much, much more smoothly this year. For two weeks before opening the school, we sat as a school staff, working to bring new concepts and techniques to the table, and discussed how these new ideas could be implemented in our school. We also agreed to rearrange our early years so that the students in our kindergarten, first, and second grades stay with the same teacher and aide for three years, creating consistency during incredibly important years of development. We have many new supplies for our classrooms, and we have recently had a math teacher from the States run a week-long seminar on math techniques and teaching styles. With all of this coming together, we are extremely hopeful for the year (and years) ahead. We have faith that our students will quickly rise to the top, and these systems we are using currently will be a model for many other schools.

And, just to mention, even though we ourselves viewed last year as one with many new challenges, we passed with flying colors by national standards. Our fourth grade had a 100% pass-mark on the national exams last fall, which put us on the radar on the national level for excellence in education.

I will write another post in the next few days about the progress being made with our documentary (the film crew is in Tanzania), but until then, I want to thank all of you for your continued support of JBFC. We would not be able to do what we are doing without you.