We’ve been going through a lot of changes recently. Rob, our student volunteer left a couple of weeks ago. We were all very sad to see him go and he will be missed by the many people he befriended while he was here. Our fingers are crossed he’ll be back next year – and hopefully for longer! Talking to him in his last few days he told me that his time in Zanzibar had been all he could have hoped for and more. He spent his last weekend in Unguja Ukuu. On Saturday we were shown around the village and taken on a culinary tour of people’s homes by 2 of our students, and on Sunday we travelled by dhow to an off shore island where we spent a peaceful and relaxing day. We also said goodbye to our 2 local volunteers who left to concentrate on furthering their education. Latifa and Salma are now busy organising sponsorship for the diploma they want to take in medicine.
And last, but definitely not least, yesterday was Gasica’s last day in Unguja Ukuu before he flies to England this afternoon. Although the teachers and students will all miss him very much, we wish him a wonderful journey and can’t wait to hear all about it when he returns in mid November. Ann and Caroline have been busy preparing an exciting schedule for him. He'll be studying different ways of teaching English, going into many different education settings where he will observe classes and lead assemblies. He will also attend meetings and be a guest speaker at various Rotary events. He is going to squeeze in some sight-seeing in London, Brighton, and Bristol amongst other places, and will be meeting a whole host of people who are very happy to finally have him on English soil after the tough visa process which failed the first time around.
But with all this change we still remain focussed on providing engaging and inspiring education to the youth of Unguja Ukuu. In a meeting with the teachers they told us how happy they are with the project and they have set up an introduction for us with the ministry of education this week. This is a great opportunity for ZSP and should help with arranging visas for future volunteers and with having support for any activities we plan in the years to come.
In our English classes we have been revising the present, past and future tenses, with the aim being that students feel able to switch between the three tenses easily when they need to. We have also been preparing the students for reading books as this is one of the best ways to increase vocabulary. I wrote a story that focuses on three friends, Gasica, Chloe and Sadiq, getting lost in the forest and we used it to show the students how to read a story and translate it and keep a record of the words they do not understand.
The next day we had a very interactive dictionary class, playing lots of games to help the students familiarise themselves with the new dictionaries and how best to use them.
Fun Thursday cemented their dictionary skills as students split into teams for a big scavenger hunt. Many of the things they had to find were new words they needed to look up in the dictionaries before they could hunt for them.
Before the class on Thursday, I spent the morning in the school library choosing over 50 books that are at the right level of English reading for our students. They are now locked in a separate “Safari English Club” bookshelf so we can access them whenever we need to.
“What is Safari English Club?” I hear you say. It is the new name that the students chose for themselves. It’s wonderful to see them taking ownership over the class and we have developed a great tool for getting the students to stop talking and listen in lessons. (Useful when all 60 children are together!). The teacher shouts “Safari” and the students reply “English Club” and then everyone remains silent while the teacher speaks. The students are using it too and so far it’s been working very well.
In another Fun Thursday students designed a logo for the club. We were very impressed and found it hard to choose an outright winner so we have chosen a few different designs we can combine to make a final logo. Watch this space for the finished product.
Last week there was no school due to Eid celebrations. During the first weekend there was a festival on a nearby beach in Jambiani. Gasica took the PLCI students and they stayed there for the three days. On Sunday I drove three of our students to join them. Everyone had such a great time and it was wonderful to see a truly integrated festival. There were strong man, volleyball, cooking and swimming competitions; live music from throughout Africa; and stalls and information on many charities and organisations working on Zanzibar.
During the week Sadiq and I held interviews for Gasica’s replacement while he is away. We were worrying at first as no one had the experience we were looking for or the ethos that is so important for ZSP. It made me realise how the way we teach is really quite rare in Tanzania. Luckily, in the end, we found an ex ZL4LF teacher who we are excited to be working with. His name is Mohamed and he has a long history of teaching and eventually wants to become a lecturer. During the last weekend of Eid we went on a trip to Nungwi. It was the first trip for the new students and Sadiq, who all joined us at the beginning of August. Nungwi is in the very north of the island (probably the furthest place from Unguja Ukuu you can get to without crossing the water!) and the students have been asking to go there for a long time. We arrived in the village and walked along the sea front backed by big tourist hotels to our first stop - the turtle sanctuary. They do very important work educating Zanzibaris on turtle conservation. The most common job on Zanzibar is fishing, especially in coastal villages like Unguja Ukuu. Although turtle poaching is illegal, in reality nobody follows the law. Most people in Zanzibar are on a very low income and killing and selling a turtle can bring a big profit – the turtle meat is considered a delicacy among locals and can fetch a high price in Stone Town. None of the students knew that the turtles were endangered beforehand, and the visit prompted many interesting conversations afterwards.
We also played football, had a mini disco and ate a delicious lunch cooked by 2 of the students... but the highlight for everyone was swimming in the sea. Even though the students live on a paradise island, most of them had never swum in such turquoise water lapping such white sand. Not only that, but our amazing friends Modestly Active had donated swimming costumes for the girls so they could swim in the sea without feeling ashamed or self conscious. I felt quite emotional watching the girls be as free as the boys for the first time. It was very heart warming and the smiles on everyone’s faces are the widest I’ve seen. Throw into that mix the floats Ann and Caroline sent from England and everyone was in swimming heaven! We spent over 2 hours in the water and nobody wanted to get out of the sea when it was time to go home.
We plan to begin proper swimming lessons soon and Gavin, a visitor from Australia, spent an afternoon teaching the older students safety skills and basic first aid in preparation.
The nursery and internet sessions are going well. The nursery children are becoming more used to my presence each day and although they have very different levels of comprehension, some of them are surprising me with how well they are learning. The internet classes are still very popular although sometimes I feel I could do with some new ideas on making the internet a bit more relevant for them all. It can feel a bit dry when we are checking email and browsing sites. If anyone has any ideas I’d love to hear them.
August 29, 2016: The newspaper tower challenge! (Chloe)
Community: The overriding feeling of the last 2 weeks has been one of community. We've had many guests visiting the school and people in Zanzibar and England have been helping in all sorts of ways. The togetherness that Zanzibaris talk about so often is really shining through for the Zanzibar Schools Project right now. Our community can be seen in many different ways. The students of the English class have requested we have a name for the class, which indicates they are really taking ownership over it. So all last week we collected suggestions from the students and this week we will hold a vote to decide on the winning name. I've increased my attendance at the nursery school, and the internet classes are still happening 2 evenings a week. This added presence in the village means more and more people are aware of what we are doing and the project is becoming a valued part of the community. I'm often told by members of the village that they feel this togetherness and people offer their advice, or help if we ever need it. Or invite me to their homes for tea!
Yesterday we held a parents meeting at the school. The teachers had warned us we should not expect many people to attend as they rarely do. But we were overwhelmed by the number of parents who came. They were all so positive about the project, they told us about the changes they are seeing in their children and how they hope the project will continue for a long time. They also offered their help... in English classes, teaching swimming and just general support when we need it. It was so lovely to meet all the parents and to be able to talk to them about their children. It was also great to see most of the primary teachers there too. It really proved to me that they are behind the project. Tupamoja means we are together in Swahili, and the phrase was repeated often throughout the meeting. In the meeting we:
- Introduced ZSP (Ann and Caroline) and Gasica, Sadiq and I.
- Spoke about our other volunteers and visitors
- Spoke about the time, energy and money we are investing in their children
- And in return asked them for their commitment to the project and to their children's attendance
- Talked about the library and the students taking books home (we will start next week) Discussed swimming lessons (Parents were joking about who the best swimmer is among them and competing to be our swimming assistants!)
Thank you! But the ZSP community is not just here in Zanzibar, it reaches far. So this update is really just a big thank you to all those that support us. Thank you to Ann and Caroline for always being there when we need advice, for working with so much energy to improve things for the youth and community of Unguja Ukuu. Thanks also to all our guests over the past 2 weeks... Rory, Orla, Karen, Paul, Sarah and Joe. Taking the time to talk and share stories with the students really brings the English learning to life. Sarah, the students loved finding out more about their English pan-pals. Also, a huge thanks to all our volunteers right now. Salma and Latifa bring so much enthusiasm and are a great help in the classes, and Rob our student volunteer from England has been such an amazing person for the children to meet, learn from and have fun with.
And thank you also to our wider community. Thanks to Ismail and Modestly Active for providing us with Islamic appropriate swimwear. We are so grateful, and now we finally have a yes from the parents and teachers, classes can go ahead! Thank you to all those who have offered to write emails to students this week in the internet class... Kylee, Dee, Karen, Crystal, Laura, Bean and Philip. They’ll be so happy to receive them.
And of course thank you to all the individuals and groups who have donated funds which mean we can continue doing what we do. The Rotary Club is amazing, especially Brighton and Hove Soiree and Stone Town Zanzibar clubs. And to Hurstpierpoint Community Charity, who recently donated funds which meant we were able to plaster the nursery school.
The English classes: The intermediate and advanced classes have been concentrating on the past simple. Most students found this relatively easy and have been quick to learn the irregular verbs (of which there are many!). It really was so great to have all the visitors with whom they could practice asking and answering questions about their past. We also used the kiokit for grammar practice, and I was lucky enough to have all three volunteers helping me out which meant we were able to split into small groups. Using the computers in this way worked very well.
The beginner class has been concentrating on English basics. They are now able to introduce themselves, have a good grip on the alphabet, numbers and animals and shall start learning pronouns and simple verbs this week. They also had their first session with the kiokit which they all loved. It is always so fascinating to see how children who have had no contact with this kind of technology pick it up so quickly.
Fun Thursdays: Two weeks ago we had a newspaper tower challenge. Students split into small groups and were given a stack of newspaper and a roll of tape. The challenge was to come up with a design to make the tallest tower using just those 2 items. In the end all the groups used the same design; one neither Rob nor I had seen before when we’ve done the challenge in the UK. And we had never seen such tall towers before either! Once the challenge was over many of the students made hats with the newspaper and we had a huge game of Chinese whispers and taught everyone to do a Mexican wave. Last week we came to the beach for Fun Thursday. In one of our previous classes Rob had explained to the students that his favourite sport is rugby. No one had heard of the sport before so Rob taught the kids rugby on the beach, while other students revised, played games or walked to the very low tide line.
Standard VI Classes: we've been doing extra English sessions on Fridays for the Standard VI students who are missing our classes due to exam revision. After Friday’s lesson I was feeling quite worried as it was clear to see how quickly they are losing their English skills now they are not using them regularly. The problem is that they need good English to pass the exam, but they cannot come to our English classes any more as the exam revision classes are a government requirement. They are so exhausted with all the extra study they are doing that it seems unfair and unrealistic to ask them to commit to even more hours of study each week - Rob and I found it hard work to keep them motivated as they were so tired. Ann, Caroline, Gasica and I are all thinking of the best way to proceed. But seeing how tired they are I am inclined to make the Friday lessons as fun as possible by just playing games in English and offering help with their exam topics if they have questions.
ZL4LF: It's been great having Rob help with the ZL4LF English classes. He enjoyed it so much he has been spending a lot of his evenings there on his own and has formed strong friendships with many of the ZL4LF teachers and students. Last Thursday we helped the students to write poems/raps on different topics and finished the class with a big rap battle which got everyone very excited. This week we asked the students to create plays in different styles and gave them the challenge of including 10 strange phrases and words in each one
August 13, 2016: Fun and games at the nursery (Chloe)
Monday 1 August: We had the first class meeting since being back after Ramadan. We sat in a circle in the shade of the old tree and opened the meeting with each person grading out of 10 the progress they feel they have made in English since the classes began in November. (not how good they are at English, but how much they feel they have improved). Marks were between 4 and 10, with most people rating their progress 6 and above. What was most remarkable was seeing the self awareness of the students. They mostly gave themselves grades we would have assigned them if asked. It shows they are aware of their learning and not just floating along. In the meeting we told them about the new students and teacher that would be joining us soon. We explained we shall be making a push to use the library and that each student will be taking a book home every week to practice their reading. We spoke about their attendance and what we expect from them.
Tuesday 2 August: We had another meeting, but this time with the teachers. We told them about the new teacher and asked for their help in finding new students for the class. We talked about a parents meeting we would like to organise to make sure we have the support of the parents so they are encouraging their children to attend, instead of creating barriers for them or prioritising other things. We also feel it would be good to have a direct relationship with the parents so that when we propose new activities (like swimming lessons for example) they are more likely to agree to them.
