Understanding a Low Pass Rate

Tanzanian students sit a few national examinations to progress through their schooling and it would be fair to say that their government is not satisfied with the pass rate. For reasons I won’t go into here, I had an interest in schools and their academic performance. But of let me say, change is one of the constants in life and I am only reporting on what I saw in rural schools at the time I was there. I have known some students who excelled under the system and others who did not, which may well be the case anywhere. Intellect and diligence are not always the main factors in pass rates, the daily lives of individuals has perhaps more of an impact.

‘Saa moja’ - one o’clock, they call seven o’clock in the morning, because it is the first hour of sunlight. Daybreak, and sunset, are abrupt in the tropics, and that alone is a factor! In the morning there will be a small fire going with water boiling as mother makes tea. It is not always possible, but the tea will be half milk and sugary. There may be uji – a thin millet or maize flour porridge, but only if the ingredients are available and so often they are not. There might be some roasted peanuts. During hard times, there may be nothing for breakfast!

Most will have a toothbrush and toothpaste, but if not twigs are used – some of the trees we planted around schools suffered from being stripped for teeth cleaning! Water would have been collected the night before, but after cooking the evening meal, the water has to be rationed for bathing. Time in the ‘the place of bathing’ depends on pecking order, but it is done out of a plastic bucket or similar container. The amount of water varies with availability and most usually it is cold.

A lotion, or Vaseline is applied to make the skin shine and to protect against the low humidity and dust that dries the skin, causing cracks. Dressed in school uniform and shoes that have first to be at least dusted off. The child may have a long walk to school, five kilometres is common. The monitor class is required to be there as early as 7:30am to clean the classroom and the school yard. With no brooms available, twigs and brush are used – the tree plantings again suffered – and the dust raised, sticks to the lotion or Vaseline and is breathed in.

During the rain seasons, of which there are two, if banana leaves are not available for makeshift umbrellas, the kids are soaked and sit in a cold classroom most usually with no glass in the windows. So combined with this and the dust it is no wonder there are chest problems. But on hot sunny days, the roofing iron radiates heat. There are no ceiling boards because if there was, over time, the gradual dust buildup would cause them to collapse. So the classrooms can be stifling and a poor learning environment – which is why we promoted trees to offer shade.  

There are times when students are required to work in the school grounds; cultivating, planting/sowing seed and harvesting either beans or maize. Sometimes the harvested grain is used to feed the kids at lunchtime, but more usually it is shared among the teachers because there are times they have to wait for their wages and anyway their earning are low. I recall one time when the students spent the day squashing army worms with their feet! Army worms are actually caterpillars and will eat any vegetation, they arrive in plague proportions, much like locusts! So while the squashing was a reaction, in fact it did little to stop the plague. The school is also required to supply water to the teachers’ accommodation and that means the kids have to cart it and sometimes from afar!

At lunchtime there may be a meal; sponsored by some organisation, or utilising crops grown at the school, sometimes the parent will work collectively, other times the students living nearby may go home for lunch but very often there is nothing! During drought times I have interviewed students and found that on average they went totally without food for three days and after the three days a half-glass of water mixed with a mashed banana was their only sustenance.

After school there are chores to do, and traditionally boys do different work to girls, but if the family doesn’t have the sex mix, the jobs still have to be done. Firewood has to be collected for the cooking fire, water carried, dishes washed from the previous evening meal, feed for the cow or goat has to be collected for those who have zero grazed livestock otherwise shepherding animals so they have full bellies for the night, cleaning out the animal pen and fanya usafi – make clean (the house).

Darkness descends at 7:00pm (saa moja jioni – one o’clock, evening) and most usually there is no lighting! Of course some have electricity, a few kerosene lamps, while others use candles but a majority only have the cooking fire. We were 1500 metres above sea level, 3.3° south of the equator and 450 km from the sea, so the evenings could cool down considerably. The fireplace was therefore the focal point with the evening meal being eaten at around 9:00pm. So homework? Difficult to find time and difficult to complete in the dark. Reading the same, but no worry, there are no books!

