Letters from Africa

November, 2008

It has been an extremely busy month as we prepare to close our first school year at the end of November. Our final examinations begin on November 19 and continue through the 22nd. Then the students are still with us for another week until they leave on November 28. There are several challenges ahead of us with this schedule. First of all, they tell me that these examinations must be 2 ½ to 3 hours long. Can you imagine 8th graders sitting for 11 such long examinations in each of their subjects in 4 days? Then, of course, they are still with us 24/7 for an additional week after the examinations because we are to send their report cards home with them on November 28. During this week, teachers are to grade the test papers; I need to work out their averages, rank, report cards, etc. The big challenge is what we do with the 110 students in this confined space once classes are over. If we plan any activities, which we must, then it is taking away time and energy needed to correct exams and do all the clerical work that is required here. Some schools plan trips of various kinds to places like the Serengeti, but then only a few rich can afford that and again, we would be involved in chaperoning those events. It will truly be a challenge.

The dormitory construction is going along very well. They tell us that they will be finished by the middle of January when we start the new school year. I certainly hope so. The dormitory cubicles were made to put in two bunk beds, giving us place for 148 students. We will need to put three bunk beds in each to give us 222 places. I understand there is a room near the washroom in which we may be able to put in some more beds. It is exciting to see the building go up so quickly. Hopefully, the roof will be up in the next few weeks and then all the interior work begins. The challenge, of course, will be how we choose the approximately 100 new students from the almost 600 who took the entrance examination. I am writing this during the night of November 1-2 and some of our teachers have not yet returned from their test sites and so I do not have an exact count of how many took the examination. We are hiring some local primary school teachers to help us on Sunday afternoon to grade some of the 600 copies of the 18 pages of the entrance examination. Last year, Sister Ewa Maria and I spent over a week correcting all day long and into the night. However, this year, we have our current students who need our attention and our daily classes to teach the remaining material in the required syllabus for this year.

Water continues to be a major challenge. Again, we had just a very little amount on water in one of our water tanks yesterday and therefore could only put in two buckets of water for use for the 75 girls taking the entrance test at our school and our 110 current students. On Friday, as the girls were trying to scoop water from this tank with the last water, they found this large snake in the water tank! This is Africa! I keep begging the engineer at the construction site to help us do something so that we do not have to close down the school again in these few weeks before final exams. We even talked about having to truck in huge containers of water, but I have no idea how much that would cost. Water would certainly have to be rationed. Honorable Mkono wants to have a well dug down the hill and pump the water up to the school, but that will take some time to do. Neither will it function when there is no electricity to power the pump.

The registration of our school is still not complete. Every time, we feel that we are one signature away, we find that there are some additional requirements that we need to meet. Father Godfried Maruru, our Social Studies teacher, has been most helpful in the last few weeks. It seems as though we have one more inspection, that of the Health Officer, to go through. It is now morning as I make revisions in this article. I just looked out the window to see about 10 girls clustered around a small pitcher of water trying to get a little for brushing their teeth! Hopefully, the registration will be accomplished before we begin the next school year.

It is a joy to have Fr. Gregory Helminski here. He has come in from the Language School every weekend to help with something. We asked him to do something with the 93 remaining current students who were not involved in helping out with the entrance examination at the 6 sites. It would have been very difficult to keep them quiet all day while the prospective students were writing examinations. The girls walked over to the parish and Fr. Greg had activities planned for them for about 5 hours. We knew that he took something from the “Sound of Music” as we heard the girls singing the songs from that movie all evening. He has had Mass for our school on several occasions and that helps in that the girls do not have to spend the hour or more walking one way to and from school to the parish church. For me personally, it is also wonderful to be able to speak in English when he is around. Otherwise, our local community is basically a Polish one within the African culture here! When he is with us, we speak English! The girls are really getting to like Fr. Greg very much and I think he is getting a good picture of them in preparation for his teaching next year.