Thursday 4 August: Over the course of the week Ann and I had been in discussions surrounding our purpose at the school. The talks were very useful as we can both have the tendency to want to do everything and to help everywhere which is not always physically or financially possible and it felt good to be clarifying our mission. We decided that speaking English and learning to think independently are the most important skills for the young people in the village. I thought about this a lot, and on Thursday we presented the “egg drop challenge” to the class. Watching the students work in small teams in order to create a structure to protect an egg being dropped from a great height (or thrown from the top of a large mango tree by Gasica to be more precise!) I was able to see how much of a difference our classes have made on independent thinking already. The students are taking pride in coming up with new and varied ideas, whereas before they often copied one another. And the process by which they are making choices is also evolving.
In the evening I taught a class at ZL4LF. I teach the most advanced students, and their level of English is amazing. It means we are able to do activities that are not always possible with my other classes. We spent the lesson practicing public speaking and learning presentation techniques in preparation for a debate they are taking part in over the weekend.
Tuesday 9 August: This week has seen lots of new and exciting changes. Our project is expanding and the work Zanzibar Schools Project is doing is starting to generate interest and therefore more opportunities. Living in Unguja Ukuu has made it much easier to spend time teaching at different times of the day and week. On Tuesday mornings I teach at the nursery school. Today we played duck duck goose, but called it cat cat dog, and concentrated on the words run, sit and stop. The earlier children get used to hearing and playing in a different language, the more it can help with their development and learning later on, so it seems a good idea to get involved in the nursery school too. When I arrived the children were reciting the Koran in Arabic. It’s amazing that they are expected to do this at such a young age and are often hit with a stick if they lose concentration or get it wrong. I had forgotten about physical punishment here, and it being the main reason the teachers have asked us not to teach during school hours in the primary school. It’s so hard to know how to react and what to say when I see it happen.
Later that day we introduced the new students and teacher to the English class. The new teacher, Sadiq, will be primarily teaching the beginners’ class, but is already a big hit with all our students. He has completed his studies up to university level, just having sat his exams for a degree in Swahili and English Education at the Zanzibar Linguistic College. He has a lot of experience teaching and has developed a calm and friendly manner which makes him popular and approachable in the classroom. He has previously taught at Al Haromein International School, at ZL4LF for over three years, and has also taught reproductive health to young men at the Canadian Institute. He believes that sharing his knowledge has the ability to change lives in Zanzibar, and that being a teacher is a two-way exchange, where he learns as much as he teaches.
We were expecting 20 new students, but have ended up with 26 as so many more wanted to join. There have been tears and disappointment from the children that weren't chosen by the teachers. We have being trying to find space for everyone but on Wednesday we had to send a few children home as we just can't keep letting new students in. It is sad, but I am keeping their names on a list and they will be the first to be offered places next time. And it is wonderful that the demand is there.
We've identified 8 of the new students with an already basic knowledge of English. Gasica will be working with them this week, to help them catch up on the topics we have already covered so that they can join the intermediate or advanced classes, rather than starting at the very beginning again. That leaves 18 new students from Standard IV and V who will be in the new beginner class.
Other exciting news is that we have started teaching evening internet classes for 3 teachers and 4 adult students two evenings a week. On Tuesday I helped the teachers to set up their very first email address, and repeated the process again with the adult class on Friday. It has been a challenge to remember what it felt like to know nothing at all about the internet. Setting up an email address became the aim for the whole 2 hour class, rather than just a step. It was lovely to be able to invite them to the hotel where I am staying (and the only place in Unguja Ukuu with an internet connection!) and do the class whilst the sun set over the sea. Both sets of students have asked to have lessons more often, but the manager of the hotel has limited classes to 2 days a week. If any of you reading this are interested in becoming internet penpals with these new learners, please let me know as I think it could bring the internet, and its possibilities, even more alive for them.
Thursday 11 August: I had a visit from 2 young Zanzibari women, Salma and Latifa, who are keen to volunteer with us in Unguja Ukuu. They live half an hour away, but have family in the village and have heard about our project. Today they started volunteering with us and Latifa assisted Gasica with the catch-up class while Salma helped Sadiq and I with Fun Thursday.
We split the group into six teams and gave them 3 challenges: to spell a verb using their bodies, to create a structure so only 3 of the team’s feet were touching the ground, and to make a piece of jewellery from things found in nature. We finished the afternoon with some big group games. It was the first time we have had nearly all of the new and old students together and it was wonderful to see them gelling so well. Having the older students there, who have gotten used to the way we teach, made it much easier for the new students to feel less self conscious I think.
After school I was teaching at ZL4LF again. This week we played a game that involved getting your team to guess words written on bits of paper as fast as possible. It really tested the students’ language skills and they all got into the competitive spirit. It was great fun watching 20 young adults all shouting at each other as they tried to guess the words!
Friday 12 August: Standard VI students are now missing our English class because of exam revision, but we don’t want them to lose contact with our program completely over the next 2 months. So at 11.30am I collected the Standard VI children from school and we all (10 of us!) squeezed into my car and drove to the beach where we shared a meal of beef soup before having 30 minutes of free time and play. Then we got our books out and had a 2 hour English lesson on the beach! I gave them a choice of how they would like to spend our weekly lessons - Extra revision on any of the exam topics from that week that they have questions about, or a recap of what we have been learning in the English classes. They asked to concentrate on the English as they don’t want to fall behind, and also asked if we could play some games each week too. It was so much fun to spend time with these 9 beautiful children. Most of all I enjoyed our free time – it was good to be able to offer them some time in which to relax and have fun, especially knowing that straight after our class they had to be back in school for another 2 hour exam revision session.
In the evening the 4 adult learners came for their internet class. It was a bit harder having 4 computers on the go this time, and we had to use 3 tiny hand held devises which made it less clear for them, but they all now also have their own email address and are keen to explore the internet more next session.
It's been a very exciting and busy week watching our English programme grow, and next week looks set to be even busier. On Monday the president of the Ipswich Rotary club is coming to visit Unguja Ukuu with his family; our young volunteer, Robert, is arriving on Tuesday; and also a teacher from Harmondsworth primary school, who are our English penpals, is visiting too. It’s great to see our ZSP family extending so far and wide.
The most exciting news however, is that Robert will be bringing a box-load of Islamic appropriate swim wear for the girls to wear in the sea, which is another big step in getting our swimming lessons off the ground. We are so grateful to Ismail and Modestly Active for donating the swimming costumes and helping the girl’s dreams of learning how to swim as well as the boys come true.
August 1, 2016 Thoughts on Ramadan and a lesson on Malaria (Chloe)
It’s been a while since our last report and many exciting things have happened in the past few weeks. Although school was closed, Ramadan was a very special time to be on the island. I thought it would be a very serious and sombre month, and focus very much on not eating. But actually it was all so heart warming, about remembering the truly important things in life and really about eating a lot! During the day Gasica invited me on adventures with other ZL4LF teachers to his friends’ and family's farms to pick oranges, cassava, bananas, coconuts and tangerines. We perused the markets to find the best cuts of meat and freshest looking fish and then we would take our big bundle of food back to the ZL4LF kitchen to cook up a feast which we shared with friends as we broke fast in the evenings.
After the first 2 weeks of Ramadan I travelled to the mainland where I attended a week’s intensive Swahili school. Being able to converse with people in simple Swahili has made such a difference in how I am accepted by and communicate with the locals. Especially in Unguja Ukuu, which sees very little tourism, as many people cannot speak or understand English at all. It has also made a big difference during classes as now I know if the students have understood a sentence or word when I ask them to translate it, and I can use Swahili grammar to explain how it works in English.
Ramadan was also a special time for Doudi (the student who was excluded by teachers from our English class and who now attends ZL4LF on a 6 month work placement) He is originally from the mainland and a Christian, but decided he wanted to stay at ZL4LF during Ramadan and follow the Islamic tradition. I often shared Iftar with him as the sun set and he really enjoyed being a part of the ZL4LF family during this time. It was wonderful to watch him in the evenings playing with the neighbourhood children and sharing jokes with his new room-mates. It makes such a difference compared to his life in Unguja Ukuu where the majority of his interactions consisted of him being teased and excluded. He had been saying that he did not want to return to Unguja Ukuu, but a few days ago he came with us to visit his old village and it was great to see him feeling more positive about Unguja Ukuu again. He even spent time with the head master of the school shaking hands and chatting with him about his life now.
Monday 18th July - Our after school English classes started again 2 weeks ago. It was great to be back at the school and to see the students - both Gasica and I had missed them very much and we received many phone calls and text messages from them during our time apart. Everyone’s English was a bit rusty after not having practiced for 6 weeks so we spent the first week revising everything we had learnt so far. We split the class into small teams of three and gave each team a topic to review and then they devised a short lesson to teach to the rest of the class. The students enjoyed being teachers for a change.
Feedback we often hear from the students is that they would like to practice speaking more often so we created a speed conversation circle where pairs of students had to talk for 2 minutes on a wide range of subjects... their favourite food, their favourite and least favourite body part and why, their daily routine, their home, their biggest fear...etc. Gasica and I were able to walk around and listen to the students talking which was both interesting and hilarious (“I like my mouth because I use it to eat”!) The body question was actually very insightful as it highlighted how differently people see their bodies here compared to the West. No one disliked a part of themselves; there doesn’t seem to be an underlying culture of wishing they looked a different way and needing to be thinner, fatter, taller or shorter to be beautiful.
Wenesday 20 July: We recently purchased a comprehensive collection of fantastic grammar stories and exercises which are now loaded onto the Kiokit. Today we used them to practice the present simple. I was so happy as it felt as if the computers were being used to their full potential for the first time. The students read a short story about a cowboy named Hank, and then answered questions on what they had read. I was also very happy to hear that one of the teachers has been using the kits in her own lessons. In a meeting with the teachers tomorrow I shall offer to go through the kits again with any teachers who are interested, specifically with the intention of using them in their own classes.
Thursday 21 July: Even though we try to make classes as fun as possible, we strongly believe that learning can be just as effective outside the classroom as inside it. With this in mind, we launched the return of Fun Thursdays with a treasure hunt. We split the class into 5 teams and they each had to follow a series of clues (which got them all practicing prepositions!) to a final meeting place. Here they had to fit their different coloured jigsaw pieces together to reveal a secret message. Once they had worked out the mystery code the students had to walk 112 paces, holding hands in a line, to find the treasure. The groups worked well together and I was very impressed that they needed very little help, even though some of the clues were quite cryptic! It was great to watch the students getting excited as they ran around the school and nearby areas, hunting for the next clue.
Sunday 24 August: Our trip to Prison Island has been voted the favourite trip for most of the students so far! Not only did they get to visit Stone Town, they then crossed the wavy sea on boats to the island. Even though Unguja Ukuu is on the coast of Zanzibar, for many students this was the first time they had boarded a boat which was equally exciting and terrifying for most of them. And once on the island a silent, awe-filled wonder struck as everyone saw the giant tortoises up close.
We then explored the buildings. What is now a tiny, beautiful, tropical island off the coast of Zanzibar, was once not a pleasant place to be at all. At first it was the location where slaves were detained and held until they were transported to the Middle East or Europe. After that, the island was transformed into a quarantine centre where people with contagious diseases were left to die, so they wouldn’t spread their illnesses to the healthy. Today, however, the island is a friendly nature reserve, and it was a truly beautiful place to spend the day with the Unguja Ukuu students.
It was a very different experience for most of the students to go to an actual tourist attraction. One student claimed her favourite thing about the day had been the toilets, as they were so clean and beautiful!
Monday 25 July: This week was spent mostly learning the present continuous. Charades is a great game for this and much fun was had with students acting out different verbs and the rest of the class guessing. Killing a chicken and opening a coconut were my two personal favourites!
The Standard VI students have started receiving extra lessons after school in preparation for the upcoming exams, which sadly means they are often missing our English class. Now I am living in Unguja Ukuu there is the possibility of having extra lessons with these students at another time, but it is becoming more and more evident just how little free time the children here have already. Most students are in education 7 days a week. They go to school every morning from 7am until 1pm and then often have tutoring or attend Madrassa (Islamic school) until the evening. Both Saturday and Sunday students attend Madrassa all day long. Knowing this, it’s amazing there is so much enthusiasm for our English class!
Because of this enthusiasm and students often asking us if they can join we have decided to open up the class to another 25 students. This means we will now be teaching around 60 students a day. We want to keep classes small and relevant to the students’ level of English, so we have also decided to employ a 3rd teacher. His name is Sadiq, he is an ex student and teacher from ZL4LF and comes highly recommended. Now when we split the students there will be around 20 in each class and we'll have beginner, intermediate and advanced levels. It really is important to have small classes to ensure all the students are keeping up. But it is such a luxury here in Zanzibar - this morning I helped one of the Standard I teachers with her class and she has 71 pupils! It was quite chaotic! We are working with the teachers to identify the new students and along with Sadiq; they will begin at the start of next week.