Teaching standards were variable, especially so in remote schools, where there was difficulty in finding teachers prepared to go there, and those there, didn’t really want to be there, so the standards suffered. Primary schools are taught in Swahili with English as a subject but most schools suffered from a lack of reasonable English teachers. Secondary school on the other hand is taught in English so the students tend to struggle. Teachers wrote lessons on the blackboard, and not being strong English speakers they made errors. Students copied those errors and made errors in tabulation as well! I once translated a year’s worth of Agriculture notes in exercise book from English to Swahili but the errors were not language only. The student passed the exam!

Regardless of teaching standards, the curriculum standards are high. Three English secondary teacher graduates found they could not teach senior students curriculum maths at the local secondary school because the standard was beyond them!

The average student can speak three languages; Swahili, their own tribal language and that of a neighbouring tribe. The majority nowadays have at least a smattering of English. Despite a lack of resources, and the many factors against them, including a lack of the common experience richer countries’ students may take for granted, the Tanzanian students I interacted with were intelligent and somehow happy.   

Still Here!

I’m still here! Although I haven’t added to this blog for quite a while – not that anyone will really care but it is as much for my own recreation as informing whoever reads the stories. I do have a lot more to add and will get there. I have started editing some of the blogs – poor grammar and spelling needs fixing!

I’ve been side-tracked for over a year writing for the now defunct Readwave. Some of the stories I have added to my Stories Blog, but I have more there to do as well.

Also I’m up to only day 494 of my seven year diary, [which I’m not posting] so while I haven’t added anything here, I’ve been busy enough.

Something happened that made me want to add to this blog.

It is so easy for people in first world countries to turn a tap and there is water. The thing though with abundance, there is usually waste.

I have been on (nagging) about this before. Water is not wasted, even if you tip it down the drain, it finds its way into the water cycle and is recycled.

Micro-droplets within the glass or bottle of water you drink today have passed through the body of Cleopatra! Now there’s a thought!

Chota Maji – Fetching Water

These days people go the gym for exercise, which is a good thing. Probably not enough people go, but for those who do it is good for their health and a way of keeping fit. It is not all that safe to jog along the road any more. There are those who want a magazine type body; six pack abs and firm, round butts.

But to some recreational exercise is unfathomable stupidity.

Upendo and her siblings used to collect water from the tap at our house, but the vagaries of the water supply meant that very often she had to go down to the stream, which was below our house.

The stream starts right there as a spring of clean fresh water that flows out of a bank with a normal flow of perhaps a bucket per second – ok, twenty litres per second.  [Hidden is an overdose of natural fluoride, but that’s another story]

It therefore takes but a second to fill a twenty litre bucket. That done the plastic lid is put on, but not all can afford a lid, so vegetation is put on top of the water to help prevent spillage.

A full twenty litre bucket of water weighs twenty kilogrammes – that’s the allowable weight of your airline bag.

So the next step is to lift it onto her head. Helping a person lift a bucket up onto a head is called twisha, but I have noticed that not many people help each other like that – it is probably a pride thing not needing to ask, because if you do ask, help will never be denied.

Once the bucket is on the head, it is a steep climb out of the stream bed and up to the flat area of the track. There are 105 difficult step to take. Footwear is sandals, malapa, jandals, thongs or whatever you know them by.  No tramper or bushwalker would countenance such footwear! Always the track is slippery because of spilt water.

Once the flatter track is reached, there are thirty metres of flat easy walking before the climb up a steepish, stony, clay road – this is a one hundred metre climb.

The road continues but off it is the track to Upendo’s house. This narrow track climbs very steeply for thirty odd metres, no steps, just making way among small rocky outcrops. Once up the steep part, there are another eighty metres of moderate slope but easier walking to negotiate. The five steps up to the house must be a final hurdle.

Don’t forget this tortuous walk is done with a straight back and twenty litres of water on her head. How much water do you use? Africans can do a lot with a litre of water.

