Dan and Sue in Tanzania: Vintons at Madisi

We stayed with Steve and Susan at their home in Madisi with their two sons. Village Schools Tanzania is run by a Tanzanian and Godfrey and Steve travel all over southwest Tanznania visiting schools, meeting with government officials, and recruiting teachers much of the time. The school at Madisi is one of their first and is where the Vinton’s and Sarah Bickel live. Sarah coordinates all the volunteers that come to the schools to help teach English and other subjects and trains them for going to their villages. The school buildings and teacher homes are all made by the people in the village and are now all wired for lights from a generator. Students come to school at night to study because it gets dark about 6:30 here near the equator and most would not have good lighting options at home.
Susan teaches English at Madisi and they stress learning English well early because it is the language of instruction in secondary school. The VST schools all ranked very well in recent national exams for Form II (second year) students, clustered in the top 100 schools out of 570 in the Southern Highlands zone. This is remarkable for a school that accepts all students in a small village that competes against top schools that select top students from all over Tanzania. It is an example of the students in the villages working harder because they appreciate the opportunity to go to school so much more. The results were posted on a class room door and we would see students coming up at night to check the results. They are very proud of their school and accomplishments.

Posted school exam rankings (note highlighted VST schools at top) and reminder to speak English that is on every class room door.

The students at VST schools work as well as study.

Susan Vinton, Sue, and Sarah Bickel with Natural Forest behind them. The school is on the other side of the forest at the top of a hill. This was one of the better stretches of road in Madisi.

Sue helped organize the medications that Susan keeps to help the village.

The Vintons live as Tanzanians which means cooking mostly over charcoal, pasteurizing your own milk, home made yougart, roasting your own coffee beans, and using your village resources efficiently. Some villagers whould help out at the home during the day when Susan was teaching.