Footsteps NZ-TZ: Ntuwe Primary School

There is a dirt road that goes from the King'ori village market area way down to The Maasai market area at Kolila which is on the main at the junction of the road into the airport. Between the Maasai market area and the other part of the (Meru) Kolila is a gravel pit that the Japanese established for various roading projects.

I tried to buy some gravel off them at one stage. There was fairly strict security and it was a bit of negotiation to get through to speak to one of the Japanese supervisors. He could not speak English or Kiswahili and I could not speak Japanese so I resorted to drawing pictures on my pad that I wanted to buy three truckloads of gravel. He was prepared to sell it, but the price was way higher than I could purchase from my usual spot in Arusha. Actually I was trying to get them to donate it because it was for a school building project but they were not interested in helping out in that way.

Perhaps two thirds the way up the road from Kolila is Ntuwe Primary School. We were not looking for another school to work with because were were actually over committed with many other small projects going on as well as my basic assignment.
The reason we went there was in response to a request from the Bishop (the Hon.) to research the food shortage in the Meru area. I have written about this in an early blog World Food Shortage? dated 6/6/08.
I will repeat some of it here in a precis form:
A woman from the Christmas Parish in the Meru part of Kolila hung herself because she could not bear to watch her children starve. In response to this the Bishop asked me to carry out a survey to ascertain the level of hunger within the DME. He chose me because I travelled around the area more that anyone else at the time - and I could fund it easily within my assignment.
I had been used to doing random sampling in forests to gather data and I used the same technique to sample schools.
I drafted a questionnaire and interviewed 35 pupils from each school in an even range of age groups with every second pupil a different sex to the previous pupil and I interviewed them - with Loti on their own in the cab of my truck. I sampled 20 of the schools over the whole area I worked [at the time].
This was a distressing thing for me as it turned out. First I found that 20% of the pupils over the whole area were missing school either because they had not the energy to walk to school, or they were looking after siblings while their parents went to distant parts looking for food - begging or from relatives.
I was shocked that I did recognize that there was a problem as I had been around these schools and was totally oblivious of the problem. Some children were even collapsing in class!
As the kids sat with me in the truck, the ginger tint in their hair and the dry skin around their mouths is a give away. Otherwise, is was difficult to tell they were hungry - certainly they were not emancipated like those you see on television.
On the day of the interview, none had anything for breakfast. On average they ate once every three days, and that meal was most usually a banana mixed in warm water and the ration was half a glass. Some of the kids would go for five days without food!
All told me of the pain in their stomachs and there were many painful stories of their families.

If you understand the problem from the picture I have painted here, think of the problems in the current drought of East Africa - to become emancipated like that, conditions are just so bad.
Anyone experiencing what I had found would try to do something about the situation, and I tried hard. Tanzania breweries provided a tonne of maize starch which I immediately distributed but for political reasons the government would not acknowledge there was a food shortage other aid agencies would not or could not provide funds.
One aid agency actually used my report and their NZ branch gave NZD100 000 but our schools saw not a penny of that! In the end MFAT (NZ) gave me an emergency grant of NZD10 000.
With that money we provided food (maize and beans) to fourteen schools using a method Loti and I developed to avoid any misuse of those funds.
It has to be recognised that corruption easily creeps in when aid is provided and it is very difficult to stamp out. There is much to say about this - but I leave it there.

Of the fourteen schools to receive food, Ntuwe was one of them.

We were aware of the whispers when we were carrying out the interviews that this mzungu might be able to bring food. I was very careful to point out that I would try to find help. but that my mission was one of finding out the scope of the problem.
Ntuwe is on in the green belt on Mt Meru, and looking at the vegetation, my first thought was that there should be no hunger there. But the kids told their story and I could see for myself that indeed there was a problem.

One tonne of maize starch between fourteen schools is not much and some families tried to make ugali rather than uji, the thin thinner porridge, sometime without success because they were unfamiliar with such a fine flour but it gave each child the first solid food they had taken for some time.
There was then the delay of us finding funds to provide more food and meantime, I was searching for a way to utilize spent grain from the brewery. I had an almost endless supply of the stuff offered to me, but the human stomach does not have the enzymes to utilize it. I searched for ways to do this and failed.

I had been able to purchase maize and beans from Mama Lilian, who had become a friend and neighbor at Sanawari (she was a friend of Mama Baraka). Mama Lilian was a dealer in bulk maize and beans and as her contribution to our project, she delivered the free to our house at Makumira.
My nursery workers and Mags measured out the family packs of food for the next days deliveries and I ferried it out daily to the schools involved. This was a fair way of delivering the food and on site we had some considerable organization to do to hand out the packs.
Polygamy or even broken relationships is something we had to deal with in many villages, so what we did was ask the oldest child in each household to stand in a row, them all other children 'living behind the same door' line up behind them. This way the food was distributed evenly.
Now some of the teachers had children at school, and the fact was that teachers were paid monthly and able to buy food, so did not need the assistance. This was somewhat difficult to manage so their kids recieved the food. Then occasionally a teacher would decide that he/she should also receive food. Usually they too would receive a parcel.
In some villages there were elderly lone people and sometimes handicapped, if they turned up and requested food, they too were given a parcel.

We managed, with the help of the teaching staff to carry out the food deliveries in an orderly fashion and at Ntuwe Primary School the kids were very happy with their parcels.

We were the only agency to supply food in the area at that time and I guess the school wanted to somehow reciprocate by supporting our environmental project. Therefore they asked if we could carry out a seminar and planting programme.

This we did when we found some time and the planting programme was successful as was the distribution of trees to each pupil to take home and plant on their farm. Some of the kids took great pride in their trees.