We’ve Moved In!

There’s a whole lot happening right now at Twegashe School!

Construction

Phase 1 construction is moving ahead full-speed toward completion. The painters started on the classroom building last week. They’ve finished inside the classrooms and are now working on the cafeteria, kitchen, and outside of the building. The construction crew is also finishing up a student hand- and dish-washing sink next to the cafeteria. Except for a few minor details, everything else in the classroom building is complete.

 

Up the hill, construction on the teacher duplexes continues. One duplex is finished except for painting and installing the toilet, and the second is not far behind. The crew is now preparing for pouring the foundation slab of the third house. Our teachers are eagerly awaiting the day when they can move into the first duplex!

Classroom and Students

Even more exciting than the construction progress is the fact that our classroom building now has students inside! We made the move last week, to the delight of the students and their teachers. The local carpenter who is making most of our furniture has been very busy making student tables and chairs, shelves, teacher desks, and cubbies. Some of the furniture isn’t complete yet, but the students do most of their Montessori work on mats on the floor anyway, so they are doing fine with the furniture we have so far.

Today the classroom’s effectiveness was tested by a heavy rain. Teachers reported that they could still hear and had plenty of light with the clerestory and large windows. This is such a contrast to most rural schools, where teachers have to close shutters to keep out the rain, but then kids can’t see because it’s too dark. And hard rains on their corrugated steel roofs with no ceilings mean students and teachers can’t hear, either. It rains a lot in Bushasha, so Twegashe’s ceilings and glass windows will mean a lot less instructional time wasted.

Toilets

Ever since the planning stages for Twegashe School, sanitation has presented a challenge. We did extensive research looking for a toilet design that would be safe and sanitary, but also sustainable in the village setting (See In Search of the Perfect Toilet). We finally landed on the microflush biofil toilet, which requires very little water and uses ordinary earthworms to digest the solid waste.

A small subset of our construction crew, including several villagers, has been working on the toilets for the past few months, modifying the design as necessary to fit our circumstances. We included villagers in this group so in the future they can use what they have learned to make household toilets for families in the village. This crew has completed one block of three toilets for the girls, and a second block for the boys is nearly finished. Two prototype toilets, which will eventually be used by non-teaching staff, are currently in use and serving as a test of the effectiveness of the design. We’re monitoring the worms to make sure they are doing their job, and so far they are getting good marks!

Bringing the toilets into operation provided motivation for a mid-October field trip for Twegashe’s students to collect worms for the digestion pit. We took a twenty-minute walk to a grassy field near a small stream. Two of our construction crew members came along to help with hoeing up chunks of dirt, and then the kids sifted through looking for worms. Counting as they put their worms into the group bucket became a good math exercise. The trip was also a good opportunity for the teachers to share lots of new vocabulary.

The day after collecting the worms, the children helped drop the worms into the digestion pit below the toilets. They learned all about how the toilets work, and how the worms can turn toilet waste into safe compost for the garden. We’re hoping that being involved in the operation of the toilets from the very beginning will help students want to use them properly and take care of them.

Food and Nutrition

Since we have students in the building now, we’ve started using Twegashe’s new kitchen. A two-burner gas table-top stove is working well for just fifteen kids. The children come into the kitchen for porridge in the morning and sit on a mat on the floor with the teachers. It feels very cozy! Our cook prepares lunch for the teachers, too, since their rental house is too far away for them to go home at lunchtime. Next year we’ll begin serving lunch to the students, since our first-graders will be staying at school all day. Teachers will eat with their students, or go to their homes up the hill and prepare their own lunch.

We’ve also made a start on a school garden by planting some fruit trees. We’ve got mango, orange, papaya, and guava trees, along with a few passion fruit vines. And of course, in Bukoba no garden is complete without some banana plants!

Raincoats

Because it rains a lot in Bushasha and because it can be quite cool when it rains, we decided Twegashe’s students should have raincoats for walking to school. One of our wonderful supporters offered to donate a set for the kindergarten class. We distributed the coats at the end of October, just in time for the next rainy season. The children and their parents were delighted by the raincoats. As one parent emphasized, this was a very valuable gift, because when it rains in the morning, children sit in class dripping and shivering, and they are not able to concentrate on their lessons.

Health

The clinic in Bushasha has a program of scheduled examinations and vaccinations for children through age five, but after age five there is no system for regular health check-ups. We recently made arrangements with the director of the clinic to have Twegashe’s students checked several times each year by the clinic staff. We want to make sure our students are and in good health, they are warm and dry, and their stomachs are full so they are ready to learn!

Looking Ahead

We’re very grateful to the Lutheran Church in Bushasha for allowing us to use their building while our classroom was being prepared. Without their offer of assistance, this group of children would not have been able to attend Twegashe School. “Asante sana” to the church for giving these thirty children the opportunity for a meaningful education!

The 2020 Tanzanian school year has been extended by several weeks to help make up for the instructional time lost during the COVID closure. This means Twegashe’s kindergartners have another month and a half to enjoy their new classroom. In January they will move next door to the first grade classroom, and a new group of kindergartners will move in. We’re sure our current kindergartners will give these new students a warm welcome to Twegashe School!