Letters from Africa

June, 2008

It is very, very quiet here at Chief Wanzagi Secondary School. The first half of our school year has come to a close and all the girls went home on Saturday, May 31. The second semester starts at the beginning of July and continues until the beginning of December which is the end of the school year here in Tanzania. The night before they left, the girls sang and danced for us and had words made up for each of us in their songs to give us a personal message. I wish I could send you a video of their dancing and singing. After they finished that, all the 105 mobbed us with their bear hugs just about pulling our veils off! They were sobbing about having to leave the school for a month. Their reactions to having to go home really really surprised us. Then later they were writing us notes telling us that they knew we were sad to have them leave us, but that we should just trust in God! Little did they know that we have been eagerly waiting for this time because our students continue to drain our energy with their many sicknesses and with all our efforts to try to keep them meaningfully occupied 24/7.

Each of us will take one week away at a time at the Ephetha Retreat Center for our annual retreat. I will be starting this Saturday, June 7, so please keep me in prayer. We will also use this time to make some needed repairs in the school and to replace broken water pipes that have not been functioning for over a month now

Our end of term one or semester one examinations were on Monday – Thursday, May 19-22. It was the first time in my life that I had to make up an examination that was to last 2 ½ hours. I really felt sorry for the girls to have to take 11 examinations starting at 7:45 a.m. and ending at 6:00 p.m. for three days in a row. At least they finished the 4th day by lunch at 2:15 p.m. Remember that these girls are the age of our USA 8th graders and they are taking these examinations in English, which is a new language for them! I really, really feel sorry for them. Our passing grade is 40% and it is even lower in some other schools. As an educator, I just feel that it must be very disheartening for a student to continue getting more than half of a test wrong – no matter how hard they try to understand questions in a foreign language.

Our biggest joy is our girls. On their last Sunday here, for the Feast of Corpus Christi, they had to walk 1 ½ hours to the parish church, were at Mass for 2 hours, walked in an outdoor procession for another hour and then walked home for another 1 ½ hours! Then, the week after their examinations, while we had to get the exams corrected, grades figures out, rank in class, etc. we had classes for them as usual. Because I felt I needed to be home for all this, I sent Sr. Beata for meetings for most of that week. That meant that each class had me for four hours a day of class in English and math. They were so good – and this is after their semester examinations. Can you imagine our American girls doing that?

Miss Maluchnik was able to finally get our girls some Pen Pals from Res H.S. and they are absolutely ecstatic. They treasure those letters from their “American friend” and wanted to sit right down and write back and hopefully get answers back – all in less than a week! They have no concept of the distances and how long mail takes. Sister Hermina sent over 18 boxes of wonderful school supplies across the Indian Ocean. They included things like scissors, staplers, calculators, glue, book bags, erasers, sets of colored pencils, some DVDs on First Aid, a huge First Aid kit, a set of encyclopedias and so many, many more things. They were shipped in a container to some Christian Brothers’ School in Arusha. It took more than 7 months to get to Tanzania from Australia. Then came the arduous task of trying to get it to our little remote village. One Montfort Brother from Musoma came to our aid, by convincing some Sisters to allow their vehicle to be used to bring the boxes here.

People have been so very generous, supportive and thoughtful and we are truly grateful for all the goodness shown us. We thank you for all your support in so many, many ways. Have a wonderful summer. Please keep the prayers coming.

Love and prayers,
Sr. Stephanie