Libraries in Boxes Start to Shape Up

We spent the afternoon sorting books into our Box Libraries.  We tried to make sure that each school's box got a selection of both non-fiction and fiction and that in each box there was a variety of interest and reading levels.

The next task is to organize workshops that will focus on activities that will encourage reading and reading related skills.

We Get 500 Litres of Water--Yahoo!

We got some water yesterday. I had made a call to Jean van Wetter, the VSO country director, and he put some wheels in motion and a phone call was made from Dar es Salaam to Kibaya.

The upshot of this call was that yesterday afternoon half a dozen big, medium and small water potatoes were gathered around our house and we got 500 litres of water.

 Trying to find a solution to our water problem

There appears to be three problems. There are two leaks in the water pipes on the other side of the road leading to our house. We happily forked over 15,000 Tsh (about nine dollars) to buy couplings and seals to fix these leaks. We are hoping that this will be done soon but, TIA.

The third problem is that the Tanzanian Revenue Authority office, that shares our water delivery pipe, has apparently been bending the pipe to increase the water pressure to their office. This has the effect of shutting off our supply. I couldn't make this stuff up.

This last problem may be more difficult to solve. It will require delicate and highly intense negotiations between the big potatoes at the local local water authority and the big potatoes at the revenue authority. This could take some time but hopefully we will have water on the district schedule sometime before there is peace in the Middle East.

Our Readers Respond to Our Water Crisis

This little guy sat on the edge of our rainwater bucket waiting to put in his two cents worth

In a previous post I asked for readers suggestions to help solve our water problem.  It has now been two weeks since we have received a water delivery.  As they say in the US military, things are rapidly moving from TARFU to FUBAR.  We are way beyond SNAFU now.

Ideas have been coming in from near and far.  Thanks to all of you who took the time to email us on this issue.  Keep your suggestions coming in.  We need all the help we can get.  Here are several of your suggestions and my responses.

•       George Washington (the face on the USD) is the king of the world.  You are rich, white outsiders in a very poor country.  Start giving gifts.  Start spreading around the happiness because money works to get a job done.  You are a long way away for my garden hose to reach.

Bribery is one way to go.  No question, Tanzania is one of the most corrupt countries on earth.  I am worried though about where it will end if I start passing out the Green Backs.  Kibaya is a very small village.  It is isolated and everyone knows us or at least knows of us.  If I start down Bribery Road it will be a bit like giving my chocolate pudding to Bubba at dinner in The Joint.  Where will it end?  It’s not only that, there is something slightly obscene about paying to work.

I asked Mr. Ndee about the possibilty of this solution.  He said definitely not.  Bribery is out of the question and people go to prison for it.  

•       Threaten to leave the project and return home.  You should not have to put up with this.  You need a reliable source of water.  Get more aggressive.  State if the situation doesn't change immediately it is 'bye-bye.'

This is certainly one option.  I cannot tell you how lucky we are to possess that most wonderful of all documents, the Canadian passport.  At any time we can hop on a bus to the nearest airport, throw down the VISA card and be outta here.  The ability to do this is a real comfort.  A wise man told me years ago when we first started to work in the developing world, 'Peter,' he said, 'whenever you work in the third world have enough FU money.' 

The main problem with this suggestion is that if we say bye-bye then we won't find out how things would have turned out. Sometimes it's interesting to ride it all the way down just to see how it plays out.  We also want to bring all of our projects to fruition.  In spite of our water difficulties the work is going very well.

•        Examine the logistics of the water route to your house.  Then search for a way to open the water valve without involving the water authorities.

Thank you James Bond.  Would you like that martini stirred or shaken?

•       Offer the water authorities something that is important to them or their kids, something to make them feel 'special'.  Offer free English lessons to their kids in return for water.  Perhaps have a feast for them after your water is turned on.

This may work.  I'm not sure how positive and up-beat I could be during the lessons though.  I could play hangman with the children using words like, corruption, bribery, theft, stealing and daddy.  I could serve humble pie at the feast. 

On a very positive note, it rained last night and we collected 25 litres.  Laissez les bons temps rouler. 

 

Model Classroom at Chemchem Primary

We've been working on our Model Classroom Project for a while now. Our plan was to refurbish a classroom in Chemchem Primary School in Kibaya to show what a stimulating learning environment looks like. The project is now firmly on the ground.

Assembling the teacher's desk

Mr. Jonas painted the classroom but things really took off when we added the teaching materials that we purchased in Dar es Salaam on our recent shopping safari. The funds for the project were very kindly donated by the Tanzania Development Trust (TDT) which made this achievement possible.

 Pupils eager to help with the unloading

A few teaching materials make a real difference. Things that Canadian elementary school students take for granted like maps, globes, comfortable furniture, a few interesting books and a bulletin board left these kids wide eyed.

Things starting to shape up where a pile of firewood used to sit

The pupils, teachers and Head Teacher were delighted when things started to take shape on Friday afternoon. Everyone wanted to participate by helping to unload the truck and then to set up the equipment. The kids eyes were glued to the books and maps.