Upendo doing squats? Not likely!

'It Only Takes One Girl'

I saw an interview on Al Jazeera of an old guy who had taken a child bride. He thought it was his God given right to take a child bride and it was 'his teachings' that had given him the right.

The programme was highlighting issues of child brides focusing on the lack of choice for the girls.

Apparently worldwide there are annually ten million girls under the age of eighteen who are married off  against their will.

I read 'It Takes Only One Girl' by Gabriella - she has created a blog because she wants enlighten the world and to empower  child brides.

Gabriella points out that daily, 23, 000 child brides are married off throughout the world. And if you imagine a (barely) teenage girl being married off to a fifty plus year old man, you should feel at least some outrage.

Of course 'marrying' means 'nuptials', and that means driving something large into something small - possibly with some force! This is bad enough, but soon these very young girls find themselves pregnant.

The result of a difficult birth process is that the birth canal is damaged, ruptured, as well as the lower bowel because the canals are very close.

The result is that these kids lose control of their bodily wastes, and to put it crudely, they leak with the inevitable causes smell, causing them to be abandoned as being 'repulsive'! This leads to a life of pain and being ostracized. 

This medical condition has a name - obstetric fistulous. The condition can be successfully treated with an operation costing US$450.

Gabriella focuses on the power of education as the means to eliminate the practice of child brides. She also believes that saving just one girl constitutes a victory!
I would go further, saving one child from any of the terrible occurrences that frequent this Earth is indeed a victory and education is a key that opens so many doors.

I tend to be a little more impatient. First I saw at the cost of repairing these small, often frail bodies the cost seemed low, but multiply that by the need and it amounts to a substantial figure.However, some of the countries that all the practice of child brides are rich. Still somehow funds must be found to address the wider problem.

The thing is barring accidents that will happen statistically, obstetric fistulous could be eliminated if the practice of taking child brides was stamped out!
To balance the equation, there must be a few of these old codgers who are nice to their child brides which may be a positive thing for the girl. So I am not saying all the oldies are necessarily bad. But the bulk of them are are! And and anyway if the girl has no say or control, civilization should change that!

This  'cause' is  the stuff of feminist movements, because, of course females identify with the problem more easily.
However to stamp the thing out, you need governments, justice and the police  to be on side. Most are usually  these are masculine roles. And those people don't readily identify with the girls, (actually most couldn't care less) - they are more likely to identify with the old codgers, especially if the old buggers slip them something nice under the table - or openly!

So anyone who cares should lobby their government to apply pressure on the governments of countries where child brides are acceptable. Not at all easy, and education has a role here. The message needs to be 'out there'!
As that guy said on Al Jazeera, it is his God given right to take a child bride. If that is what they believe, then religious leaders have a role and need to be taken to account as even passive tolerance amount to condoning.  The guy  is wrong, no God sanctions child brides!

Within cultures there is order and tradition. Making changes can tip balances and cause chaos, so I believe that cultures evolve and it is unwise to aggressively impose change from the outside. Education is a good and handy - but cutting dicks off might achieve quicker results!
However this particular issue needs changing from today and the downstream implications can be dealt with as they arise.

Therefore, shaming the guys who take child brides seems to me to be the way to achieve quickest results.
Shaming like : Saying, 'This man has taken a child bride so she will not expose his impotency. He hires boys to impregnate his wife because he can't do it himself.' Name the men!

Maybe that's all too extreme and difficult - but I hope I have highlighted the issue.

Happy New Year

2014 dawns and I am a little behind in adding to my blogs. It is a matter of little holdups and I am enjoying writing for my grandchildren.As well I am typing out my diary - there are seven years of it  and I am only up to day 282.
Into 2014 I will get back to this.....

Life in Africa Sixteen

 From My Diary

Well now, I haven't added anything to this blog since early May. This is because I am typing up my diaries.
I kept a daily diary and while everything is not included it is quite full. As of now, I'm up to Day 137, 31 December 1995. And we were in Tanzania for seven years, so there is a lot to do yet.

