The Power of One
I know that I ask a lot of everyone, but I don’t have other outlets to reach a large audience of people who may be able to help out… so bear with me.
A little background… Before my work picked up in Uru, i volunteered at a local government school teaching class 7 English Monday to Friday. Class 7 (age 13 or 14) is the last year of primary school in Tanzania and all students take a national exam, that if they don’t pass, ends that child’s academic career. I spent the 2015 academic year working as hard as I could, using my proficiency in the Swahili language and my ability to connect with kids, to teach my class of 50 students as much English as possible for their exam. Public schools (which we call government schools here) typically have 1 teacher for every 60-80 students (I was lucky to only have 50 kids) and we had no textbooks or learning resources/materials. I had so many eager students who wanted to do well and my one hour 5 days a week with them wasn’t enough… so i told them (and any other students at the school) that every Sunday, rain or shine, I would be at the school ready to teach or provide extra tutorials for anyone who wanted to come. At the end of that year, all 50 of my students passed their national exam, mostly making As and Bs in English.
There were 14 exceptional students in my class who i knew would not be able to attend secondary school simply because they could not afford it… even public government schools are not free here (public schools require uniforms, various contributions etc and can cost up to $100-$200 a year for everything needed). I decided to not just pay for them to go to public schools but do them one better and find them sponsors to attend high quality private schools. These children joined the Neema International Education Sponsorship Program, and with the help of some incredible sponsors, these students are now in university chasing their dreams and on track to change the world. I have included a few pictures of them below!
In August 2023, Baraka and I moved out of Moshi to an area called USA river to live with my partner Chris. Across the street from our house is a local government school. When I first moved here, I told Chris and my family that I hope to maybe get involved with that school and volunteer some on the weekends or even assist during my days off. But life got so busy with commuting to and from Moshi, and I was always so tired and often busy even on the off days… so it never happened. Children in the village often see me walking the dogs and ask when I can come teach them English... it breaks my heart that there isn’t anyone else who is willing to volunteer their time here in the community.
Last Thursday night I went next door to give the cows who live there some fruit and veggie scraps… there are two girls who live there. They are 14 and 15 years old… Mariam and Brightness. They said “Auntie neema… tomorrow is a public holiday, we have no school. Can you come teach us?” I told them I would try. But I got tied up on Friday and never followed up. On Tuesday night this week, when I was out walking the dogs, I saw Mariam walking home from school with her friends. She greeted me and then told me again, “Auntie Neema, tomorrow there is a holiday and no school. Can you come teach us?” I told her this time that I had nothing planned for Wednesday, and I shouldn’t be busy and I would do my very best to come.
Yesterday morning I went for a run and came home exhausted. It was super hot and doing a 10k in this sun is no fun. But i came home, took a cold shower to wake myself up again, got on the computer and started to print documents that I had typed up of Swahili/English vocabulary and random worksheets I had compiled from teaching days. I went to get the girls and their faces lit up. We went across the street to the local school and used one of their classrooms to look at the materials together. The girls walk an hour each way to school. Rain or shine. Trekking through mud or sweating in the scorching heat. They say there are over 100 kids in their class. And their teacher just writes on the board all day, not really teaching or interacting with the students. Even in these conditions, Mariam and Brightness are some of the lucky ones.
72% of children in Tanzania stop going to school once they complete primary school, at the age of 13 or 14. So Mariam and Brightness are part of the 28% that are at least in secondary school. Of this 28%, only 3% will go on to any education after the age of 18. The other part that is a major issue and why these kids are all begging someone to teach them English— all government schools are taught in Swahili… the students will take a 45 minute class of English from 3rd to 7th grade for an hour a day only. But then secondary schools are all taught 100% in English. So imagine having only 5 hours a week of a language class for four years (taught by teachers who hardly speak the language they are “teaching”) and then all of a sudden you are expected to do FULL CLASSES in math, biology, physics, chemistry, history etc in this foreign language. That is the situation we face here in Tanzania. Private schools offer a better alternative, although they cost anywhere from $500-$2000 or so a year, making them inaccessible to most. Private schools have textbooks, smaller class sizes (30-40 per class) and the language of instruction is English, even at the primary school level— this gives these children a HUGE advantage for secondary school.
As I sat there talking with them and explaining pronouns and how we have subject-verb agreement in the English language, they were so focused on something that is pretty boring if you ask me… they were literally holding on to every word I said. Both girls are extremely intelligent and eager to learn. They recognize what life awaits them if they don’t get an education. 25% of girls under the age of 20 have begun childbearing in Tanzania. I gave the girls 2 dollars and told them to go to the little shop down the road to get themselves 2 notebooks each, one for notes and one for homework. I also gave them some notecards they could use to practice their vocabulary. I told them that we could continue this Sunday and to let me know what time would be good for them.
The girls immediately went over to sit on a makeshift bench by their house and started studying and trying to make English sentences… they were hunching over so they could put the paper on the bench to use it like a table. I told them they didn’t have to do it right away- they said they had to do it now because once it is dark, they have no electricity to see.
A few hours later, I went back over to their house because their cows were making a lot of noise and I wanted to see if the cows were ok. The girls’ grandma was there. She said the cows were crying because they were waiting for their grass. I waited there for a few minutes only to find Mariam coming back to the house muddy, sweaty and carrying a massive roll of grass on her head. You could see in her eyes she was tired. She is 14 years old and should be enjoying her childhood and studying and playing, not working in the fields and cleaning. I know this is the reality for the majority of children in the world, and the way I grew up was the exception.
What’s so strange is all of us who were fortunate enough to never suffer or want for anything material just assume everyone lives the way we do… we completely take it all for granted and have absolutely no idea how lucky we are. Even if we say we know how lucky we are, you can’t really grasp it… not until you live somewhere where you see it everyday or where many of the things that you took for granted are no longer in your life… for me here, I am still extraordinarily fortunate. But I don’t have air conditioning, a dish washer, a drying machine, tarmac roads— we don’t run out of water or electricity because we live by a river and Chris bought a pump and he put solar electricity on the house.. so those issues are solved… but without those, we would have minimal running water or electricity. And still, I have so much more than most…. So before you say, i really would like to help but I can’t afford it— every penny makes a difference. Don’t allow the fact that you can’t do something huge stop you from doing what you can do— more on this in my next post.
There are thousands of causes out there that you can support. And It’s not my place to tell you which cause is more or less worthy of your contribution. But I want to leave you with this. The larger the organization, the more overhead expenses and the more personnel. That means that your donation may not actually be going where you want it go or it may not be as effective as it would be at a smaller grassroots organization. In the same way that supporting local businesses or going to a farmers market directly impacts the individuals who are selling you the products, donating to a smaller organization directly benefits the community the are meant to support.
I have dozens of students like Mariam and Brightness in uru waiting for a chance to go to school but cannot afford it. I would like to help these girls and put them in boarding schools (which is the norm for anyone who can afford it because it allows the students to focus on school and be in a safe and stable environment ) but I have an obligation to get the neema students sponsored first. So if enough people step up, we can put all these kids in school. Please let me know if you may be interested in sponsoring a student to continue their education and to help keep them in school. My email is mandy@neemainternational.org if you are interested!