Mr. Isaac teaching about tigers

We Go From One Water Crisis to Another

People here in Kiteto get water in a variety of ways. 

The rural poor take shovels to the river bed and dig holes until a puddle forms.  Then they scoop the water into small buckets and carry it home.  They often have short lifespans as water borne diseases take their inevitable toll.

Families who live in the town of Kibaya go to communal water pipes which are turned on three times a week.  The women gather around the tap, socialize while waiting, fill their plastic buckets and then carry them home on their heads.

Middle class people like us have big plastic SIM Tanks.  Three times a week the water supply is supposed to be turned on at the local authority office.  Then it flows through a pipe, to our part of town and fills our SIM tank.  When the water overflows from our SIM tank we know that it is full and then use the shut-off valve on the intake pipe to prevent water wastage.  Our SIM tank is about 15 feet above the ground and holds 500 liters; when it is full we have gravity fed running water.

Each part of town is on a different water schedule.  We are scheduled to get water three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Since we moved into this house at Christmas, things have not gone according to the district schedule.  Many, many times we just don't get water.  Our neighbours usually do though, and that makes things very demoralizing and stressful for us.  Their SIM tanks get filled and we see water flowing at the communal pipes. 

When it rains we collect the runoff from the roof of our house and go to ridiculous lengths to conserve the water that we do have. 

We have done everything we can think of to address this problem.  Our partners at the CERC, where our office is, have gone with us to the district water offices many times to help present our water problems.  Mr. Ndee has visited and phoned the offices for us on numerous occasions.  He has been very supportive.  Handshakes are exchanged and assurances are always given that we will get water according to the schedule.  We rarely do. 

When things get to a crisis situation, we once again go begging and cajoling to the district offices for our water supply to be turned on. 

Now, not even the begging is working.

I am not sure what else we can do, but I do know what we will not do.  These are lines in the sand which we will not cross. 

• Debra will not go to the communal tap and carry water home on her head.

•  I will not risk shredding my sciatica nerve by hauling water from our nearest neighbour, from the CERC or from the communal taps.

• We will not go to the river bed and dig down until a puddle forms.

• We will not share our colleague’s house again nor will we move into a motel room.

The thing is, our work here is going very well.  We are making real, solid progress with all of our projects.

Books are arriving from Canada for our Libraries in Boxes project, our Model Classroom project is nearing completion and we have just published Gab Fest, a book of very useful ESL lesson plans.  Twenty refurbished computers are due to arrive in Dar and are bound for Kibaya.  These computers have the potential to provide access to new skills and opportunity. 

The work with our primary school teachers is highly successful.  Our workshops are lively and well attended.  Workshops with our secondary school teachers are about to begin anew.  We respect the people we are working with and enjoy helping them.  We have formed many very solid relationships.

I invite our readers to provide us with some suggestions.  What should we do?

Six Big Boxes of Books Arrive From Canada

Ute, the librarian at a high school on the outskirts of Montreal, where I taught English and history for fifteen years, got on board to help with our Libraries in Boxes Project.  She organized the collection and shipping of six boxes of books to Tanzania.  She was helped by her principal, Dion and by Jamie, an enthusiastic English teacher.  Funding was also generously provided by the Black Family Association of the West Island.

Peter unpacking the books

Unpacking the boxes was a delight and a trip down memory lane.  It took ages to get the books out of the boxes because we were reading so many of them.  Ute did a brilliant job of selecting the perfect fiction and non-fiction books.  There were many of the old children's classics that we read to our own kids when they were growing up.  A stack of Hardy Boy books caught my attention and I began to remember the exciting adventures of Joe and Frank Hardy and their friend Chet.

  Debra checking out some of the titles

Nancy's Grandchildren Send us a Pile of Great Books

Nancy was a colleague of mine some time ago when I was teaching high school English and history.  She heard about our efforts to bring books to the primary schools of Kibaya and asked her grandchildren for help.  They took up the challenge and sent us a pile of their books.  Many thanks to Henry, Vivian, Sally, Emma and Elinor for their wonderful selection of fine books.  Who says kids can't make a difference?

Gab Fest

Our small book of lesson plans is now ready.  Gab Fest:  A Collection of Activities to Promote Spoken English will be given to the eight primary schools and the three secondary schools that we work with.  It is our hope that the books will be useful.

Gab Fest

We have long believed that many students of English have heads full of grammar but lack the ability to communicate.  Some ESL teachers drill English structure and have their students do endless 'fill in the blanks' activities and grammar tests that are then corrected and marked.

Our approach is different.  We believe that learning English is like playing football.  You can read and write about football until the cows come home, but you will never be able to play it until you start kicking the ball around.  The activities in Gab Fest are designed to get the students speaking English and to gain ability and confidence, in other words to get them kicking the ball around.

The lesson plans came from a wide variety of sources.  Some of them were found in ESL books and some on the Internet.  Many were developed through conversations with fellow teachers.  We invented some of them.