Thanks to a kind donation brought to us by Robert, who will be coming to volunteer with us for 3 weeks this month, matched by funds from the Zanzibar Schools Project, the nursery school is now plastered inside and out. The teachers and nursery pupils are very happy with the work and hopefully one of Robert’s roles will be to decorate the walls with a sea-scape mural while he is here.
Thursday 28 July: Today Cait, a volunteer from Makunduchi Cottage Hospital came to deliver a creative class on Malaria. The students learnt important facts on how to prevent the disease from spreading and also had a lot of fun getting crafty with bottles and paper to make their own mosquitoes. Every time we do something creative I am reminded how important it is for the students. Although they are becoming more adventurous, they are still quite apprehensive in trying things out in case they get them wrong, and often ask the teachers or the older students to cut things out and draw things for them. At the end of the session they all used their mosquitoes to act out the story and loved running around, flying their mosquitoes and biting each other!
June 8, 2016: Letters from penfriends in the UK (Chloe)
Sunday 22 May: The student’s had all been waiting patiently for the day to arrive when we would go on our second school trip. And this was it! This time we decided to explore the north of the island and spent the day on the beach in Matemwe, where only one of our students had been before. We all squeezed into the school bus and had a very fun 2 hour journey up to Matemwe (after we’d been pulled over and stopped until we paid the police bribe) full of talking, singing and dancing. I love seeing the whole class together and relaxed like this. It’s in the in-between times that you can really see the changes the students are going through - with their English skills, but also the blossoming of confidence and creativity.
We had a lovely day on the beach. One of the highlights was a whole class game of football. It was great seeing boys and girls of all ages competing. We split the teams into my class against Gasica’s and played until our toes bled. (Well mine did anyway...who knew kicking a football without shoes on was so painful!) We went for a walk, talked together, played some games and also spent a lot of time swimming in the sea again. This time nearly all of the girls came in and it is great to see how everyone’s confidence and enjoyment in the water is growing. It struck me watching the girls bathe how unsuitable their clothes are for swimming – either they wear their full clothes which are really hard to swim in, or they dress in clothes suitable for swimming, but I worry about how their parents and teachers will feel if the news gets back to them that their daughters were in public without headscarves and wearing short sleeves.
Monday 23 May: Today we had our monthly class meeting to share how we all feel the classes are going and to suggest ideas and improvements for the future. We opened the meeting by going around the circle and each of us saying a little bit about ourselves. We then went around a 2nd time scoring 1 to 10 on how we feel the classes are going. If people wanted they could explain their reasoning, but they weren’t obliged to. Everyone scored the classes between 5 and 10. The 5’s and 6’s were due to the students’ frustrations that they weren’t progressing with their English as quickly as they’d like. The 9s and 10s were about the classes in general and the student’s enjoyment of them. I spoke to 3 students who were feeling frustrated with their rate of learning and these were their worries:
- Not being able to say the things they want to
- Not being able to understand everything
- Being able to write, but not being able to speak English.
In response we are going to create more activities that really promote English conversation. We will also organise a day in which many English Speaking Zanzibari residents are invited to the school so everyone gets a chance to talk 1-on-1 for a good period of time. Additionally, when I move to Unguja Ukuu next month, it will provide many more opportunities for English conversation outside of the classroom.
The monthly meetings have become a very important part of our teaching. This time we were able to tell the students how we feel outside of classes when we ask them a question in English and instead of trying to answer, they pull a funny face and run away! (It was happening quite a lot!) Since then everyone has been making much more of an effort to respond and surprising us, as well as themselves with what they do understand and can say when they make the effort. It has made a huge difference to how we are all relating. Another suggestion the students made was that instead of Gasica or the more advanced students being the ones to translate what I am saying, that everyone should really try to understand for themselves and if people don’t understand then the younger students should try to translate. Again this has meant there is a lot less Swahili being spoken in class and the students feel like they are progressing faster than before.
Wednesday 25 May: Today is Gasica’s birthday so instead of having a classroom session, we all went down to the beach for English fun and games and to meet a handful of students from PLCI. We started by asking different students to come to the front of the boisterous group and introduce themselves to one another in English. Some sang songs or told jokes and the Unguja Ukuu students were very welcoming to those from ZL4LF. I gave Gasica a big chocolate birthday cake and was able to witness the Zanzibari tradition of everyone having to sing a happy birthday solo in order to receive a piece of cake! I also made a big pass the parcel, complete with prizes and forfeits and we spent a fun afternoon combining Swahili and English birthday traditions. The Unguja Ukuu students presented Gasica with a whole chicken they had carefully cooked and beautifully prepared with eggs and vegetables. At the end of the day the football players went back to the village for a big PLCI v Unguja Ukuu football match. Most of our students stayed behind at the beach as they wanted to go swimming. They really are loving the water and being in it more and more, but I found the situation quite worrying, knowing we were in their own village and seeing that the girls were in quite inappropriate clothing for the Muslim tradition. Since then I have been in talks with Ann and Caroline and we are hoping to find a way to obtain appropriate swimming clothing for the girls so they can keep having as much fun as the boys. The boys won’t miss out though, as there is a whole teams worth of football shirts on its way to Zanzibar too!
Thursday 26 May: Today, during the students’ computer session with Philip, the teachers asked us to talk with them. They began by singing the students praises, saying that whenever something important needs to be done in the school it is always one of our students who puts themselves forward, and that they are seeing them take more responsibility and have a noticeable increase in confidence compared to the other children at the school. They also told us that when some doctors came to visit the school to talk about cholera, they asked questions in English and it was our students who were the only ones who could reply and ask their own questions in return. I asked whether this is a new development, or whether it has always been these students who stood out. The teachers replied that it was a new development and how happy they are to see the students progress.
They also told us that they would like to accompany us on the school trips which we all have mixed feelings about. In some ways it will be good to become more of a team with the teachers, and we do not feel we can refuse them, but we are also aware of how much it will change the dynamics. My fear is that the students will feel less free to be children (to dance and sing and swim and be silly.) Gasica told me he thinks it could change the way the students behave quite drastically.
Monday 30 May: The letters arrived from our new penpals at Harmondsworth Primary School in London. They were received by the students with much excitement. The relatively simple English in the letters was perfect for our class and the students got so much learning and enjoyment through reading and understanding what was written. Both Gasica and I could see the effect they had on the class – on their English, and on their enthusiasm. We learnt new words such as dot to dot, martial arts, x-box, gymnastics, looking forward, and it was a lot of fun trying to guess if the names belonged to girls or boys.
We spent the next 2 days writing our responses and the children took such care to write neatly and decorate them with drawings and pictures. Some of the letters our students wrote back were very touching, explaining all about their lives in Unguja Ukuu, their hopes and dreams and the way they feel about things. It was very clear to see the innocence of our Zanzibari students compared to those from London. Our letters are now on their way back to the UK and we are really looking forward to finding new ways the students can communicate with one another in the future.
Thursday 2 June: Not only was today our last day of school before the 1 month break for Ramadan, but it was also Philip’s last day at the school before he leaves for China. To mark the occasion and to celebrate with the teachers and the students we staged a talent show. The students sang songs, performed plays, danced and presented words of goodbye and gifts to
Philip. (All in English and to quite a lot of heckling from the teachers!) Philip received over 50 mangoes and we were all given crab shaped pasties filled with delicious crab meat. We finished the afternoon with the students, telling them how proud we are of them, how brave they are, and how we want them to keep practicing English during the break.
I think we're all happy for a small rest, but at the same time, things really seem to have shifted in terms of confidence with the English over the last few weeks and we feel reluctant to break the momentum.
On our way home from school we dropped in to visit Doudi at the ZL4LF chicken farm where he is now living. He did not want to go back to Unguja Ukuu for Ramadan (even though he would not normally fast as he is Christian) so he will stay at ZL4LF and fast with the other students there. He is working very hard at the chicken farm - tending to the birds, vegetables and fencing. He is so happy and relaxed at ZL4LF and he says he does not want to return to Unguja Ukuu, which we will need to think about as the ZL4LF placement is not a permanent position for any of the students there, but a way in which to give students 6 months of valuable work experience before finding other employment within Zanzibar.
Wednesday 8 June: Philip left Zanzibar this afternoon. The last few days before he left were spent uploading a whole resource full of English learning tools and exercises onto the kiokit, which realistically could keep us all going for a year at least, and which enables us to use the Kio in a much more integrated and useful way. We are all very excited to try out the new learning tools when we get back to the classroom in July.
This morning I sat down with Philip and asked him about his experience here in Zanzibar. He said “I've enjoyed my time here enormously. It's been a very rewarding experience but I've also faced challenges such as complications arising from the cholera outbreak, concerns over the election and frustration over gaining access to the Kiokit system for content upload in the initial stages. Three things that will stay with me for a long time are the warmth and exuberance of the students at Unguja Ukuu school, the rapt attention of students as they used the Kiokit, and wonderful days relaxing on the beach with white sands and the azure ocean.”
Philip is off to China to teach mathematics to students there. We wish him lots of luck on his continuing adventure in education and give our thanks for all the work he has done in helping the Unguja Ukuu students gain access to information technology.
May 19, 2016 Doudi's story (Chloe)
I promised to keep you all updated on the Cholera outbreak here in Zanzibar. So far the illness has affected over 3,000 people, sadly resulting in 57 deaths. The good news is it is on the decline with 99 cases reported this week, down from 199 the week before and 245 the week before that. The Government is reported to be lifting the ban on restaurants, cafes and street vendors selling food. For a while even weddings and funerals were prohibited from providing fresh food. The heavy rains have abated, which should improve things even further.
Both Philip and I have also been unwell this last month, but luckily we are both feeling fit and healthy now. And although as teachers we have all been absent from school at various times, with the help of some wonderful volunteers we have kept the English classes going every day.
Monday 2nd May: The students spent this week mostly revising all the different topics that we have covered over the last 2 months in preparation for the exam they shall do next week (at their request). The elements they were most keen to revise were telling the time and the present simple.
On Monday we also went to visit Doudi who had been excluded by the teachers from attending our English Class. After consulting Ann and Caroline it was decided that we would offer him the opportunity to attend ZL4LF (An English school, which also offers training opportunities, run by Gasica) for 3 months, but we needed to talk to him and his family about whether they would be happy for this to happen.
But we discovered that Doudi does not have family in Unguja Ukuu. In fact he lives on his own. In a tiny room, the size of a small bathroom, in a house that's in the process of being built. There is nothing in it at all and he has been told he has to leave once the windows and doors have been put in. He sleeps on a bed of concrete breeze blocks, with a thin layer of cardboard on top. Above his bed is a wooden frame he has built himself to hang a mosquito net from. He has no mattress or blanket or soft furnishings. In the corner of the tiny room sits a sack of rice and a few vegetables which he buys each week and cooks for himself. He also has a suitcase with 2 pairs of trousers, a few tops, and his school books inside. And that is it. As there is no door when it rains he gets wet and there is nothing to keep the mosquitoes and insects out.
He told us his story, which was really very sad. And the whole time we were there, you could feel how much it meant to Doudi that someone was asking him questions and was truly interested in what he had to say. He asked us to plead with the teachers to allow him back to the English classes. We told him we would talk to them but in the meantime we wanted to know if he would like to attend ZL4LF. He was excited, but also apprehensive about the prospect and decided to think about it for a day or two and to ask the woman who had allowed him to live in the room.
During the week we returned to visit a few times with different students from ZL4LF, so he could get to meet some of them before making a decision. They all thought Doudi was great and were eager to have him come to ZL4LF. And Doudi decided it was something he would like to do too. We hadn't been able to talk to the teachers beforehand, but the day after Doudi left Unguja Ukuu we held a meeting to discuss the situation with them. They had heard about Doudi leaving his house with a suitcase in the presence of a Mzungo (me), and there were lots of rumours about Doudi having gone to live in England! We told them he was at ZL4LF and how we all (Ann, Caroline, Gasica and me) felt about the situation. We also spoke to them about his life and his character. The teachers who had been the main instigators in making Doudi leave looked really quite ashamed and all the other teachers seemed willing to have him back in the class once his time at ZL4LF is over. Over the past few weeks Doudi has settled into life at ZL4LF. Gasica sees him often and I have been to visit him many times and it has made us both so happy to see him with new friends and being welcomed so warmly into the ZL4LF family. He sleeps and works with a group of students at the chicken farm and attends English classes every morning.
Thursday 5 May: Today Philip and Karen, a volunteer from England, led the students in a class using the Kiokits to read stories together. As the students have no text books the fact that they could all hold the same story book (on the tablets), at the same time, and read and follow along together was very exciting and worked really well. It was easy to see how with the right software, the technology can make up for a lack of physical text books and it is something we will continue to explore over the following months.
