Update - 29th November 2006

It's been a few weeks since I last updated my blog. My only real excuse is the fact that it's so busy here at the end of term. There are a few toics that I want to update, such as about Joseph, the student who went missing, so I'll do that asap.

Right now I'm just sitting marvelling at how quickly this year has gone. Already it's the end of November which means I've been here for the best part of a year. The school term has less than two weeks left. Today, our school exams start which leaves only a couple of days of after-exam revision, marking exams, meeting parents and then a huge end of year celebration. If there is one thing that Tanzanians do, they can celebrate. We are expecting between 2000 and 3000 people at the school - parents, students, local supporters and whoever else manages to get past the gate. The last time there was such a celebration here - around two years ago - 1500 turned up though only 500 were invited. It will be a day of speeches, awards and a LOT of goat!

We're also getting ready for next year. On 11th December, 170 children will turn up to get their new uniforms. They are the lucky ones from at least 15,000 who turned up at the gates to do the Friday exam. Since September we have found around 200 who met the criteria of being very poor and of above average intelligence, but then some turned out to be be only one or neither of those, so it's been whittled down to 160. Our last testing will be this Friday and hopefully the result will be that we find the last ten children. It sounds like it shouldn't be a major feat to find a child that is both clever and very poor but it's exceptionally hard. Most children are poor and far too many are very poor but to find those very poor children who are really clever is so difficult. It may sound exceptionally picky to only target those clever children but if you understand that (a) we only have a very limited amount of places and hence we have to choose carefully because (b) the Tanzanian education system is very difficult so only the strong will survive. Remember, this is a sytem that will cull at least 80% of children before secondary school by making them sit two national exams in primary school. It is also a system that educates children in Swahili until they get to secondary/high school whereupon they must study in English. The odds are stacked against them. Therefore although it's hard to find very poor, ethical, hard-working and clever children among the Arusha population every year, it makes sense to me now.

So our end of year exams start today and after that we will have a couple of days of post-exam revision. Next week, we will be busy correcting exams, writing reports and meeting parents. And then we launch into final preparations for 2007 - uniforms, timetables, desks, chairs, finishing the building of new classrooms, covering books, fixing old broken desks, expanding the admin office etc etc. Thankfully, we have 11 Rotarians from Chinchilla, Qld here right now who (as I write at 6.30am) are building desks and chairs so the 170 children has something to sit and work on.

On that note, I guess I better do some work myself so I can head home to Ireland in two weeks time.

Mary : )