We have used some of the activities in Gab Fest as primary school teachers in Korea and university teachers in China.  Many of them have been adapted to meet the local conditions in rural Tanzania.  We have selected activities which do not require a lot of resources.  Most of them can be done with pens and paper and with chalk and a chalkboard.  They are designed to be done at no cost or very low cost.

We would like to thank Cuso International and VSO Tanzania for their support of our work among rural Tanzanian teachers.  We are very grateful for the constant support of our partner, Mr. Ndee, the director of the CERC and Mr. Henry Kimola our Champion Teacher.

A very big thank you also goes out to the folks at the Tanzania Development Trust (TDT) who provided the funding for the printing of Gab Fest.

May Day--A Political Post

“Don’t be afraid to see what you see.”

Ronald Reagan

On May 1^st left wing movements all over the world celebrate International Workers' Day.  Sometimes with violent demonstrations but often peacefully, trade unionists, communists and anarchists dig their red and black flags out of their closets, dust them off and wave them proudly.

To Each According to his need, from each according to his ability.

Karl Marx

In Canada, middle-aged tenured academics and rococo Marxists do likewise, if only in their imaginations.  They quaff micro-brewery beer, sip fair trade coffee in chichi cafes, thumb well-worn copies of Chomsky’s, Manufacturing Consent, reflect on their favourite Michael Moore film and become teary eyed as they dream of the socialist visions of their youth.

In 80 countries of the world International Workers' Day is a national holiday.  Tanzania is one of those countries.

I have often asked myself since coming here why this country is poor and undeveloped and yet seems to have everything.  Natural gas, diamonds, iron, nickel, precious gems, coal and platinum are all there for the digging.  Tanzania is the third largest producer of gold in the world.

Tanzania's tourist sites are the most spectacular to be found anywhere.  Serengeti, Kilimanjaro, Ngorongoro, Olduvai Gorge and Zanzibar are places of the imagination.  The Tanzanian people are friendly and welcoming.  They are among the most polite people that I have met. 

Countless billions of dollars in foreign aid have been funneled here since 1961 to the point where Tanzania is known as a 'donor darling.'  And yet, many people have nothing, need everything and given the richness of their beautiful country, deserve so much more.  Why?

Ironically, it is the socialist vision that is being celebrated today all over the world that is responsible for the economic woes of Tanzania.

Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania, studied at the University of Edinburgh.  There, he encountered the ideas of Fabian socialism.  The Fabians believed in the Marxist vision of a society based on the principle of, to each according to his need; from each according to his ability. They wanted this vision to be achieved gradually rather than through violent revolution.

Julius Nyerere

Like a generation of young men who would later lead post-colonial African countries, Nyerere rejected the fundamental truth that capitalism is the only system of society that allows man to use his reason to create wealth.  Under the guidance of his Fabian mentors, Nyerere ignored this truth and dreamed of importing socialism into Africa at the same time that America was becoming a beacon of capitalism. 

While Americans were fast becoming the wealthiest people on earth, with the most political and personal freedom in the history of man, Afro-Marxists were poised to lead their continent into grinding poverty.  Americans recognized that there is no liberty unless there is economic liberty.  To Tanzania’s peril, Julius Nyerere did not.

Once Nyerere took hold of the levers of government he worked on creating a country based on Marxism. To each according to his need became the guiding light.  Need became the common currency.  Tanzanians stretched out their hands to the Nyerere's government to get their needs met.  In theory, those with the greatest need were to get the most.  Socialism quickly turned Tanzania into a country of alms seekers.

A huge civil service was created to administer to the needs of Tanzanians and dole out the country’s treasure.  As in most Afro-Marxist regimes it took no time at all for the bureaucracy to become hopelessly corrupt.  Margaret Thatcher summed up the situation nicely when she later said, “Socialists cry ‘power to the people’ and raise their fists as they say it.  We all know what they really mean—power over the people, power to the state.”

Socialism works well until you run out of other people's money

Margaret Thatcher

The producers, whose creative energy was being regulated and whose wealth was being appropriated to meet the never ending 'need' quickly realized that this was a suckers' game.  Like Hank Rearden, the steel producer in Ayn Rand's novel, Atlas Shrugged, they shrugged.  They stopped producing, emigrated or simply didn't show up.  By the 1970s eighty percent of employed Tanzanians worked for the state.

         

A government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights;

it holds a legal monopoly on the use of force against a legally disarmed victim.

Ayn Rand

All of the predictable events followed, as they have done in every socialist country from Cuba to Albania.   A single party state, collectivization of farms, preventative detention and torture were followed by hunger, shortages, a crumbling infrastructure and mind blowing poverty. 

In the late 1970s Tanzania had more political prisoners than South Africa.

When Julius Nyerere took time off to visit Chairman Mao; Tanzania was one of the least developed countries on earth.  The socialist vision, imported from Scotland so many years ago, has hobbled the prosperity that Tanzanians so richly deserve.