Monday 9 May: Today was the big exam and all the students were excited about proving their English skills and winning the prize of coming back to our house in Stone Town for a home cooked biryani and going to Forodhani Gardens. I'd never known the students to be so silent as during the test. You could hear a pin drop and the concentration was palpable.
Tuesday 10 May: Today, before class, we had the lovely task of visiting the nursery school to deliver educational materials which had been bought with a donation made by a generous woman back in the UK. The nursery children and teachers were so happy with their new equipment and got straight to work testing everything out.
Wednesday 11 May: We gave the children the results of the exam. Some were very happy, but some students performed less well than they expected. I spent a few minutes at the beginning of the class talking about how exams only measure one type of intelligence and how some of the students who I have great conversations with in English, got relatively low grades, whereas others who find it quite difficult to talk in English performed well. I found it sad to see some of them so disappointed, but Gasica assured me they are used to exams...it’s the only form of measuring learning that they know of, and that it will push them to work even harder. We spent the rest of the lesson creating our own hand-made wall charts with colour pencils, paints and felt tips which we will take down to the nursery school once they have been assembled and child proofed! I want to mention here, how little creativity is encouraged in schools in Zanzibar. There are no arts classes of any type and the students really love having colours and paints to play with. At the same time the students are not used to drawing and it can be quite a tough task for them to draw something on their own, without copying. However, the times I have brought coloured pencils to school, the class can spend hours engrossed in colouring.
Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 May: This weekend saw a special celebration in honour of the graduating students at ZL4LF. On Saturday there were games and performances at the school, followed by a formal ceremony in the evening that both Philip and I were invited to attend. Watching Gasica talk to his students about what they can achieve in their lives really brought home to the both of us how lucky we are to have him as part of our team at Unguja Ukuu. On Sunday the whole school went to Nungwi, in the northern-most tip of Zanzibar.
Monday 16 May: Today we introduced the subject of prepositions. We taught the class words such as: on, in, beside, under, over, with, at etc. using a furry toy monkey and a box. We then played a game where we hid objects around the classroom and the students had to guess where they were (“Is it under the table?” “Are they in your pocket?”)
Once the lesson was over it was time for the exam winners to claim their prize. We took the 2 top students from both classes, plus a 5th student we feel is working very hard, back to Stone Town with us. It was so sweet to see the students’ wide eyes and awe at the sights in Stone Town. They really enjoyed it and Sharifa especially told me many times how happy she was. It was also a real treat for us as teachers to spend quality time with such a small group of students. I was able to speak with one student in particular called Tahiya. I had no idea previously how much she could say in English, and how confident she was once she was out of the classroom setting. The highlight for me was sitting around our kitchen table with all our plates piled high with food, joking and talking as we ate. When it was time to leave nobody wanted to go, asking if they could stay for the night. But eventually they all climbed into the car for the hour’s drive back to Unguja Ukuu.
Tuesday 17 May: The rest of the week has been spent writing letters for the pen-pal project so they are ready to send off in early June. It was very interesting hearing about what the students’ parents do for a living, what they can see from their houses and what their houses are made of. Many students have to walk a long way to school in the mornings, and evenings are spent going to Madrassa, fetching water and digging up stones to build with (along with the usual things like watching TV and helping their mums to cook dinner).
Thursday 19 May: Philip had previously uploaded some tongue twisters onto the Kiokit and today we read them together with much fun and laughter. Favourites included some Dr Zeus and classics such as She sells sea shells on the sea shore and Red lorry, Yellow lorry!
We only have a few more weeks until school closes for a month for Ramadan. We have lots of things planned for before then which I will tell you all about in the next update... but expect news on our second school trip, a big English birthday celebration complete with pass the parcel and the bumps, and an all English talent show to mark our last day at school before the break.
April 30, 2016: Cholera and Kio Kits (Chloe)
Zanzibar is going through a tough time right now with a big outbreak of cholera which is getting worse every day due to the heavy rains. There are many new cases daily and 50% of deaths have happened in the last 2 weeks, with 80% of mortalities being children under eight years old. It’s very sad and you can see that a lot of people are worried about the situation. The authorities are trying to reverse the outbreak by shutting down all food stalls and some restaurants. There are public health announcements happening via text messages and over the radio and WHO are concentrating on purifying water sources. We hope things begin to improve soon and will keep you posted about the situation. On a happier note, despite a shaky start, the students of Unguja Ukuu have had a busy and exciting 2 weeks.
Monday 18 April: The students were incredibly disappointed that we had not been able to go on the school trip over the weekend due to the heavy rains. A lot of them felt like we had tricked and betrayed them and although they could understand it was out of our control, many still felt humiliated that they had allowed themselves to get so excited about something that didn’t happen. We promised we would try again the following Sunday, but it felt like a bit of a sombre start to the week with many students becoming reserved again and holding back smiles. It was an important lesson for us as teachers. I think in the future we will be more aware of just how emotional it is for the students to do things for the first time, and we will explain beforehand that although we will always do our best to follow our plans, sometimes in Zanzibar things happen which mean we might have to postpone or change them.
Wednesday 20 April: After revising the present simple we started the complicated task of teaching the students how to tell the time in English. This really is not an easy topic for our students as the system they use here is quite different. The day in Zanzibar starts at 6am. But instead of calling it 6am, it’s 0. 7am is 1 and so on. But they still use the British clock, so even though the number may say 2, for someone in Zanzibar it is 8 o’clock! Confusing isn’t it? We thought so, and so did our students. It has taken us most of the two weeks to get a real grip on it.
Thursday 21 April: Today we introduced the students and teachers at the school to the Kio kit computer system. The Zanzibar Rotary Club attended for an official handover and everyone at the school felt incredibly lucky to be the only school in Zanzibar with this technology available to them. The students definitely got to grips with the technology much faster than the teachers and were soon all off on their own searches of the Kio’s software. There were a few issues with the system, but all in all everyone had a great time and it was a very positive experience which Philip will provide more detail on in a separate report of all things Kio.
Sunday 24 April: At 10am in the morning (4 o’clock Zanzibari time!) we set off from Unguja Ukuu for the school trip. It was such a fantastic sight to see all the students dressed in yellow as we arrived. They had bought yellow t.shirts for all the teachers too and we looked and felt like a real team as we visited parts of the island. Our first stop was Jozani Forest which involved seeing lots of curious monkeys and a plank walk through the mangroves. We then spent the afternoon at Bwejuu beach. Gasica found us a wonderful spot with a little house we could use for shade and not another person in sight...just long stretches of white sand and turquoise sea. We played games, practiced English, ate a delicious lunch of pilau and went swimming in the sea. At first the boys waded in but the girls were much more hesitant, even though it was obvious they wanted to bathe too. Rayyan, a female teacher from ZL4LF, and I went to talk to the girls about ways they could manage bathing whilst staying respectable. It was wonderful to see that many of the girls did join in with the swimming, and I think many more will bring special clothes next time so they can take part too.
On our way back to Unguja Ukuu we stopped off in Paje for a walk along the beach. I think for some of the students this was their favourite part of the day as Paje is a place many have heard of, but never visited. They were intrigued by the tourists and what they do on holiday, as Unguja Ukuu is a forgotten part of the island and sees very few tourists passing through. Throughout the day I spoke to many of the students about what a magical day they were having. It transformed the class into a team. It was wonderful to see all ages and friendship
groups mixing and many students told me they would remember the day for ever...as will I. We returned back to Unguja Ukuu after dark - with a bus full of tired, but very happy students.
Monday 25 April: On the previous Thursday one of ourstudents, Doudi, who is a young adult with mild learning difficulties was excluded by the teachers from our class. The reasons were unclear, but also obvious, as prejudice against people who are different is sadly quite rife in Zanzibar. Doudi, Gasica and I were very upset as we all feel he is an important and valued member of our class. Not only is he always on time, respectful and interested, he also plays a vital role of teaching us all what it means to be a true team and how to appreciate one another for our differences as well as our similarities. On Thursday we had assured him he should still come on the trip.
April 17, 2016: Introducing "The School Trip"! (Chloe)
Monday 4th April: We arrived at school with lots of exciting news. Firstly, that the students will be getting fed at lunch time again; which seemed a relief to everyone present. We also gave the students the fantastic news that we shall be going on a school trip once a month. We feel this will have a big impact on the team spirit within the class, help to bring everyone together, and reward the students for all the hard work they are putting in. The students were incredibly excited, with everyone having suggestions of where they would like to go (Nungwi being the most popular...maybe as it’s the furthest point from Unguja Ukuu?!) We set the date for Sunday 17th April.
We've created a routine which is working well where Mondays are spent revising everything the students learnt from the week before. Chloe creates a fun revision print-out, we then we split the class into the 2 levels and the students go through the sheet, asking any questions along the way. This really helps us to see which students have grasped the new concepts and which still need a bit more help.
Tuesday 5th April: !noticed a lot of the students were getting confused between the verbs “to have” and “to be”. We often hear students say funny phrases such as “I am a big nose”! We had a very fun class drawing pictures on the blackboard which showed the difference between I am a telephone and I have a telephone, or she is a beautiful girl and she has a beautiful girl. The picture of I am a big nose definitely got the most laughs though! The rest of the week was spent on encouraging conversation around which food the students liked and learning food vocabulary. It was wonderful to see all the students fluently talking to one another about the food they did and didn’t like. We also played lots of interactive games, the most popular being food bingo!
Thursday 7th April: I've started teaching at ZL4LF 2 evenings a week, working with the advanced students. This week we watched a film called Africa United. The next day the students split into small groups and created a presentation based on one of the questions prepared for them. Below is a small selection of the topics discussed:
- The film makers of Africa United are very clear about their intention to make a film about Africa that does not simply focus on the stereotypical views of Africa. Do you think they have succeeded? Do you think the film shows a true representation of life in Africa?
- The characters in the story refer to themselves as a team. What does a team mean to you? Talk about times you have felt part of a team and times you have felt alone. Do you think family has to be through blood ties or can it be something else? Discuss this and how this sense of team and family relates to your own lives.
I was very impressed by the student’s work and the interesting things they had to say.
Monday 11th April: Lunch is back at Unguja Ukuu! It was instantly obvious to see the difference in concentration levels and energy now the students are having lunch after their full day at school and before they begin the English lessons. No more yawning or tired eyes... it really is great to see the change.
After revising last week’s lessons, this week we've been concentrating on the Present Simple. We're excited as this means students should now have a basic grasp on articles, nouns, adjectives and verbs! We alternated between splitting the class and having all the students together. We taught the more advanced students about irregular verbs, with the plan that they will then spend 1hr during the school trip teaching the beginner students 1-on-1. I want to encourage the idea of helping one another, and not just telling each other the answer, but through explaining how to get there.
With lots of help from local film makers, I managed to find what I need to edit the film I shot last month with the students at ZL4LF. I'm busy editing and hopefully it will be finished by next weekend.
Thursday 14th April: Philip came to teach the first of the computer lessons to the teachers at Unguja Ukuu. They were very happy to learn how to use word and the printer, and will continue familiarising themselves with Microsoft programs in the weeks to come. Once Philip had finished with the teachers he joined the advanced class that Chloe was teaching and the students played a team game in which they had to ask him questions using the present simple. One point for a yes response, zero points for a no!
It was decided that the Zanzibar Rotary Club will visit the school next Thursday for the official hand over of the Kio kits. Philip is busy uploading as much material as possible before then.
Friday 15th April: I've started a diary writing project with the students at ZL4LF. This week we made our own diaries and talked about confidentiality. Everyone is to write 2 pages a day. Next week we will work on turning personal content from the diaries into poems we are happy to share.
Saturday 16th April: Gasica and I met to prepare a powerpoint presentation for a VSO careers fair for Zanzibar youth happening at the end of this month. It was great to hear Gasica’s story again and to create a presentation he feels happy and confident about delivering.
Sunday 17th April: The school trip has been cancelled due to rain! It rained so heavily through the night, and has continued all morning so far that the roads are blocked we can’t get to Fuoni or Unguja Ukuu! It is a shame, and although Gasica is receiving lots of disappointed phone calls, the students are used to this happening here and we will make sure we go another time soon.
Kiokit Update from Philip: The KioKit is a multi-tablet system developed to assist learning in education, specifically for Africa. A lot of the software that came with the system was directed at general education of secondary students and was not that compatible for teaching beginner’s English as a second language. My work to date has been to find a way to upload new content to the kits and I am now busy sourcing new, suitable material.
The process has been quite complicated but the good news is that after much searching on the internet and considerable work on the computer there are now a number of flash card sets and early learner reading books available for immediate use by the students. The reading books are presented in full colour and can be read at the individual’s own pace of comprehension. Over the next 6 weeks I'll endeavour to create as much content as possible.
