Londo Primary School

Monday 27 May 2013
Londo Primary School

I slept late this morning waking at 0800 for breakfast.  I do not believe they have ever had a guest with as strange a diet as mine.  The kitchen staff has been very accommodating on my protein and vegetable diet.  Each meal has consisted of free range chicken egg omelets, usually with onions, tomatoes and carrots.  The omelet is accompanied with a side dish of sautéed pumpkin leaves at every meal except two where the veggie was sautéed cabbage and this evening, okra in a tomato sauce (very delicious) with a whole cucumber.  Sometimes a meat is served, small bits of chicken or beef.  A bottle of water is included in every meal.  

After breakfast, I mentioned to the kitchen staff I would be eating in the village for lunch.  Riding sister Mech`s bicycle into town, I passed a thatch roofed open walled hut with a pool table underneath.  I turned around approaching the hut.  Two Tanzanian`s were playing with 12 others sitting on homemade benches under the thatched roof watching the game of either 8 ball or 9 ball.  One asked me to join, pointing to the bench for me to sit and watch, probably the only one who spoke very little broken English.  After watching half a dozen games, the same asked if I knew how to play and if I wanted to play a few games.  Of course I said yes.  Their pool hall was within 30 feet of the dusty road with an occasional farm to market truck hauling plantains or rice.  During the hour I was there, 3 herds of cattle were being driven by a couple farmers toward the direction I had come from.  After winning 2 of 3 games, I gave them a TZS $1000.  The pool table was of a commercial type with a coin slot to drop the balls for each game. As I started walking away, not expecting any change, the English speaker approached me with my change of 800.  The total cost for 3 games had been 200 (13 cents US).

I had taken a few pictures during the primary school tour on Friday.  One of the teachers asked if she could have the photos for her class.  Without thinking, I asked if she had a memory stick or flash drive to load the digital files onto…Huh, what`s a memory stick? She asked.  The school of 442 has no water system or electricity.  Sister Mech and I rode our bikes to the next larger village and had found a place to print a photo from a photo shop.  The photo shop, being run by a generator with a computer so I could view which photo to print, had an electric photo printer capable of printing a maximum 5” by 7” quality photo for a cost of 5000 (US $3.00).  After hearing the cost, I only printed the best one photo.

I returned to the school this afternoon on my way back to the convent.  The school had already let out for the day.  Friday, the teachers (all female) had told me they lived in the small houses in the center of the school yard and for me to stop by anytime.  I was invited in teacher Gama`s house.  She was cooking dried beans and ugali.  Ugali is nothing more than a boiled paste of flour and water cooked until thickened.  In my trips through the villages, I have seen the ugali being scooped up in small amounts by hand then partially dipped into a vegetable or bean mixture, then eaten.  I politely declined her invitation to eat with her saying I had just eaten at the convent.  I had lied as my true reason for not eating was the high carbohydrates of the ugali.  The ugali was being cooked on a small coal burning stove on the concrete floor.  After removing the ugali from the fire, she excused herself to let the other teacher know a visitor had arrived.  Within a few minutes, teacher Maria appeared.  They were both very happy to see the photo sister Mech had taken of the two teachers and I in one of the classrooms.  Maria invited me to join her in tutoring several of her students in Swahili which began at that moment.  The three students were waiting as Maria and I arrived to the classroom.  

With English being taught in the Tanzanian school system, the majority of students are studying to become trilingual.  The students initially arrive at school knowing one of the 120 tribal languages and are then taught the national language Kiswahili and also English.  Between tutoring the 3 pupils in their Kiswahili, giving them writing assignments, Maria then would also tutor me with a vocabulary list and simple phrases of Kiswahili while the students quietly did their tasks.  As each student (2^nd and 3^rd grade) approached for their writing to be critiqued, Maria would stop with me and focus on the children.  We continued our tutoring lessons for an hour and a half until the sun set.  

With no light switches to turn on, the day ended as darkness approached.