One Year Later: Lessons Learned at JBFC

Saturday, October 4th, marked my one-year anniversary at JBFC in Kitongo, Tanzania. As anniversaries often are, the day was one of reflection and a sense of accomplishment. I’ve learned so much from the kids and staff of JBFC, yet I know I still have so much still to learn.

 I’ve learned you can never have your hair braided too much, or hear the little girls sing “Let it Go” from Frozen (if you haven't seen the JBFC girls singing Let it Go... click on over to Facebook www.facebook.com/JBFCTanzania) too many times (ok, maybe there is a limit to that).

 Kids all over the world will pretend that they can’t hear you when you tell them it’s time to get out of the pool.

 I have learned just enough Swahili to continually cause confusion and fits of laughter for Kanaeli, our campus shopper and driver.

I finally learned how to light a gas stove without screaming. Hint: buy a long handled lighter. (I’d say I learned to cook here, but that would be a bold-faced lie.)

I learned how to slaughter a chicken. Though, next time I’ll work on the not letting it run around "like a chicken with its head cut off" part.

 I have learned how to have patience, whether it is in communicating in Swahili, sitting in traffic or waiting for the extremely slooooooow Internet to load.

It is actually easier to climb Kilimanjaro the second time, especially when you are raising money to give 300 Tanzanian children windows for their school library.

The most impressive thing to my family and friends at home is most likely my newfound ability to live with lizards, bugs and DOGS! I still run away from the geese and donkeys though…

Most recently, I learned that graduates don’t just walk into graduation, but do a fancy little line dancing walky-thingy-majig.

But seriously, the best thing I’ve learned is how very lucky I have been in my life. Growing up, I had parents that drove me to school, picked me up and had dinner on the table for me every day. (Except for that one time they both forgot me at school!) I never had to work off a scholarship everyday after class, before going home to cook dinner for my siblings.


I have met volunteers at JBFC that will be lifelong friends. The international staff of JBFC has become family. The staff and especially the kids of JBFC will live in my heart forever.








Melinda Wulf is celebrating her one-year anniversary as JBFC's Administrative Director.

Budding JBFC Journalists

With a Journalism degree and a high school career on the newspaper staff under my belt, it was only fitting for me to initiate a Journalism Club at Joseph and Mary Schools.

 A school newspaper and yearbook are such foreign concepts to our students, it took a few weeks to get across what we hope to create.



So we enlisted guests from the United States to bring newspapers and printed copies of yearbook pages over to Tanzania just so we could show the kids what we had in mind. They pored over the pages of the examples we showed them for the entire club period.

We had a photography workshop one day where we split the club into two groups and did a walking tour of campus. The kids stopped and took pictures of things on campus that they could write an article about. The two groups then joined up and told each other what they took pictures of and the seeds of their potential stories. These are the images that caught their eyes.

We held a brainstorming session to choose a school newspaper name and had each student write down a potential name and put it in a ballot box. Watch for the Joseph and Mary Vision, coming to a newsstand near you very soon!


We look forward to two of our ambassadors arriving this week to help us kick off the yearbook project. Our hope is to create a yearbook very similar to what you see in the States. So item number one on the list for them is taking school pictures! Each class, club and individual student and teacher will have their picture taken for the yearbook.

Stay tuned for updates throughout the year, and perhaps even some guest blogging from our Journalism Club. I am so proud of our budding journalists and photographers at Joseph and Mary Schools.







Blogger Melinda Wulf is the faculty sponsor for Joseph & Mary School Journalism Club and the Administrative Director for JBFC.

Yoga at JBFC

JBFC was lucky enough to have a real life yogi here on campus for the last few months. Elisa Masso has since left us for Thailand to receive her yoga certification, but not without leaving her mark here with us.












Over the school break, Elisa led yoga classes several days a week for the JBFC girls. I attended a few of these classes and it was great to watch the girls grow throughout the weeks.


Early in the sessions, the girls were often reluctant to attend and apprehensive about this whole yoga thing. Then came the giggles as they watched their sisters attempt down dog and grow
their trees.

In Tanzania, people like to get really close, nothing like the boundaries of personal space we keep up in the US. So getting them to spread out in the school dining hall could sometimes prove a challenge.

My first day, Nyalmalwa was close enough to whisper in my ear that I was doing cobra wrong. I had to take special care not to plow Dotto in the head as I moved into warrior.












By the end of Elisa's time with us the girls were counting down the minutes to their next yoga practice. Some even took their mattresses to the dining hall in lieu of yoga mats.

I've since seen some of the younger girls, Rachel and Salome, perform the series that they learned from Elisa in their dorm room.

This was a great program over the break to both keep them active and work on their emotional well-being. As for me, it got some muscles moving that I haven't used in awhile.

 

 

 

 

Blogger Melinda Wulf is JBFC's Administrative Director.  

JBFC's Year in Review

2013 has been an incredible year at JBFC. We've grown and changed, while staying true to our mission... ending poverty one child at a time. Here are some of the highlights from our year.

We couldn't have done any of it without all of you. Thanks for all of the love, support, and prayers over the last year. We will need all of that and more in the year to come. We have big plans in store for 2014 and we will make sure we keep you informed of all that's going on in Tanzania, right here on this blog. So stay tuned...


In 2013, JBFC expanded our campus and got a bird's eye view of all that we have done in our village of Kitongo, Tanzania.

Thanks to some generous friends we added a dining hall big enough for our entire school community, where we served 200,000 meals in 2013.

Our students at Joseph & Mary School continued to excel, outscoring the rest of the students in our district.

And to keep our kids making the grade... JBFC launched Book by Book to build the JBFC Library.

We said farewell to old friends...

George & Connie

 

 

 

 

Kayci Hebard

And said hello to some new ones...

Seth Diemond

 

 

 

 

Melinda Wulf

We had more guests...

 

 

 

 

doing more things....

 

 

 

and raising more money and awareness about JBFC than ever before.

 

Nina's Share the Joy of Reading Project

 

Emily's Art for Africa Project

We swapped letters with our new pen pals in New York...



Exchanged art with some talented girls in Tulsa...

... which was featured in a local art show.

We flexed our creative muscles in other ways...

... learning drama and taking to the stage.

Thanks to our Permaculture partners, JBFC's farm is growing more fruitful and efficient by the day, providing our campus with most of our food needs and saving the organization money.

And we expanded our campus restaurant, Papa's, so we can serve more customers, help train more underprivileged youth, and continue to make JBFC more self-sustaining.

We partnered with the Walkabout Foundation to give some of our handicapped students some new wheels.

We saw more smiles...

 

 

and had more laughs...

 

than one year should be able to hold.

But 2014 promises to be even better.

For more information about JBFC and its mission, please check out our website.

For more pictures from JBFC, please visit our Facebook page.

And don't forget we're on Youtube, releasing monthly videos to give you more insight into what's happening in Tanzania.