It is expected that observation of the students using the device will provide valuable feedback on the usage and potential of the Kiokit within the classroom. The adventure continues!
April 2, 2016 Chloe and Phil arrive in Zanzibar! (Chloe)
Tuesday 8th March: We were met at the airport by Gasica who has been looking after us ever since. We spent the first few days acclimatising to our new, beautiful home.
Friday 11th March: We visited Unguja Ukuu primary school for the first time and were surprised by the large number of children that are learning in this relatively small community. All the children were very excited to see us and it was great to finally meet them all.
Sat 12th March: We were invited to Pwani Mchangani with the ZL4LF school trip. Everyone had a great time and the students were very happy to practice their English with Philip and me.
Tuesday 15th March: Meeting with the teachers and community leaders at Unguja Ukuu. It was a chance for the teachers to give us feedback on the past 3 months with Ann and Caroline and to let us know what they would like for the future. In general they were very happy with how things were going, although they also wanted to change some things.
The teachers decided they did not want to continue English lessons They are possibly interested in having computer lessons. We need to find out which teachers will attend classes, and how many days a week they would like them. The students who are engaged and interested will continue to have after school English (and computer?) lessons. This will stay at about 40 students. The teachers told us they would prefer us not to teach during school hours.
Wednesday 16th March: Our car got broken into and all the power windows were stolen! This annoying incident caused us to miss the last day of school before it closed due to the re-run of the election. I was sad to be away from the kids again as it felt as if we had to stop before we had started.
Saturday 19th March: Due to worry over possible violence during the election (it was a re-run after the first election was declared void by the party who did not win!) we were invited to stay at a beautiful hotel in Kizimkazi for 3 nights which is a quiet, rural part of the island. Philip and I had a wonderfully relaxing time and we are happy to report that there was no real violence or organised uprising.
Tuesday 22nd March: The school in Unguja Ukuu remained closed during the week following the election. Philip spent his time working on the kiokits (more about that to follow) while Chloe spent the week making a film with the older students at ZL4LF. The students really enjoyed the drama games, songs and dances and were enthusiastic during the filming. It was interesting to see the difference between European and Zanzibari culture. When I’ve done this project before the kids want to copy a famous film like Pulp Fiction and then change it to make it funny and relevant to them. But here the students wanted to make something that educates. So we have made a film about how you should go to the hospital and not to a witch doctor. All the filming is finished and now I need to edit it, but I am having issues finding a firewire adapter. We are on the case though, and I am confident a solution will turn up so that I can get on with the editing process!
Saturday 26th March: Feroz returned to England. It was great to have him around and we will miss his advice and company.
Tuesday 29th March: Finally the school in Unguja Ukuu is open and we had a great week really getting stuck into the teaching. It feels like we have found a good way of working together. We are concentrating on enabling the students to be able to introduce themselves and talk about their lives in great detail. For grammar we focused on articles and adjectives. And the vocabulary has been about body parts.
I think we have hit a good balance between serious learning, interspersed with fun, energetic exercises which back up the lessons. Students have been drawing, acting and singing during class with much amusement. We were sad to see that not all the students were receiving lunch due to lack of funds from the teachers, who had said they could pay for half the cost. After talking to Ann and Caroline about this we'll fix the problem next week.
This week has also included 2 trips to Bomba radio station where both Gasica and Chloe were interviewed! Philip has been continuing with the frustrating task of getting the KioKits usable for our lessons. (see below)
Friday 2nd April: During our meeting a few weeks ago the teachers told us they need a printer and copier at the school. Feroz worked his magic with Stone Town Traders and today we picked up the free copier/printer! Learning how to use it properly will be a part of the teacher’s computer lessons.
KioKit Update from Philip: It's been quite a difficult task to enable the KioKit to perform as a usable system for TESOL education, but it would seem there is light at the end of the tunnel with a proprietary technician agreeing to come on line and reveal the connection protocols that will allow the user to upload content to the kit for display in class. The software program I've been working on these last few weeks is a vocabulary builder which will take from 1 to 10 words, currently nouns have been enabled, and develop a number of multiple selection exercises to be automatically developed and then uploaded to the kit for use in class. If all goes according to plan, the next report should include pictures of a working Kio!
October 2016 Gasica in the UK (Ann and Chloe)
Here is a quick round-up of what’s been happening in Unguja Ukuu recently.
English Lessons – The advanced and beginner classes are doing really well, learning more each day and improving their conversation skills each week. We are still very impressed and happy with the classes Sadiq is creating for the beginner class. They are fun, simple and clear and the young students are all enthusiastic.
The intermediate class seems to have reached a stage where they are a little overwhelmed by all different subjects they have covered in the last year. They do really well in a class, but then forget what they have studied within a few days. I have experienced this myself when learning a new language – there comes a point when my brain feels saturated and it feels like I have taken a step backwards. Usually all that is needed is to stop learning anything new and to just practice talking with the knowledge you have until it feels natural and comfortable. So we have decided not to teach anything new to this class for the time being and just to concentrate on the things they have already learned. We hope that by creating fun, conversation based exercises the language will become a part of them, rather than something they have to try to remember.
Upcoming Exams: November and December is the time for exams in Zanzibar. The standard 6 children are still absent from our classes due to exam revision and 5 of them have now started boarding during the week at an exam revision camp half an hour away. And now the Form 2 students are also in extra revision which means they are missing our classes as well. The upside to this is that both the intermediate and advanced classes are smaller which means it’s much easier to get the whole class practising conversation and giving individual attention to the students.
Swimming – Since the arrival of the burkinis back in August we’ve been having regular swimming lessons in Unguja Ukuu. It’s a very popular activity amongst the students, with a few having learned to swim already, and the others well on their way and feeling much more comfortable in the water. We had intended to train some local adults to be swimming instructors, but it’s been hard finding people with a level of commitment we can rely on. (Our top candidate has only shown up to one of the lessons so far, and then he decided not to swim even though he was there!) We are still thinking about how best to proceed, but in the meantime the three ZSP teachers have been leading the sessions along with different volunteers.
Reading programme:Students in 2 of the classes are now proud owners of a reading folder in which they are taking home a book each week. The folders help to keep the books in a good condition and also include a book log that parents sign after
listening to their children read, an instruction sheet in Swahili for parents with suggestions for questions they can ask to check on their child’s comprehension of the story and a cover that the students had fun colouring and making their own. I have spent a lot of time this past month listening to the students read and making sure the books they are choosing are at the right level for them. We are all very happy with how the project is going. The students are increasing their vocabulary each time they read and we have just heard that My Book Buddy will be funding an individual dictionary for each student which will really help them to get as much learning from the books as possible.
Visitors: We have had a few visitors to the school which the students always love, and my father is currently here for 3 weeks helping out in the classes. It’s been very interesting to see how much they students enjoy having an older person around and that they have really enjoyed his personal, calm and simple way of teaching.
Building work - Due to some amazing donations from the UK we have been able to fund bringing electricity to the nursery school which they need for the well. This means the teachers, students and surrounding community will have easier access to fresh water. We have also been able to approve work to the computer room at Unguja Ukuu primary school. They will tile the floor which should go a long way in making the room dust free, prolonging the lives of the computers there. They will also replace a blackboard with a whit all for projecting onto.
Gasica’s visit to the UK. Many of you will have had the chance to meet Gasica during the 4 weeks that he’s been in the UK. He is making the most of every minute and has so far spoken at 2 Rotary meetings and addressed about 600 people at the Rotary District Conference in Eastbourne. The meeting was a fantastic platform for the Zanzibar Schools Project and we made some great contacts with Rotary Clubs that are looking for projects to support and we even met a chicken farmer who’s interested in an African project.
Gasica has loved visiting schools and the students find his story so inspiring. Gasica and our young volunteer from the Summer holidays (Rob Lindfield) are working with Varndean College to set up a microfinance project with the students at PLCI school in Zanzibar and we hope the project can be replicated by other schools and Rotaract Clubs.
Gasica is enjoying professional development courses at the English Language Centre in Hove. Although he’s never taken an exam before he was placed in the Advanced English Class and he enjoyed experiencing new teaching techniques. He’s currentlyin the middle of his Teaching English as a Foreign Language course and works hard every evening writing up his notes so that he can share what he’s learnt with teachers when he gets back to Zanzibar.
As if this wasn’t enough, Gasica has learnt to swim (after an hour he could swim 4 lengths of crawl), has met the local MP to thank him for supporting his visa application and has hobnobbed with the mayor of Eastbourne. We hope you enjoy the photos of Gasica making the most of his visit to the UK.
February 19, 2016: Final thoughts as we head home (Ann and Caroline)
Thursday February 18: The last day at school. Due to various generous donations, we had enough pencils and pens for every child in the school. They were distributed and received with much solemnity. In some classes there was also much agonising over the choice between a pencil sharpener and a ruler.
With gifts distributed, it was time for the school to make a formal thank you to us. One of the classrooms was transformed by a table laid with best white linen and vases of colourful fresh flowers. Fortunately we plan to come back in November, otherwise it would have been too emotional to say farewell. The teachers and the school committee agreed that our project had been a success and much gratitude was expressed all round. Thanks to Feroz and Gasica for translating. Ann and Caroline were presented with straw gift baskets containing a “bread egg cake” made by one of the teachers and a sumptuous supply of mangoes. We were given identical red Kangas with a motto about love and the teachers were delighted that we tried them on immediately. Many instructions and practical help was offered about how to wear them and finally we gained critical approval from the female staff.
We conferred certificates upon those students who had attended our classes regularly. For most it was the first time they had ever received a certificate. Feroz was a popular person at the festivities – some of the children in the class have had their teeth inspected by him as part of his outreach project to the rural areas. There was an improptu quiz with prizes of coloured pens which led to the two brightest students leaving equipped to colour in a rainbow! By this stage, the class was on a roll and we finished the day with video recordings of the students confidently answering questions posed during the Skype session with Varndean. We’re looking forward to sharing the videos on our return to the UK. As ever, Gasica’s translating skills were invaluable. He said “The children say they’d like to hug you” which resolved any cultural concerns we had about appropriateness. There was a long queue of boys and girls keen to be hugged and once hugged they seemed to join the back of the queue again... The ultimate reward for our efforts.
Summing Up...We’ve experienced lots of fun. The sad stories are balanced by energy and laughter too. We feel we've been successful in linking an international community of our friends and family with a small African village. We’re overwhelmed by the many connections that have been made between our friends at home and our new friends here.
We’ve loved the way people have got involved in our project in so many ways:
- A great orientation to Stone Town by Feroz and Hassan
- Practical support and advice from the Zanzibar Rotary Club of Stone Town
- Swahili language lessons in Lancing
- Lots of encouraging emails and Skype calls
- Preparation of ICT course materials
- Visiting us equipped with unobtainable including Earl Grey tea, oatcakes and a replacement for the lost camera
- Sending school-care packages of ink for the printer, jump drives, dictionaries, DVDs, skipping ropes, balls ...
- Sending clothes and toys for the orphans
- Laptops for the teachers and volunteers
- TEFL text books and more dictionaries from ELC Hove
- School twinning in Lancing
- Equipping us with gifts for the children of pens, stickers, pencils, toothpaste and toothbrushes to bring out with us
- Skype with Varndean school and motivating correspondence between the schools
- Ribbons for teaching prepositions
- Shares on Facebook that helped us find one of the next volunteers, Chloe
- Generous funding of the Kio Kit tables by the Brighton and Hove Soiree Rotary Club, the Zanzibar Rotary Club and a private individual from Hove.
We really, really appreciate your kind donations that have so far have provided 2 months of school lunches for children staying for extra English, renovated 9 blackboards, provide funding for volunteer accommodation and transport, funding for Gasica to help us teach, photocopies of educational materials, text books for the teachers and so much more!
And of course, we couldn’t have achieved any of this without Gasica, who’s helped us understand Zanzibar culture, translated for us, taught us some essential Swahili phrases (“jazzer” for “fill her up” at the petrol station is the favourite) and provided inspirational teaching and leadership. Quite outstanding in someone who’s not yet 28.
ANN: Summing up...
FRUSTRATION – at the appalling English in the text books. The worst were “let’s eat father” (Lynn Truss would be horrified), and in the section on cleaning the school “Slash the glass” (actually cut the grass). FRUSTRATION with the bureaucracy that meant we didn’t get Gasica’s visa
FROZEN – memorable as the only Disney film we had for the first week and the cult of the snowman that quickly developed in 32 degree heat.