It is interesting though to read some of my thoughts - many naive, some embarrassing and some downright uninformed.

Of course everyone looks at things from their own point of view and it took a long time before I saw things in a different light. Once I was thinking and (even) dreaming in Swahili my views and attitudes changed. It is amazing that Swahili remains in my everyday language. Also we were living and working in rural villages which is different to mixing daily with the expat community.

It is not my intention to post my diaries (one reason is that it is difficult to put on) but it is more private in nature.

So, on with Life in Africa Sixteen.

 These kids joined us in out wait for the village chairman to arrive at Olkung'wado. Well it was us who were waiting, and the kids came because they knew us as they were students at the local primary school.
The village office has changed now but then it was a fairly bleak place. We were going to negotiate to carry out plantings within the village - it you like to green up the grey concrete look of the place. The initiative in the end was not successful.

These are mostly the same kids but the picture shows the growing village of Olkung'wado. Partly built buildings/houses and all built with the concrete block. It made the village look grey.
The had been rainfall because the grass is green and kept short by browsing animals.
The browsing animals made it difficult to establish trees in in the village.
A woman who owned a bar, replaced the sandy soil
with good soil (2 cubic metres) and made a tree shelter of bricks in order to plant a Ficus benjamanii which we supplies - it grew well.

As a contrast, over the ridge and above King'ori is the village of Mareu where there is more rainfall and the bricks are burnt from locally quarried soil. Much cheaper and from my point of view more destructive to the environment.
These kids had been sent by their mother to collect some tree seedlings that we had dropped off at the church but we could see the girl had her hands full, so we transported them and the trees to their house.

 Our first Christmas at Makumira was with a family we grew to be close to a number of reasons and this was to increase as time went on.
They did not have the concept of Father Christmas or the exchanging of gifts on Christmas morning. They were keen though to have and decorate a Christmas tree!
The family came down for Chai & cakes and I sneaked away and returned dressed in red and banging my fimbo. The younger ones did not know who I was and I handed out the gifts. I had set up a treasure hunt for the kids as well and they had fun finding the little clues and gifts. Just a little New Zealand thing.

At Christmas tome there are Conformation ceremonies in nearly all the Christian churches. This one happens to be a special one, way up at Ugweno in the Pare Mountains.

 The kids, especially the girls see this time as an opportunity to be dressed in the best finery of their lives! This of course is at great expense to the families involved and the churches try to dissuade the practice - but with only limited success.

It is a point of pride for the families as well and I guess the families could use the amount spent on other things. Just a little of Life in Africa I guess.

The other point of pride for many Tanzanians is their house cow. Here is Mbise's mother with her cow and his father looks on.

A good number of the house cows are zero grazed, which means food is brought to them, rather that allow them to graze in the villages. This cause a very real commitment because hand catting and carrying fodder is a big job. Kids are co-opted to help but imagine, you cut the fodder (very often simply on roadside and unused areas) near your house and as the season goes on they have to go further and further to find feed.

 One particular Maasai boma housed young Neema (her school name) seen here on the right. Because she showed interest and skill in the seminar and with the school plantings, her father appointed her in charge of the boma and farm plantings. She did very well.

Valeska is an interesting village in that there are a number of tribes there and at least from my point of view, I enjoyed the diversity.

The girl in black was explaining to us that she had passed well in the national examinations, but her father was not interested in her going to secondary school. In this case it was not a question of money, he simply did not see value in secondary education for her.

These are issues apparent in Tanzania, but not only Tanzania, and while I have great sympathy for the girl, I would not do anything against the wishes of her father.

This Mama asked me to take her photo, and I gave her a copy.

She is the mother of Neema and had a sense of humour that I could identify with.

The picture tells its own story.

 

 With Mt. Meru in the background the church leaders came out to open a new parish just beyond the Leguruki village.
It is certainly a spectacle to see the leaders dressed in their regalia.
I enjoyed the opportunity to witness the event which is quite close to the home of the Bishop.

