Ufani School

The Ufani Primary school is in the Iraqi Village of Bacho, in the Rift Valley, 3km outside Dareda. It is in a hugely fertile valley of great beauty. The community is not big and not wealthy, most are subsistence farmers and few have had an education themselves. This school was started by a Roman catholic Priest who was sadly transferred and not replaced and the work was only started and not completed.

The school has only 4 classrooms, one of which has no roof!! The existing classrooms have mud floors, no windows or doors. It is the only primary school for miles and so there is no choice but to go there. The teachers struggle through but their office alone is a huge demotivating factor.

When i was in Babati I met up with the wonderful Don and Marianne Stolls. They were on a trip of a lifetime and part of that trip was to help renovate this school with Joas. so taken were they with this community an their plight that they wanted to do more and so set up a charity called the Karimu Foundation ( http://www.karimufoundation.org ) and are raising funds through the school in northern California, USA, where they work.

Wow! Don and Marianne did a fantastic job. working tirelessly at the school they organised fundraising activities, dinner dances, auctions, activities, dime a day schemes and raised a fantastic amount. But equally as important they inspired the people within their community, young and old, to come out to Ufani, Dareda and help them use the money raised to renovate the classrooms.

In associated with Beth from Inspire Worldwide, and Joas Kahembe, we provided the structure, insurance and paperwork to enable the volunteers from Marianne's school to come to Tanzania and help renovate the school.

We organised for them to stay at the local Dareda Institute of Agriculture Training centre and from there they worked like Trojans, some to the point of exhausting, all because they were determined to make an impact and finish the work they had set out to do.

The first task was to remove the partially build classroom that was now a hazard, remove the leaning walls in another classroom and teachers office

Then the walls are rebuilt with proper foundations. We also took the opportunity to expand the very small teachers office so that the teachers need no longer squeeze past each other. The bricks were all provided by the local community, and lorries delivered the big rocks. You can see from the surrounding land that this school is extremely rural and we had to talk with the local community to ensure that the roads were cleared, as some have a tendency to farm even on the road!

All the while the kids could carry on their lessons.

The floors in all the classrooms needed to be leveled and cemented and Don and Marianne clearly want to show the District Commissioner what was expected of him! This is all back breaking work and builds up your fitness.

You can see that the window frames are in.

The walls are yet to be plastered, but that is a job and a half, then they need to be left to dry before being covered in lime which also needs to dry before painting.

A very precise timetable had been drawn up to ensure that the volunteers were kept busy at all times and never had two days to sit and wait for things to dry. If you are only here for two weeks, careful planning is vital.

But there was time to go on a cultural safari to visit the Barbaig, the closest you will get to an untouched tribe or a stone age tribe in this area. For more information on the Barbaig please go to http://www.livingstonetanzaniatrust.com/index.php?page=ourtours

With one team working inside another had been busy plastering the outside walls.

Because the school buildings are on a slope, it was necessary to consider the impact of rainwater on the foundations. With this is mind we built a cement drainage ditch to divert the water away from the foundations. The extra cost now will increase the buildings life by many years, so a job well done.

In fact there is so much water here that the farms are extremely productive and there are plans to start a school farm as part of the income generation scheme. It is also important to teach the students about farming, teaching useful life skills because not everyone is going to be an academic!

Then, at the end of their 12 day trip, the team could sit down and look with total satisfaction on what they had achieved. What had been a school in a dreadful state, an embarrassment to the region, had suddenly taken shape and is becoming a beautiful school.

Don and Marianne are know that this is not over, that this is just the beginning. Step 1 is to create an environment conducive to learning for staff and students alike, and this step is not over. Don and Marianne are coming back in the summer 2009 with more volunteers, which they hope will speed up the building process.

What is fantastic to LTT is that they are going to follow the model LTT has designed regarding teacher training and teacher resources, and they will be looking at sustainable local income generating schemes that can fund on going maintenance costs. The very fact that our model is being copied already is a great boost to all at LTT, and shows the faith and belief that people have in the work we are doing. Needless to say we are chuffed to bits!