wednesday outing

On Wednesday afternoon I went on a little adventure with my friend Lizzy. She had been asked by a lady in the U.K. to "check in" on the school that her charity is funding in a village outside of Moshi. In a sense, we were "secret shopping" the school. Checking to see that what they were telling the charity was accurate and that everything was running smoothly. A bit of an odd request, but it made an interesting outing for us!

Lizzy is also the proud new owner of a truck! So in our own wheels we made our way up the road in the direction of the school... we hoped. All we had was the name of the village- Timbirini and the general area it was in. At one fork in the road we stopped and asked some women if this was the right way to Timbirini. One lady misunderstood us to be offering a ride there and hopped in the back seat! This worked out well for us because she was able to tell us exactly when we arrived. There aren't any signs announcing the villages. With our eye on the diminishing fuel gauge we climbed higher and higher into banana tree forests. Finally the lady said we had arrived and sure enough, one of the few buildings on the road was a large warehouse type structure with "Uru District Vocational Centre" painted on the side.

We were welcomed graciously by one of the teachers. The principal of the school was out for the day, but this lady's English was great and she was very happy to answer our questions and give us a tour. It is a vocational school for secondary (high school) students. They either study tailoring or carpentry as their main subject and also have classes in English, math, science and technical drawing. The students all come from surrounding villages and their tuition is paid by the British charity. A lot of them are orphans or come from single parent homes.

The school also has a room with about 20 computers in it, but they didn't appear to be being used. Although they didn't say so, we got the impression that they didn't have a qualified computer teacher. On the chalkboard in the computer room were written out steps on how to double click to open a program.

We wrapped up our visit and carefully maneuvered our way out of their small driveway. Back down the hill into town, first stop gas station!

Comments

[Dee]

What a nice way to spend a day. Secret shopper indeed! Wonder if their power is on enough to run those computers? And there are good hitchhikers around still, huh? Love you.