Letters from Africa

July, 2008

June has been an interesting month and certainly different without our students here. It has been wonderful to have some weeks of quiet to look at the sunrises and sunsets without running to the aid of students needing something. It was especially good to have this time since none of us have been feeling our best and hopefully we will be ready to face the next half year. Yet, it seemed to go by so quickly.

The greatest news is that Sister Iwona Maria Stasik from the Poznan Province arrived on Saturday, June 21 to help us for two months. It is wonderful to have her with us, to have another member in our small local community, and two more hands to help. I made the 3 hour airplane trip to Dar es Salaam to meet her. Sure enough our plane to Musoma on Sunday was cancelled so we had to stay in Dar es Salaam another night and arrived on Monday. While there, I was able to buy copies of the Kiswahili Catholic Catechism of the Church, many religious books and some DVDs for the students. However, we still cannot find a Kiswahili lectionary. After searching for all this time in the towns and cities closer to us, I thought for sure that I would find it in Dar es Salaam which is the largest city in Tanzania. They tell me it is out of print and may be available in about a year or more.

We had all these plans to do a whole lot of cleaning before the girls come back on July 7. Everything gets so dusty here overnight, that we were going to wash down all the student desks, beds, windows, etc. Those plans had to be scrapped as we are in a real water crisis for the past week and we do not know when it will be solved. It has not rained for weeks so we have not been able to collect any rain water. Something is broken with the pumping mechanism that every so often pumps water from Lake Victoria. For some time, the villagers were getting water from us to make the bricks to build a larger out-station church here in Buturu connected with the Butiama Parish, so that was draining our water supply as well. Our two cement underground water tanks and our two large plastic tanks above ground are now just about empty. All our plans of doing extra washing of sheets, towels, etc that are not always possible with the girls here, have had to be scratched. Every drop of water becomes very precious. We only wash dishes once a day and then we use all dirty water from brushing teeth, washing up and dirty dish water to use to flush down the toilets. This is a new phenomenon for us. Even when we did not have running water for weeks, we were still able to carry it from the tanks. I only hope and pray that the situation will somehow be solved before the girls get back 10 days from now! Please help us pray about that.

Another piece of great news, is that work has started to clear the land for the dormitories. Honorable Mkono came by with some very concrete plans for the dormitories. The men have spent much of the past two weeks clearing the land and dynamiting the huge rocks that are in the way on the proposed site. Now the challenge is to try to keep the work continuing! Honorable Mkono said that we had better put a leash on this man named William, who was going to direct the land clearance and dynamiting. For fear that William would not come if I was not home, I did not tell him that I was going to be away on retreat. He kept calling me the first days making promises of when he would be at the site which never were being realized. One night between Sunday and Monday at 1:30 a.m. he called saying that he was a half hour away from bringing all the huge equipment to Buturu. The retreat house is about an hour away, so I kept trying to waken the two Sisters by phone calls to warn them that there would be all this heavy equipment being delivered! Sure enough he did arrive and the men spent the rest of that night sleeping in the truck. What makes doing anything difficult here is that we are in such a very, very remote area. In order to run the machinery, every day they have to bring a huge container of diesel from Musoma, which is about an hour away. Parts of the machinery break and then they have to travel far to get replacement parts.

I do not know how far the building will be able to progress. As I have mentioned previously, even if the dormitories are not finished by January and we cannot take any first-year students for the next school year, I am hoping that at least the Ministry of Education will register the school so that our current students can take their National Examinations in their second year.

It should be an interesting second semester in that we will be having many guest teachers. First of all, we are to have Pius Alex, a Student Teacher for geography and history. Then Honorable Mkono brought over this man from the University of Dar es Salaam last week who wants to place 6 University students with us for more than a month to get practice in teaching. It would be wonderful to divide up my English class of 53 into smaller groups of 15 or so based on their knowledge of English - but we are desperately trying to think of where the small groups would meet as we only have two classrooms and a library available and the rest of the 52 in a different class need one of the classrooms. All we can think of is to send them in various areas outside, but then the noise of the construction may interfere. We shall see.

During this break, we have had dozens of families coming each week still trying to get their daughters enrolled for the second semester. We have had to dismiss one student in May and have really not talked about it to anyone. Yet, we get messages from towns a hundred miles away, asking to be able to take the place of hers! If only we had the Sisters, teachers and facilities, we could easily have 300 + students right now. When we meet our girls anywhere in town or at Church, they are all lonesome for school. I do not know how many have called or text-messaged the three of us wondering how we are managing without them!

It does seem strange to be going back to school full force in early July. Help us pray that we have the health and energy to welcome our very alive, enthusiastic girls and that somehow the building process really takes off. Have a great rest of the summer!

Love and prayers,
Sr. Stephanie