First Week at Work

August 10th

My work with The Carpenter’s Kids program began this week. The Carpenter’s Kids is one of the Diocese of Central Tanganyika’s HIV programs. It is a partnership between the Diocese of New York and the Diocese of Central Tanganyika. (Tanzania was formed when Zanzibar—an archipelago off the east coast of Tanzania—joined with the mainland of Tanganyika in 1964).
The program involves linking up a parish in New York with a parish here in order to enable vulnerable children in DCT to attend primary school. Currently about 50 kids are chosen from each parish and 50 dollars a year per child buys school uniforms, school supplies and breakfast plus lunch on every school day —with a five year commitment. In Tanzania schools are free as long as a child has a uniform and the necessary supplies.
Last year, while I was teaching full time at Canon Andrea Mwaka School (CAMS), I became good friends with Miriam Plume who has been the Program Assistant for The Carpenter’s Kids since June 2006. Many Saturdays I would go to a parish outside of Dodoma town in order to participate in the distributions of uniforms and school supplies to children who have lost one or both parents to HIV or malaria. One Saturday early last spring I took five of my secondary students from CAMS out to a parish so they could see more about what The Carpenter’s Kids does. CAMS is an international school and many of the children are much better off economically than children living in villages outside of Dodoma. As is custom in Tanzania, greetings and encouraging words are always the flavor of the day. My students did a great job standing up in front of a hundred people and encouraging the kids to praise God, study hard, and listen to their teachers, (I think they threw that in for me). Anyway, they had a good time; seeing a side of their homeland that perhaps is sometimes easy for them to forget amongst television, the internet cafe and hanging out with friends.
I am still teaching three mornings a week at CAMS. When I first began teaching here last year and living in a nice apartment, fully furnished with running water I felt cheated. This was not the Real African Experience I was looking for. I wanted to live in a village, where I’d pick beans, milk cows and fetch water. But as my 10th grade kids reminded me yesterday---too often people who have never been to Africa have the wrong idea. “All you see on TV. is starving babies and poor people.” And of course they are right. Africa is not just a continent of starving children and war-torn nations. It seems that in the US that is all we hear about. Rarely is there a headline telling of a new school being built, or that literacy is rising in such and such a country, or that Tanzania is a peaceful place, welcoming to tourists who want to see wildlife or climb Mount Kilimanjaro. Then again most of my students at CAMS have had a different experience than those we are supporting through The Carpenter’s Kids.
But they are both Tanzanian. And they both represent the real Africa. At least for today.