FUN – the amazing popularity of the Hokey Cokey, the High 5, High 10, laughing with the teachers in the staff room and the Great Dhow (a Swahili Coast sailing boat) Race.
WE RECEIVED MORE THAN WE GAVE – “thank yous” from the children thanking us for their lessons, presents of mangoes and crabs, specially made pilau,
WE LEARNT MORE THAN WE TAUGHT – to be humble about how we give to developing countries – to ask what’s needed and to work together to find what’s feasible, not imposing what we want to give. To learn to be tolerant when we don’t have the full picture. And most of all, to be thankful for the educational opportunities that we’ve had.
CAROLINE: Summing up...
THE CHALLENGE – we encountered teachers and students with a very shaky understanding of English. The cultural divide was great. Many artefacts of lore and experience which we take for granted were simply not available to students or teachers. The people of Unguja Ukuu are, by our standards, very poor indeed.
Teaching methods are very different from those we are used to. Rote learning and corporal punishment are the mainstays of teaching practice here. These we learned to live with in a rather cautious coexistence.
Teachers aren’t helped by textbooks (insufficient in number) which contain gross errors and, sometimes amusing, infelicitous use of English. They are required to teach a set curriculum to prepare students for exams having had no training in the topics they are required to teach. The ICT teacher informed us she had to teach about the INTERNET, and asked, ‘What is the INTERNET?’ No technology here. No INTERNET connection and one working laptop (a second hand donation) that only one or two of the teachers have the remotest idea how to use. Blackboards and chalk are the backbone of educational technology.
WHAT WE ACHIEVED – In the face of this, we made significant strides in improving the level of English, both written and spoken. We spent many hours preparing teaching materials, putting our portable computer printer to good use. Both teachers and students found our lessons fun and we had fun giving them. Much creative insight was invoked in the process as we quickly learned that standard TEFL methods weren’t of much use.
The most valuable resource in our teaching, however, was the enthusiasm and desire to learn on the part of both teachers and students. They don’t take education for granted and seize the opportunity to improve their life prospects. They gave Gasica, Ann and myself absolute respect and worked very diligently in their learning. I greatly look forward to returning next November and seeing how their exams went and what advances they have made with our new volunteers.
February 12, 2016: The benefits of a blackboard that's black! (Ann)
Saturday February 6: A brainstorming session at ZL4LF to generate ideas for a grant proposal for a Rotary Club in Surrey. We’re thinking of a larger scale project to provide IT, English language and business training for students from schools such as Unguja Ukuu. This would be a joint effort involving ZL4LF, the Daraja Foundation and the Zanzibar Rotary Club. We hope we’re working along the right lines...
Monday February 8: Hurrah, the blackboards are renovated and it’s possible to read what’s written on them! No more pale grey boards! We supplied branded paint and the school sorted out the painting and repairs. Great value at £50! We were getting fed up of seeing children copying down things that were wrong due to confusion caused by inadequate blackboards.
We show an English language films during the morning break. Only 30 of the kids are allowed to see it, so there’s a bit of a scrum to get in to the computer room. To date, there’s been no bloodshed. The rest enjoy storytelling sessions with Ann, using ‘Aesop’s Fables’, and ‘Handa’s Surprise’, followed by the Hokey Cokey. The aim is to create a positive vibe around English and as there’s nothing else on offer, this isn’t hard!
The school wants us to focus on Standard VI students (age 12-13) who take exams in November. No one from the village has passed the exams which lead to placement in a Stone Town school where they receive a much higher standard of education. We’d like at least one of them to pass! The school had identified a group of about 30 able students who are mostly from Standard V and VI. But in the course of observing some of the classes we’ve noticed some bright sparks the teachers missed. They’re invited to the class and immediately fit in, coping with more challenging English and the concept of having to think!
We have a sample exam paper and decide to see how the group shapes up to some exam practice. ‘A Bug’s Life’ is very popular with the students so we’ve developed a practice comprehension test based on it. First, we need to teach them about exam strategy. This was a novel concept, even to the older students! We started by explaining the concept of allocating exam time according to the number of marks in each section. This proved slow going and we suddenly realised that the concept of time allocation is irrelevant if you don’t wear a watch, there’s no clock on the wall and, even if you did have one, mobile phones into the exam room. It’s a theme we keep finding. The problem that you think you are addressing turns out not to be the problem at all, there’s an entirely different one waiting for you! We’ve offered to buy a couple of wall clocks for the exam room and Gasica will be buying them just before the exams, so no possibility of them falling apart in the corrosive salty air or walking out of the open-air classrooms!
A respected member of the Unguja Ukuu community passed away and the teachers are away at the funeral. Everyone in the village is related or are friends, so there’s a big turnout. The Islamic faith requires that mortal remains be interred within a day of the death.
Tuesday February 9: As the afternoon group hadn’t grasped exam strategy they were destined to repeat the lesson until they had. One of the older girls grasped the concept and explained it to the rest of the class. Given the complexity of the topic, Swahili was allowed! The students really enjoyed having the concept taught by a peer and saw that it was something they could do. So, only a day late and they have a go at our short comprehension test. It included some language they didn’t know so we discussed the concept of “Don’t Panic” when you see something you don’t understand. Gasica says Zanzibar students are not in the habit of panicking as they expect to find things they don’t understand! Most do well – am sure Disney studios would be pleased to know the educational value of ‘A Bug’s Life’. In fact even the Headmaster enjoys it!
The teachers were trained on how to use POWERPOINT, put a presentation on a memory stick and show it on the TV. Much excitement and determination to master the technology.
Wednesday February 10: Linking to previous work, the afternoon session was an introduction to the circus. The kids learn about clowns, trapeze artists and unicyclists. They demonstrate their understanding of acrobatics, balance and wobble with a range of handstands and the yoga tree position. Even the girls join in!
The teachers’ session focused on a review of verb tenses, using our travel itinerary as subject matter. Slowly breaking them in to the news that we will be leaving soon. Today, I am in Zanzibar. Next week, I will be travelling to England, and so on.
Thursday February 11: Today we had our final meeting with the teachers and we explained what help we could offer for the future. There will be two new volunteers who are coming in March to take over from us.. We also told them about the BRCK Kio Kit tablet computer system which one of our volunteers will be implementing.
The afternoon class is busy obtaining a consensus on answers to questions posed by students at Varndean following last week’s Skype session. We love the answers to the first question “What thing do you most like about your village?” Answers include “Freedom” from one of the teachers, passing by the classroom and looking at the board. We’ll video them giving the answers. Internet speed here makes Skype difficult. The day finished with the conferring of going away gifts. In this case, a tube of toothpaste for each child. Colgate proved the most popular brand with a few outliers standing out from the crowd.
February 5, 2016: Introducing the nursery school (Ann)
Monday February 1: Bad news from the British Consul about Gasica’s visa. The stumbling block is his lack of bank account, regular savings and marital status. Gasica decides to open a bank account, a process that involves confirmation from the sheha (village leader) that he is an upstanding member of the community and many passport-sized photos. This part is achieved, but it takes more visits to open the account.
We’ve started showing English language cartoons during the mid-morning break. This is an instant success. Thirty children are allowed into the computer room. On the first morning there’s an unseemly scrum and the children outside are knocking at the door, trying to get in. From inside we can hear one girl sobbing. This is a remarkable as children rarely cry here. They are told that only newborn babies cry. But we can’t let her in – if we do another thirty children will rush in. Ann stands with her back to the door as children try to push in. This week we are screening “Bug’s Life” which is even more popular than Lion King and Jungle Book. It’s also a great educational springboard for teaching about leaf cutter ants, how to “walk in line” and what an inventor does!
Tuesday February 2 – Due to the crowd control problems during break on Monday, today we have a new strategy. Ann is deployed to entertain the children who can’t get in to watch the film and reads “The Ant and the Grasshopper” to them. This plan works well and we hope it will generate some interest in books. There are plenty in the school library but they are rarely borrowed.
We have a consistent group of students from Standard VI in the afternoons. They’re in the top year of the Primary School, around the age of 12 or 13. At the end of the year they take an examination and those who pass are able to attend Secondary School in Stone Town. We’re told that no student from the village has ever passed the examination. So we’re aiming to help them prepare for the exams. We’re not sure whether they’re taught exam technique, but that will be on the agenda next week. We almost have a past English exam paper (well it’s for Standard VII not Standard VI, so that’s near enough by Tanzanian standards!) We’ll devise exercises that reflect the skills they need in the exams.
Wednesday February 3: Two of the most enterprising primary school teachers have set up a nursery school in the village and have invited us to visit. The children, aged around 4, put on an impressive display of singing, clapping and speaking in English. They are very short of equipment and want to build a second classroom. We decide to help such a worthwhile cause and will make sure the children have some appropriate toys.
Thursday February 4: We’re excited to learn that one of our friends who teaches the International Baccalaureate is interested in using our reports for a project relating to resource-poor settings. During our correspondence the idea emerges to have a Skype call between Varndean College, Brighton and Unguju Ukuu Primary School. We spend the hour before the Skype call prepping the students. They were very hazy on the concept of Europe, but with Gasica’s help, learnt that Brighton is in England, which is part of the UK, which is part of Europe, just as Unguju Ukuu is part of Zanzibar, in Tanzania, on the African continent. We show photos of Varndean’s playing field and school building. The students declare the school to be “beautiful” and we explain that both schools are lovely but built differently due to the climate. Given the heat in Zanzibar, they don’t need windows.
The students brainstorm questions for their English counterparts. The first is “Can you share your books with us?” The second “What is the name of your English teacher?” More questions quickly follow and the students decide who will ask each question. Fortunately the Skype link worked, but only from under the tree. The students crowd around and take turns in asking questions. The best impromptu question is “Can we come to visit?” if only! The link only last 10 minutes, but we are just glad it works. After the call, the students write up the questions and the answers they heard. They have difficulty believing there are 120 teachers at Varndean and think that it must be the number of students.
We also meet the English support teacher from the Technical College. His remit is to cover 32 schools. Quite a challenge! We raise the question of why the ICT teacher has no resources. It seems that the support teacher for this subject has two wives along with two jobs and seemingly two lives. He works in Stone Town for the Ministry and has a second home in the countryside! The problem is a lack of text books – for example the history teachers share one text book between three.
Friday February 5: Caroline visits a school text book shop in Stone Town. Sadly the required history text book isn’t available, but Caroline buys some ICT and English text books. We look at the text book versus the syllabus but they have some important omissions such as “The internet”. We’ve only got 2 weeks left and there’s still so much to do...
January 29, 2016: The orphanage and visa disappointment (Ann)
Saturday January 23: Permaculture day! An exciting sustainable project has just come to fruition(!) in Zanzibar. After only 3 months, the first cohort of students graduated from the Permaculture Institute of Zanzibar. The land that’s being used belongs to a local Zanzibar resident and she has allowed the Institute to farm the land. The students learn about how to work with the land to grow a range of suitable crops. In addition to students from Fumba (who are involved in town planning), and a musician who is creating a sustainable artistic community, there were 5 students from PLCI. They will be developing some of the land near the PLCI chicken farm.
Sunday January 24: A visit to the orphanage with Gasica. A friend had sent out 3 boxes filled with toys, colouring books, pencils, clothes and shoes. Gasica regularly visits the orphanage and was happy to help make sure the donated items reached worthy recipients. One of the teenagers showed Ann around and related details of her life at the orphanage. Apart from school, they have visiting teachers who help them with maths and English. After much wrangling, Gasica is now able to take them out on Sundays. The children’s ages span 18 months to 18 years of age. They may not all be orphans, some of the children come from families that don’t have the resources to cope with the number of children in the family. As in the rest of Zanzibar society, the older ones look after the younger ones.
The process of allocating toys and clothes was very orderly and fair. The older teenagers spread out the toys on a table in the library and children came in one by one to choose an item. The same process was repeated with clothes and shoes. Everyone was delighted with their new items and the older girls sang a song which was recorded on video and sent to the kind donor.
Monday January 25: Back at school we’ve been investigating the library, its books and resources. A former teacher is the librarian. He was given the job as he is going blind and he would prefer to be pensioned off so that he could use the lump sum to have the eye operation he needs in India. Sadly, the government refuses to let him retire. The library contains books donated through “My Book Buddy” scheme and other books that are mostly in English. The librarian reports that about 40 children per week borrow library books.
Reading for kids here represents a challenge as, once school is out, there are chores (looking after younger children, fetching water, etc.) that take priority. Add to this the lack of good lighting in homes where night closes in very rapidly.
Tuesday January 26: Caroline taught her computer skills class for the teachers. She started with Microsoft WORD but soon realised that basic keyboard skills are needed. Those present in the class have no experience with any form of keyboard (never even seen a typewriter). There are two working computers in the computer room, one of which doesn’t have any application software (e.g. Microsoft WORD). We loan them our computers to get the ball rolling. One of our aims is to improve computer availability at the school both for teachers and students. It sometime feels as though Unguja Ukuu is on a different planet.
