Bethany May 2007 Report

Twelve months on, once again I (John Brindle) found myself cocooned in a mosquito net lying on a bed with just a sheet covering me. I was seventy miles south of the equator in the village of Yitwimila where the Bethany Family orphanage is based. As I lay there listening to the noises of the African night, frogs croaking crickets rubbing their back legs together cows munching on the grass the sound of music in the distance and of course the high pitched buzz from the mosquito trying it’s very best to feed on me. This time I have arrived with a group of students and staff who want to make a difference, here is what they achieved.

On 30 April 2007 three teachers and five students set off from Accrington & Rossendale College on a journey of a life time, which would take them on minibuses, a Land Cruiser and 3 flights to the shores of Lake Victoria in Tanzania, Africa. The aim was to set up a teaching programme, build bookshelves, bunk beds, single beds and complete maintenance at the Bethany Family Orphanage built and maintained from money raised locally in East Lancashire.

An English Teacher from an East London school joined three female students and a member of staff from the Care and Health team to set up the school, teach lessons and prepare three residents at the orphanage to continue with the work initiated. These three Tanzanian girls will be attending Accrington & Rossendale College in September and will study childcare. They showed great potential and will prove to be an asset for Tanzanian society once they are experienced and qualified.

As for the students from the college, there were two level 3 Child Care students and one Level 3 Care student who are all in their final year and preparing for working in schools, nurseries and special needs care work. Zoe, Beani and Becky knew each other but had never shared the same bedroom and work experience. They worked exceptionally well together; managing preschool sessions and teaching English as a second language. They gained valuable life and work experience, which will prepare them for future employment. They proved to be independent, reliable and motivated young people who took on additional responsibilities and worked as valuable members of the teaching team.

Two hours of preschool and five hours teaching sessions were carried out most days. This included English preparation classes for the five young men and three young women who will be spending twelve months in England to learn construction trades and childcare. The final session was an activity for them to prepare a presentation of five minutes on a topic of their choice. All students performed very well and individual assessments were made. Three hours were used to teach English to Standards 1 to 7 in rotation and these were children who, that same day, had already spent at least four hours in the local primary and secondary schools. Primary school children walked for about two miles to and from their school, which was a crumbling site of unfinished building, which looked as if they would fall down if leant on. In the school the children sat on stones, concrete floor or four to a desk if there were desks in the classroom. It was remarkable how neat their handwriting was.

However, the children were all happy with smiling faces and cheery expressions. They were all eager to learn and enjoyed their classroom at Bethany. They did reading and writing and enjoyed drawing and colouring. Although the accommodation and food was very basic at Bethany the children were all very well looked after and many of the young children enjoyed looking after their younger ‘siblings’. Girls of six or seven carried babies around on their backs using kangas to support the babies. They took pride in their maternal skills and enjoyed playing and talking to the babies in Swahili.

It was necessary to clean out the classroom before any teaching could take place. There were three long tables and benches for the children to sit on, but it had been used as storage for a pram, clothes and shoes as well as for books and exercise books. Cockroaches and spiders with the occasional lizard, which ventured indoors needed to be swept away. Three hundred new reading books were bought for the children in English and Swahili from money raised at a school in East London. These books were very much appreciated by the children because they were written by Africans for African children and were stories, which the children could relate to them. These books were avidly read by all the children including young adult boys as well as girls, which seem to be an impossible task for children and young people here in England where books often are left unread in place of computers and play stations.

The young women learnt how to plan lessons and teach in small groups. They worked as a team and shared experience and information with each other. New games were taught to the children, new songs were sung and stories were read. The classroom was used for sessions every day and children were also taught in small groups in the dining hall by the Accrington students and the 3 prospective students from Tanzania. These six young women worked very well together as a team. They were calm, reliable and mature and showed excellent potential as childcare workers and teachers. They were proactive and also followed instructions carefully. Their tutor from Accrington – Pat Bridge who gave individual support and guidance, supervised the sessions.

Reports were written for every child showing the progress, which they made as well as recommendations for further support or transfer to higher standards. Lesson plans were written following a recommended teaching format so that the older girls could follow this and develop further plans. It was recommended that the three young women should teach the children at least two hours every day. The standards should be rotated so that all would be taught each week and that the young people should prepare for their studies in England by read, writing and discussing topics in English.

Three male students and a staff member of the construction department made up the other half of the team. Martin and Sean, who are second and first year carpentry and joinery along with Tony from plumbing, they worked along side the 5 young Tanzanian boys who will be attending trade courses in construction at College from September. With an extensive building program going on our part in this was to complete finishing work on the 2 new buildings going up at Bethany; one building will be used by the Tanzanian co-ordinator and his family, while the other building is to be multi-purpose. This building will be used for volunteer accommodation, classrooms or over spill from other dormitories.

When we arrived the building work was still on going and we had to re-evaluate just what we could accomplish. Tony who was there to complete the plumbing work on both buildings found that because the rendering work was incomplete he could only start to lay out the falls for the main drains and supervise the work digging them out. All the drains leading from the buildings and the connecting pipe work were put in place. As well as doing this Tony, who took along Mwita, one of the Tanzanian boys, to work with him and made himself very useful by doing maintenance work on the plumbing in the girls and boys dormitories, the old clinic/accommodation block and helped with anything else that needed doing. Tony also broke all records for consuming scones the norm is 2 scones but it’s true to say he finished up with the title of Tony 5 scones.

