every day life in Tanzania

We visited a local school this morning, a government sponsored public school. There are a total of 11 teachers assigned to this K-7 school, with one teacher out ill and another doing some additional education so only 9 were actually teaching the 670 students that attend. That’s a class load of over 70 students per teacher. There is a real shortage of teachers and my guess there is a real shortage of money to pay them. There are a large number of private schools where the student teacher ratio is much different. The kids were charming, we sang “Row,row,row your boat ‘ to them and then they joined in with us as they already knew the words and then sang it as a round.

At this level their classes are in Swahili with English being one of their subjects. They spoke a little English with us, but you could see it was difficult for them as they are nowhere near fluent. Once they reach what we call high school all classes will be taught solely in English. We taught them how to fold paper air planes and then took them outside to fly their planes. They thought that was fantastic and had a great time. They had a few questions for us and drug us to their desks to sit with them which was quite difficult as they were already sitting 3 to a desk. The children were remarkably well behaved, all in the required uniform, but many of the uniforms were just-about worn out and in need of some serious repair so you know what a hardship it is for some families to even have their kids in public schools. They have a lunch room and grow a garden to help supplement the lunch menu. Also parents are expected to help pitch in with basic supplies, both school and for lunches. The tour company I’m traveling with has a foundation that helps support this school and many others in Africa.

Following the school visit we went shopping at one of the many roadside markets to buy supplies to bring to a local family’s home where we were going to help cook a meal. The men did the prepping and we ended up with a lovely meal of a dish chickpea and hominy, a rice dish and a spinach dish and meat and vegetable dish and polenta.