Wednesday January 27: The teaching topic is use of the conditional (if……). The intermediate students were asked to complete the statement “If I could have any job I wanted….. We made it into a team game pitting girls against boys. The first team with the most correct answers won. To spice up the game, half way through additional points were awarded for ambitious answers. One boy suggested “If I could have any job I wanted I’d be President of Zanzibar” which was trumped by agirl stating she’d be Queen of England. The boys were outraged that the girls won and accused Ann of gender favouritism.
The younger group reviewed terminology associated with football, discussion of other sports and had a boxing demonstration from Caroline. This went down well with the girls who demonstrated a very proficient combination of punches. On Wednesday evening we were invited by one of our adult students to attend a local dhow race on the very atmospheric beach of Unguja Ukuu. The whole village turned out making it a splendid occasion indeed. It was well off the beaten tourist track and we had VIP plastic seats with a great view along with an endless supply of coconut water. Corporate entertaining?
Thursday January 28: We accompany Gasica to Dar today to collect his passport and, hopefully his UK visa. Sadly, the visa has been refused on financial grounds. It appears the visa assessor in Pretoria didn’t bother to read the large collection of letters of recommendation from two Rotary Clubs and two charitable organisations that accompanied the application. They also appeared to ignore the detailed description of the funding we had in place to support him.
Friday January 22: A visit to the friendly British Consul in Zanzibar to investigate what can be done to help Gasica. He confirms our suspicions that visa decisions are made on a tick box system with a few basic criteria and that the assessors are often under time pressure to process as many applications in as short a time as possible. We learn that the visa interview Gasica attended in Daar was conducted by an outsourcing agency, which may explain their lack of thorough questioning. They only asked him one question. The Consul agrees to investigate what further documentation could help, but isn’t holding out much hope. Plan B is to resubmit the application for a course in November, assuming we can find out more about what may have led to the refusal. We will fight on!
January 22: Discipline and TOMS shoes (Ann)
Monday January 18: First of all a few words about discipline. Teachers are equipped with long sticks which are used to point at the blackboard and to keep order in the classroom. Today was the first time we saw corporal punishment administered, for seemingly minor offences. In Tanzania corporal punishment is considered normal, both at school and at home. By chance met the head of Save the Children in Tanzania. She gave us many alarming statistics about the high incidence of sexual abuse of young girls and boys. For more information please visit: http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/countries/tanzania.
Ann was given a class to teach where she gave a football sticker to each child who successfully completed an exercise about sport. The level of excitement was almost impossible to contain and back up support from a local teacher was needed. It makes us realize the challenges of controlling large classes, but the corporal punishment still seems extreme.
This was the final day of learning about menus and practising restaurant dialoguefor our after school club. We’d ‘liberated’ a real restaurant menu and the kids poured over it with great interest. None of them have ever been to a Western-style restaurant so it was regarded as a novel foreign object.
At the end of the intermediate class there was a impromptu gathering around the blackboard to discuss geology. We certainly have the top students in the village attending our classes! But we’re not entirely convinced that it’s just interest in learning English that is the draw - there’s a bit of flirting that goes on too.
We don’t have an internet connection at the school so we’d made short videos of internet activities including shopping on Amazon, e-mail, use of search engines, Google maps and Skype. The teachers really appreciated the lesson from Caroline and Gasica, although it left Ann feeling like an African teacher having to look after two classes simultaneously. Fortunately the more advanced group were able to work on a pre-prepared exercise about Diamond Platnumz, Tanzania’s most successful musician who specializes in Bongo Flava and is a big hit with the teenagers here.
Tuesday January 19: The arrival of a van from the CHaRA Mission delivering 800 pairs of TOMS shoes for all the children at the school was cause for massive excitement. Their staff supervised sizing and there was a creative lecture on hygiene that involved glitter. It’s hard to describe the buzz in the school and how happy the children are with their shoes. The donation is made every year and is part of TOMS “One for One” campaign – buy a pair of their shoes and they’ll donate a pair to Africa. https://www.facebook.com/toms
Wednesday January 20: Torrential tropical storms kept most of the teachers and students at home. Those who did arrive were most concerned with drying their clothes. Remember, they have at least a two mile walk or cycle ride to school. No mums doing the school run in the family 4x4. The shoes are a distinct advantage, being rubbery like CROCs. Creative ways are used to distinguish the identical shoes – one child even put dried out corn cobs in his.
A highlight of the second internet class for students was Gasica demonstrating Skype with a colleague at PLCI on his iPhone. The students are riveted and are so hungry for technology. The teachers’ class was originally intended as an English lesson featuring business and IT English but ended up as another computer session. Physical demonstration works splendidly where words and concepts can be lost in translation. Here’s to the motivational use of ‘realia’ in language teaching!
Thursday January 21: We're very excited that we’ve raised sufficient funds to buy a set of 40 tablets called the “Kio Kit”. The tablet was designed in Kenya to withstand the African environment and has tons of suitable pre-loaded information and games. To fund the purchase we have generous donations from The Brighton and Hove Soiree Rotary Club, HELPS (a local Sussex charity) and the Stone Town Rotary club in Zanzibar. A computer expert has kindly volunteered to introduce the kit to the school over the coming months. Everyone is delighted! Caroline drove a delegation from the school to the Ministry of Education in Stone Town to seek exemption from import duty, but we have concerns as the Ministry takes possession of the equipment and we lose control. But in evening at the Rotary club the problem was solved...local Rotarians are visiting Kenya next month and will collect the kit in person. Very reassuring to bypass the official systems!
Friday January 22: Caroline visited the Ministry of Immigration (imposing magnolia coloured building, Stalinist brutalism) to extend our visas to stay until February 20. Rather like the Waitrose deli counter, we took a numbered ticked from an impressively up-to-date looking computerised dispenser. We settled in to enjoy the wait in efficient air conditioning. But our initial impressions were shattered when it appeared that the numbers were being called in a random bingo sequence but our number never came up. Eventually we realised the glitch in the system and gained entry to the right part of officaldom. An interview was conducted in a back office with some suspicious looking characters who asked us how much money we had. They asked us why we wanted to extend our stay in Zanzibar and were informed that bad British weather was not a logical reason for requesting a visa extension. Clearly they haven’t experienced a winter in Lancing. After more discussion the rubber stamp was produced with a flourish and no money changed hands!
January 15, 2016: A volley of gunfire at midnight (Ann)
Monday January 11: Back to school for real today! We joined English lessons with the teachers. Caroline was with the brand new intake who are just learning how to greet each other in English. She was shocked that they had to sit on the concrete floor 6 hours. Ann joined a class in the “computer room” (rather mis-named as there are about 5 PCs, none of which work) where the children were learning “TV, monitor, laptop, computer and keyboard”. They were very keen to touch or hold each item and it’s hard to describe how motivated they are – there’s no fidgeting, everyone pays attention and there’s no chatting unless it’s about the class.
At break we hang out in the staff room – watching the teachers commissioning various small children to run errands for them. Some of the teachers ask us to help with their lessons by photocopying exercises for the children to complete as they don’t have text books. Then the ICT teacher asks “What is the internet?” She showed us the government curriculum which tells her to give a lecture about how the internet works and search engines. The recommended resource is a computer...but as the school has no wifi and she’s never been on the internet it seems quite a tall order. We can’t get 3G on our phones or router in the village so the explanation is going to be challenging!
Tuesday January 12: Woken at midnight to a volley of loud gunfire and what sounded like paratroopers landing on our roof. In fact it was anti-aircraft guns being deployed to celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the revolution. In 1964, 600–800 revolutionaries overran the country's police force and overthrew the Arab Sultan of Zanzibar and his government. A few troubled months later Tanganyika and Zanzibar joined together to form Tanzania. Reprisals against Arab and South Asians took place and many educated Zanzibaris like our friends Feroz and Hassan left the island. On leaving school Hassan did his national service teaching at Unguju Ukuu Primary School. Hence we are teaching at his old school. Apart from the gunfire, government buildings are draped in the national colours of yellow, green, black and blue. Around the Presidential Palace there’s a steady stream of Land Cruisers and truckloads of soldiers with Kalashnikovs.
School is off for the day so we took the opportunity to meet with a local computer expert who reviews our computer kit proposals. He thinks the Kio Kit looks well-designed. He points to the amazing impact that One Laptop Per Child had in Rwanda where the scheme was backed by the government.
Wednesday January 13: We’ve made a short presentation about how the internet works and what you can do on it. We present using still images on the TV screen. The presentation is met with amazement. The teachers are fascinated to think of shopping on the internet and wonder how you pay and how the goods are delivered. They are interested in social media and are most impressed by the idea of free information. The majority of the lesson is delivered by Shafii in Swahili – the topic would have been impossible to discuss thoroughly in English. At least we’ve managed to introduce the teacher to the key concepts before her class has the lesson on Thursday.
School starts at 7am and ends at 1pm when it’s really hot! So we’re delighted that 50 children voluntarily opt to attend our 2-hour English class. The school feeds them and we pay 50% of the cost of food. The students are learning about restaurants. They have to make up name for their restaurant and the best is “The Three Girls Classic Restaurant”. Judging by their menu they are targeting a specific demographic by serving chips with everything. There’s a certain charm in menus that have ice cream listed as a main course and one fish finger as a starter. Speaking to a local friend we find out that traditionally they don’t eat dessert so it was no wonder they struggled with what we asked them to do! By the end of the week all the students have successfully role-played eating at a restaurant or being a waiter and they’ve even had a couple of disruptive customers when we take part and complain that the order was wrong.
Thursday January 14: The biggest challenge today was the power cut that took place when we were hoping to use the wide screen TV to show stills of the internet. But sadly there were 80 children and a very small laptop screen so the lesson took place mostly using chalk and the blackboard. Although all lessons are supposed to be in English, it’s almost impossible to describe the Internet to non-native speakers who are barely at intermediate level. So Shafii rose to the task in Swahili and I stepped over the children sitting on the floor to show them images on my tiny laptop screen so that they could try to imagine “Facebook” and sending an email.
Friday January 15: The visit to the UK Visa office to see if Gasica can study TEFL and English in Hove. His older brother decided that Gasica’s usual jeans and T shirt needed an upgrade for the occasion. He looks great in the new suit and at least the walk to the 7am ferry isn’t too hot. It’s a nerve-racking day and we all feel more and more nervous as the time approaches. There’s a mad dash around Dar es Salaam as his passport photos are on the wrong colour background and we still have the final letter of recommendation to print out...but eventually all the boxes are ticked, his fingerprints are taken and he’s only asked why he wants to study that particular course. A week to wait for the result!
From Christmas to New Year 2016 (Ann)
Wednesday December 23: Our family enjoys visiting ZL4LF. Gasica arranged for each of us to meet groups of about 7 students. Each group had a senior student as facilitator who made sure that beginner, intermediate and advanced students all had the opportunity to interact with us. Then “Question Time” style we answered general questions. Ollie’s tattoos are a favourite talking point. Ellie, who's a primary school teacher, is impressed by the motivation of the students and their enthusiasm for speaking English with us.
Christmas Day, December 25: Khadija, one of our favourite teachers decides that she’d like to visit us in Jambiani and she texts to say that the most convenient day would be December 25! The lesson on timekeeping paid off. She arrived early with her niece and grand-daughter, known as “Little Khadija”. Christmas is non-existent in Zanzibar so they were unfamiliar with the trappings of the season. They loved Ollie’s Santa hat and gamely tried it on over their hijabs. Christmas cake from England was shared round and some was set aside to take home to share with the rest of the family. The cake box was a hit with Little Khadija and she was delighted with a sparkly cracker-shaped Christmas card. We sing “Jingle Bells” and paddle in the sea. Although big and little Khadija live near the sea, they had never paddled and declared that they were scared of the ocean.
We drove them home and were invited in to see the family’s 100 broiler chickens and 75 layers that supplement Khadija’s small teacher’s pay. Young broilers are bought from Dar es Salam. Khadija fattens them up in 6 weeks and then they are collected by a van from Stone Town.
Monday January 4: The first day of the new term and we set off to school in good spirits. But there’s no sign of the ultra-reliable Gasica and no answer from his phone. It turns out that he was overseeing the final phase of the construction of ZL4LF’s chicken farm, which will give the students work experience and make money to fund the school. Construction ends shortly and the chickens arrive by the end of the month. A student helps us find Gasica, who had become separated from his phone, a rare occurrence as he usually takes and makes calls non-stop whenever not teaching.
