Waiting in Iringa

I didn’t realize how long it has been since we updated the blog. We had been waiting for a house to become available and I guess everyday life in Iringa seems pretty normal now and not blog worthy. In the mean time I have met with a couple other well drillers working in this part of Tanzania and learning about science curriculum for secondary schools. The diocese has textbooks for their 7 secondary schools and I have been checking those books to make sure they follow the approved Tanzanian curriculum that the students will be tested on. I also broke my string of 4 months total time in Africa without ever being sick. I am getting over a good old fashioned Minnesota chest cold so I still have never had a problem with food in Africa.
Sue and I have also been helping sort out the applications for students enrolled at Tumaini. They enroll about 1,000 students a year and accept many more than that because so many either go to other schools or cannot come up with school fees to attend. We were going through them pulling the ones that actually are enrolled. It is interesting to see all the names, I wish we saved a list but here are some common ones Happy, Happiness, Godlove, Godbless, Goodluck, Innocent, Job, Nimrod, SweetBertha, and many more interesting ones. The other surprising thing in the applications is how low the secondary school grades are, even for these students who are in University. The passing standards for Secondary School allow exam scores as low as 30% and students are allowed to fail at least two subjects. The majority of the students we saw had failed basic mathematics. I did not see the IT applications so I hope their results were much better in math.
The problem is the educational system starting right from primary school. There are so few teachers who are really proficient in math that the cycle perpetuates itself because students end up not liking math or science and do not see a good reason to study those subjects when the best opportunities they see are in Government or Business. I’ll learn a lot more when I start working with the students.