Ngabobo Primary School

The village of Ngabobo is more remote. After passing by the Ngarenanyuki Secondary School, there is a road to the right, just before the high bridge. This road eventually reaches Sanya Juu [after going past Ilkirimuni] but way before Ilkirimuni there is a junction in the road heading North. This is the road to take to Ngabobo.

In our early days there, there was a police post at the road junction. Just a little wooden banda in the shelter of some Acacia trees. The reason for the banda was because the road went on to Kenya. A smuggling route. Apparently vehicles stolen in Tanzania made their was through here to Kenya - I suspect other smuggled goods too, probably both ways.

The police abandoned the post at some time - I think the police came from Sanya Juu - there was no accommodation here and I bet the cop/cops on duty were quite vulnerable - and gradually the building materials disappeared into some Maasai hut or other.

Ngabobo seemed to have a reputation,at least among school teachers. To be posted to Ngabobo was about the worst low-light of a teacher's career!

Ngabobo is a Maasai village established in a dry savanna area. There was a water race that we needed to cross to drive into the school, situated in the North of the village. The water is high in salts and cannot be used for drinking. There was a problem with drinking/household water and women made the long trek to the spring at Ngarenanyuki.

On our arrival at the primary school, we found that the building were ramshackled and there were few teaching resources.

No wonder the students did not perform well - poor resources, unmotivated teachers and parents who mainly did not see the value of education.

We were able to bring a few resources to the school and the National Parks authority rebuilt the school to a high standard.

The Headteacher lived on the outskirts of Olkung'wado, so he had a long journey daily. Later he had a bicycle.

As well as a planting programme, for which we supplied the trees, the Headteacher and the environmental teacher requested materials for a tree nursery. 

We had some reservation but decided to assist and teach the pupils how to manage a tree nursery.

Results were mixed. The worst was holidays and weekends when livestock passed through the school grounds damaging the nursery and tree plantings. The water race was some distance from the nursery so watering was not quite what it should have been either. 

We do not only plant seeds in pots - we plant them in brains as well.

Outside the new school block funded by the National Parks Authority, the pupils pose for a picture after a short seminar and inspection of plantings.

The Headteacher said they did/had not earned the prizes we had brought, but we found a way to hand them out.

We held a small competition among all the schools of the Ngarenanyuki area 'for the best work for the environment.' While Ngabobo were nowhere near some of the other schools in their achievement, I none the less had a soft spot for the pupils.

So we gave a football and a netball. The thrill of such gifts does not last long because thorns are everywhere in the savanna and there is no way of repairing damaged balls.

During the food shortage, we had some much food - beans and maize - to deliver that I hired a larger truck to assist with the cartage. 

For the uninitiated, it is daunting going to depots to negotiate for trucks! The guy we hired was really good and the deliveries went without untoward incident.

We always delivered food to the schools so the village authorities did not need to become involved. Food delivered through the village authorities tends to go in different directions.

There was a cholera outbreak at the time we were delivering the food to Ngabobo. This was possibly cause by a lack of household toilets and that was addressed shortly after.

Instead we delivered the food to the Lutheran church and that went well.

One young boy could not understand how he had missed out in the food - his siblings were given his share for the family. In the big truck there was some spillage so he andI gathered it up and he went off happily.

There was a water pipe to the area but over the years it had become almost useless. This was due to various damage including to irrigate some crops neared Olkung'wado.

We had some small amount of funds and were able to rehabilitate the line. The repairs could only be termed 'temporary' but at least in the meantime there was good water in the village. And the village people have the responsibility to guard their resource. 

Beyond Ngabobo, there is another small Maasai village called Ngareiani. 

The Pastor took us there because he wanted us to help them, but it was too late in our assignment to take on another task.

But look at the name. Iani - the village is called after the man Ian, who was a settler/farmer there in the past. So that is two village called after him (if it is just the one man, which is likely). 

I wonder who he is/was?