Gasica quickly changed into teaching clothes (a shirt and long trousers) and we set off to school. Over the Christmas break the road out of Fuoni is looking more and more like a war zone. The shops along the road that used to sell everything from bread and chickens to mobile phone top ups have been destroyed to make way for a new road. The dust is incredible and there are even more pot holes caused by the construction vehicles. How people can work in the heat is unimaginable.
The school is full of teachers and children, but the first week of term is all about cleaning rather than learning. Coral rocks lining the school path are being painted white and paper is burning on a smoky fire. The children are brandishing twig brushes, but they don’t make much difference to the dust. We have a long meeting with the teachers and it emerges that although they had spent a lot of time planning the schedule in December, they are still no clearer about which classes we will join. We present the list of students who have signed up for the voluntary class – some are from the secondary school opposite. One of their teachers is fetched and agrees to match our funding for lunch for the students who are staying after school for our classes rather than going home for lunch. The teachers suggest we return on Thursday when they will have a clearer picture of the timetable.
Tuesday January 5: At last! Caroline submits Gasica’s visa application to study TEFL and English for a month in the UK. An appointment is booked at the Visa office in Dar Es Salam for Friday January 15. Gasica is almost beside himself with excitement and declares he will buy new trousers for the occasion. We research options for computer purchase for the school and enter into dialogue with a supplier from Kenya and the One Laptop Per Child organisation. We also prepare a request for funding and submit to the Brighton and Hove Soiree Rotary Club. Fingers crossed.
Thursday January 7: Back to school and there is further discussion of the timetable and the arrangements for dinner. We have a plan for next week but after that it is likely to change. It transpires that the students in Form II are not in school – they are awaiting the results of the November examinations and no-one knows when they will be published. So no school for Form II!
The day ends on an incredibly positive note. The Stone Town Rotary club have just received $12,000 from an American Rotary Club for Gasica to buy a bus for ZL4LF. One of the girls from ZL4LF who went to the USA on a Rotary scholarship so impressed the club that they decided to raise funds for the vehicle. We call Gasica and in spite of the crackly phone line, we can tell that he is probably the happiest man in Zanzibar at that moment.
December 18, 2015: End of term report (Ann)
Monday December 14: We raided the kitchen and took several forks, a knife, a variety of spoons, some crockery and a cooking pot in to school. In each class the kit was used to demonstrate prepositions in action. We started with the teachers who were impressed with the quality of our pot and took part in the exercises with gusto. By the end of the day, even the youngest students can put the pot between two forks and the bowls have been over, above and on our heads several times.
Tuesday December 15: A day of rain of Biblical proportions. Only two teachers turned up to class, but they are now able to hold their own in a conversation about the weather. We learn that the Swahili translation of “It’s raining cats and dogs”, is “It’s raining big and little elephants”. We introduced the phrase “Rain stops play” which leads us into a cricket minefield. TEFL teaching should come with a warning about not discussing cricket. Attempts to discuss cricket without the aid of photos is doomed to disaster. We promise to bring in photos of cricket tomorrow.
In spite of the rain, the children struggle in to school, showing more determination than the teachers. Is is curiosity about what the bizarre foreigners will think to do with bowls or lack of anything better to do? As a reward for making it to school there is an extra-long episode of The Jungle Book. The language and visual humour works particularly well and the kids are nearly able to sing along to “The Bear Necessities”.
Wednesday December 16: Nearly all the teachers make it to class today. We run through the weather terms again and produce the photos of cricket to support “Rain stops play”. But it backfires on us. We had imagined that this would be sufficient, but the entire class wants to understand all the rules. The explanations lead to more puzzlement and requests to see live action video.
While Gasica takes the intermediate students. We work on shapes and colours with the beginners. It is a successful lesson which involves us getting into a lot of sticky situations with triangles, red dots and pink hearts. It seems that glue doesn’t perform in the same way in Zanzibar as it does in Lancing. Or maybe the children are picking at the corners of their shapes to get us running round with more glue as today’s entertainment?
Thursday December 17: Gasica is joining us later today as he’s arranged to bring a few busloads of students from ZL4LF for a football match with our students. So today classes are all in English. We study maps with the teachers using free maps from one of the local shops. Some are rather puzzled by the points of the compass, but by the end of the class they can all give directions to the fictitious lost tourist reasonably well. We all agree that if anyone is lost in the maze-like lanes of Stone Town, it’s best not to give directions but to escort them back to the main street.
As the last class with all the teachers we ask them to answer three questions about the lessons:
- What have you found most helpful?
- What have you found least useful?
- What would you like more of?
There’s general agreement that they’d like more grammar and vocabulary. Of particular interest to us is the fact that they have particularly enjoyed the experience of working together and a reasonable number stated that they had learnt a lot from the films. As Gasica wasn’t with us to help with translation, they universally misunderstood the second question and said that they find pronunciation the most difficult.
Raya and Khadija told us a few weeks ago that they make the best pilau in the class. As a thank you for the English lessons, they have made us a chicken pilau which has been kept hot in a thermos. They make the tomato and onion salad in the classroom and there’s much tasting until they are agreed on how much lime to add to the salad. They are very disappointed that Gasica hasn’t arrived in time for them to watch him enjoy the pilau, but leave the hotpot with us. The grand-daughter of one of the teachers is entrusted with returning all the equipment at the end of the day.
The students are keen to sign up for classes in 2016. They will be given lunch so that it’s feasible for them to come to our lessons straight after school at 1pm and still get home in time to do the evening chores. As the water isn’t safe to drink all children spend a lot of time carrying water from taps either at the school or from wells to their homes.
An incredible number of students from Gasica’s school arrive in two busloads to play football and socialize. They attend his school before or after regular school to learn English, Science and participate in various clubs such as emailing pen pals, art/crafts. The idea is to promote hard work exposing the students from our school to the dedication of the ZL4LF students. The football match draws a big crowd and the rest watch “Frozen” which has been voted the most popular. The mixing is judged to be successful and we look forward to working with a motivated intermediate group in the New Year.
December 11, 2015: Talking about TIME (Ann)
Monday December 7: Aspects of time formed the subject matter for today in the teachers’ session. We had a lively discussion about attitudes toward time, in the course of which we elucidated some well known sayings such as ‘time waits for no man, “time is on our side”, and ‘time flies.” The concept of punctuality was discussed. It seems that in Zanzibar, when one agrees to an appointment at 10, arriving at any time up to 10:59 would be deemed punctual. Discussion sharpened the teachers command of spoken English.
There's much confusion in telling the time as the Swahili clock starts at dawn, which is always 6am. So 7am UK time is known as 1 in the morning. We explained that our clock starts at 12 as we have different times for dawn and dusk throughout the year. This was greeting with incredulity and then with sympathy. All the teachers thought the idea of a cold, dark winter couldn’t compensate for our long light days of Summer and thought it must be impossible to sleep with so much light.
In the beginners’ group, we used a set of coloured scarves and a football to illustrate prepositions. Great fun for all as well as some English learnt. We concluded the day with a competition between boys and girls to see who could demonstrate the prepositions most quickly using the ribbons. Two rounds resulted in a tie (literally).
Tuesday December 7: Work on time continued and we reviewed the simple past tense, giving extensive lists of regular and irregular verbs... you have to feel sorry for non-native speakers! We explained “cutting it a bit fine” (they were convinced this meant arriving 10 minutes late) and “contingency time” is an equally alien concept. However “a period of Grace” was warmly embraced.
The afternoon session with the younger students saw them recording data about themselves. They were weighed, measured, and asked about their family composition, writing the details down on a pro forma we created for them. They seemed to like weighing themselves, most of them getting on the scales several times!
Today used to be Tanzania’s public holiday to celebrate independence. However, the new president, who is against any form of waste, has banned celebrations and asked the citizens to focus on tidying up the country instead. Our local friend at the swimming pool thinks this is entirely appropriate because the money saved can be used to help provide medicines in the area of the country where there’s a cholera outbreak.
Wednesday December 9: One of our students is a fisherman and he has kindly brought us several buckets of cooked crabs. So today we had a class on snorkelling which was very popular. Some great English was generated including “The bubbles are swimming in the sea” and, having only just learnt the word “explorer” one girl wrote “The people are exploring the sea”. Result!
Thursday December 10: Today we met with the school committee, the headmaster and the teachers to discuss how we could best integrate with the school when they return in January. There’s enthusiasm for English lessons amongst the teachers, but time can’t be made for classes during the school day. However they agree that they will voluntarily attend classes for 1 hour a day, three times a week. We will also assist with the school’s English classes, which means we can reach a lot of the children.
The community classes in the afternoon will continue at 1pm. However, as they are straight after school and the children don’t have time to get home for lunch we will make a contribution to lunches being brought in from the village. All children who attend these classes will be required to register and commit to attending regularly. This is extremely exciting as we can develop a comprehensive curriculum for these students who are so hungry to learn.
It’s so rewarding to see the progress that’s being made – one of the students had spent the time when the film was running to copy out all the “hobbies and interests” section of the Swahili phrase book. Quite unprompted by us today she appeared with a list of questions for us that ranged from “Do you like social dancing?” to “Do you like painting?” Gasica explains the new teaching approach to them for January 2016 and there is much solemn listening to the proposal. Numbers will be confirmed next week.
In addition to the new teaching programme for 2016, we're hoping to purchase 10 resilient laptops. One of our friends who is a computer expert is thinking of coming out here at the end of April and will supervise teaching some of the teachers and students about computers.
December 4, 2015: The kids are back! (Ann)
Monday November 30: All 800 children are back in school after an absence of 6 weeks...but they aren’t in the classrooms or learning! Some lackadaisical sweeping and grass cutting took place, but at the end of the day it looked the same as last week. We teach the oldest year group, aged 13-15. They have just taken exams, all in English, to qualify for senior school. However, the standard is shockingly low – the children can barely answer the question, “How old are you?” Not sure if this was due to not knowing numbers or due to the usual habit of repeating what the teacher says rather than answering a question. But at least “The Lion King” overcame all barriers.
Some of the students who come to our voluntary 1pm class had campaigned for our classes to continue. Fewer than usual turned up but they had more individual attention than usual. By the end of the day, it becomes clear that school is not back for 2 weeks, it was just a random day when the children attended school. So, back to the original teaching schedule tomorrow.
Tuesday December 1: In the morning we had some interesting conversations with the teachers. In a discussion of good and bad habits, one of the Muslim teachers noted that drinking alcohol is a bad habit. Another wanted to know whether we drink alcohol and we prevaricated by introducing my grandmother’s favourite saying “A little of what you fancy does you good”. One of the teachers jokes that she will now try some wine...Oh dear, have we corrupted the village? Afterwards we talked about it with Gasica, who is a great interpreter of social nuances as well as being a super teacher. He says that the teachers wouldn’t be surprised that we drink alcohol but the discussion is a sign they feel comfortable with us.
A further sign that the teachers are at ease were two questions that came up in private from two of the younger women. They asked “How do you teach the children English?” and “Can you teach us computer skills?”
Wednesday December 2: Today we use the coloured ribbons again that were kindly donated by one of our friends. As there are than 40 children in the beginners’ class, the ribbons have been cut in half so each child can hold one during the lesson. Now they are good at colours, they are learning how to wave the scarf, sit or wrap it around specific body parts. However, we get stuck on the instruction “tie a bow”. Only a few children master the art of bow tying. No-one has done this before, not even Gasica. Footwear is primarily flip flops and for football the kids run around barefoot. Now we are obsessed at spotting lace up shoes and indeed there are very few either in the shops or on the local feet.
Thursday December 3: The boys want a football. We are being careful not to give in to every request. Pencils and pens were given out in the first week to publicize the classes and were given to reward consistent early attendance in the second week. So, in line with this approach Gasica tells the children that they can have the football on Monday if they have memorized his football vocabulary. The challenge is to find words that are different in English and Swahili as most footballing terms are used in English!
In the evening Gasica is using “Frozen” with 80 children at his after school club. He's replicating all of the approaches that we use in Unguju Ukuu during the day at his school/orphanage in the evening. He calls himself “The ideas thief” but we are delighted that he wants to try new ideas with his trainee teachers. All the paper materials that we use are photocopied in bulk so that Gasica has enough for his school. There are no text books, so having photocopied exercises speeds up the learning process rather than writing everything on the blackboard.
Friday December 4: An important planning session today. We're working on Gasica’s visa to visit the UK in March. The English Language Centre in Hove has very generously awarded him a bursary to attend English language classes and TEFL teaching. We know of teachers from Pakistan who also had student bursaries who couldn’t go to England due to visa problems. We are collecting letters of support from the local Rotary club to demonstrate Gasica’s fine character and determination to return to Zanzibar.