Our day started at 7-30 am with a look at what we had to do. Our first problem was that the multi- purpose machine would not run so, rather than waste time on messing with it, we worked on with what we had. Martin took charge of putting in emergency openers in the bedroom windows of both buildings with Andrea working with him. We also demonstrated to the Tanzanian joiners how to fit chevron bracing into the truss roof space to give it lateral strength. We only needed to do one and then they took over and completed that task. Sean along with the remaining 3 Tanzanian boys and me started to set out and manufacture the 12 bunk beds.

In the 11 days we completed manufacturing 12 bunk beds, 12 single beds that will turn into 6 double beds, 5 shower stillages, 4 kitchen base units, 4 shelving units, emergency windows, doors in manager’s house and repairs to old bunk beds. Days were long, we worked through the heat of the day (temp 30/33 degrees) till 6pm in the evening, lunch could arrive at anytime from 12-30am to 2pm.

Food was mainly rice and beans, rice and cabbage or just boiled potatoes with bread and jam for breakfast tea and cordial to drink. You need plenty of fluids or you became dehydrated.

Martin and Sean soon got into life at Bethany making friends with everyone and were invited to play for the Bethany football team against the local village and helped them to a 6-2 win both lads scoring 2 goals each and managed to dodge the cows that were grazing on the pitch. They helped Bethany to 2 wins out of 2.

My last day of this trip at Bethany, 5am found me listening to the awakening dawn, the gentle rustle of the breeze through the acacia trees and the quiet murmur of voices as people started to rise and begin their day. Being a Sunday it was a slower start then normal. I joined Graham at the usual time of 6am for my first cup of coffee and scones, waited to see the sun rise over the distant hills of the Serengeti, this is one of the best parts of the day, one minute the clouds in the sky are glowing red and within minutes the sun is full up and the heat of the day was upon us. Slowly everybody gathered for breakfast, I’d managed to finish my 3^rd cup of coffee. Everyone made an effort to dress in decent clothes for the Sunday service. Children had decorated the dining room with colourful kangas and garlands of branches with blossoms hanging from the rafters.  Colour and noise filled the room, then the choir start to sing and the songs they sang came from the heart and this was transmitted through the joy in their faces and the rhythm in their dance.(More than once over the last 2 weeks I’ve turned off the generator and the air was filled with the sound of singing drifting over all the compound). Andrea gave the reading in both Swahili and English, the service ended with everyone singing and filing out of the dining room, forming a line and shaking hands and greeting each other. Surprise for dinner, the cooks had gone out of their way to give us chips for dinner which we devoured with relish.

Sunday afternoon saw us fill the Land cruiser with 2 large bags of maize, 8 small boys and the male members of the team, for a trip to Bunda, a Tanzanian orphanage about 50 miles away on the very worse road I’ve ever travelled on. We passed trucks and buses that had broken down, I have never seen ruts in the road, the size you could hide a small child in. I was not prepared for what I witnessed on our arrival at Bunda, I imagined all orphanages to be like Bethany, sadly I found out they are not. The building was very small and in need of repair and the children were not the happy smiling children of Bethany and when they sang for us there was no joy in their voices. Looking round the orphanage you could not help but compare it to Bethany, instead of each child having their own bed, I looked in the boys’ room which was about 12 feet by 12 feet and saw what looked like a dog blanket that 11 boys sleep on and that would be the same for the girls. We left the 2 bags of maize that had been kindly donated, at least they will have food, the young boys from Bethany had been given sweets to hand out to the children at the orphanage which was very moving to see. No one should live like this! Back on the main road, which happens to be the only one that has tarmac, we stopped off at a shop and all of us enjoyed our first bottle of soda in 2 weeks. To see the joy on the faces of our young friends when they reached up and started drinking their sodas was worth ten times the amount it had cost. Night arrives very early and very quickly, with no ambient light, the night sky is full of stars and you can pick out the constellations easily. We all gathered in the dining room to say our good-byes to everyone, this is always a very hard thing to do but has to be done. Later whilst I sitting on the concrete steps quietly reflecting on the events of the day and, like always, children just appear and sit with you and either talk or just sit and hold on to you asking if or when you will return. I have never experienced the trust and friendship you receive from these, no one can deny these children a chance of a brighter future. I thank Accrington & Rossendale College for this first step in making their future brighter and I hope we can continue with what will be a fulfilling friendship.                       

• In conclusion, students and teachers alike experienced new issues and problems, which would prepare them for future work. They worked very well together as a team and took on higher level responsibilities and ultimately gained from their experiences.
   
• This trip was a complete success, we assessed all the young people that will be studying here from September and feel they will do well. I cannot praise our students enough, their attitude, manners and commitment to the work they were given was outstanding they can feel proud of their achievement and in the way they represented the college, themselves and the companies they work for. Finally I wish to thank everyone who helped to make this happen.

Finally, I just bought a bacon sandwich for the cost of £1.30p I felt guilty about spending that amount as it would feed a child for a day, so I put the same amount in the Bethany tin in the library.  

 Pat Bridge and John Brindle