Education
Samaritan Education Center, Chamazi, Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
October/November 2020.
Travelling makes us dream. Not only for the beautiful landscapes we discover, but also for the people we meet on our journey. It’s those encounters that transform us and offer us new ways of seeing things. It’s these moments of humanity that give the experience a meaning.
As explained during the description of our project, we packed for a world tour, but humanitarian above all. We want to get as close as possible to the locals to learn from our differences. It is often through volunteering missions that we find opportunities to bring our vision to fruition. In addition, we could not imagine our trip without passing through Africa. The continent is often overlooked by world travellers, but since the creation of our project, it is the one that attracts us the most ... Why? Because we don't often hear about it, except for its recurring conflicts and its high rate of poverty and illiteracy. In terms of evolution, we live very differently and we know that it is precisely from this continent that we can get the most enriched. Plus, we could not see the humanitarian dimension of our trip without an educational experience. Indeed, education holds an important place in our hearts. Not because we are planning to become school teachers, but because we believe that is the key for a lot of things. We had the chance to share a few weeks with Emmanuel and his family for his educational project in Tanzania: Samaritan Education Center.
Contents
Samaritan Education Center
Samaritan Education Center is an NGO that aims to educate children from low-income families in the community of Chamazi.
This village of 140,000 inhabitants with 50% of them children, is located in the south of Dar Es Salaam, in a district called Temeke. This community has only two public schools, each supporting around 2,000 children. We let you do the math to count the out-of-school children... Other obstacles to education are the lack of available teachers who can have more than 100 students per class, as well as uninterested parents, who themselves did not have access to education. Important note, in the event of dropping out or failing at school, the student is removed from the Tanzanian educational system. So, there is absolutely no room for error ...
Motivated by the large number of children and adolescents who spent (and are spending…) their time in the street instead of being at school, Emmanuel (28) founded the charitable project “Samaritan Education Center” in 2018 so that disadvantaged children could go to school for free in the afternoon and improve their living conditions.
The same year, Emmanuel also created a nursery school.
The structure welcomes children from 3 to 6 years old for lessons from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. and can take care of them until 4 p.m. This center operates only through volunteers’ financial contributions: rent, teachers' salaries and 2 meals per day for each child. Emmanuel's association receives no financial assistance from the government.
To date, over 300 disadvantaged children have benefited from the Samaritan Education Center, and 65 of them are now in primary school thanks to it. More than 100 volunteers visited the center and shared their knowledge with the children. Emmanuel believes in their involvement and in cultural exchange to motivate children to see other horizons and seize opportunities.
Local life
So here we are in the village of Chamazi, where we are very kindly welcomed by Emmanuel, his wife Happy, and his daughter Britty.
We arrive with 12 kg of school supplies for the children (thank you Cora Messancy!): colored pencils, markers, papers, pens, bags…
We have a spacious bedroom, with fan, bed and a mosquito net. We don't need more to feel good.
The shared bathroom is small and the daily shower is a “bucket” one, as we call it here. Basically, you pour the bucket of cold water over your head. Well, we need a little time to stop resisting the experience, but let's say that Asia had previously prepared us both. As for the toilets, it’s “Turkish style”! A small bucket to flush the toilet and voilà! Charming. Here is the same, we need a little time to adapt, but we get used to it.
We are already happy to have clear water, which they have to buy and collect every day in the village with a cart and their buckets. It is only like this that we can have water for our everyday’s life (shower, dishes, laundry, cooking). Hygiene is still rudimentary compared to what we know. Little cockroaches roam around the house and our feet are always dirty because we have to take off the shoes inside ... But this will make us enjoy the comfort of our home even more! Let’s not forget how lucky we are. As for the rest of the house, there are other rooms for the volunteers and the family, and a living room with a few chairs, two small plastic tables, and a TV. Simple, but enough. This is where we share our meals together every day.
Sharing our days and nights with this family gives us the chance to live like locals. Happy doesn't ask for any help with the housework, but we want to participate. Having 5 volunteers at home every day is a lot of work…
She gives us cooking lessons every night and she is happy to share her knowledge.
The meals are repetitive but quite good. Again, simple but enough. We also relieve Happy from time to time with the dishes. And we also do our laundry like locals.
Happy makes it all fun. She carries her name so well: she is the light of the house with her big smile. She's always up for a joke, never moaning and never expecting anything.
As far as community life is concerned, we are rather accompanied by Emmanuel, who is always there to help us at school and teach.
Weekly routine
Our daily routine is as follow:
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8:15: Wake-up call
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8:30: Breakfast (chapatis, beignets or bread depending on the days, and a good cup of spicy tea)
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8:55: Departure for the morning school
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9:00 - 12:30: Class with the young children, aged 3 to 6 (about 10 children), including a small break (tea time) at 10:30
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13:30: Lunch
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14:00 - 15:30: Preparation of the activities
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15:30 - 16:00: Rest
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16:10 - 18:00: Class with the older children, aged 7 to 14 (between 30 and 40 children)
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18:00 - 19:00: Games with the kids in the streets
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19:30: Cooking
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20:30: Dinner
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22:30: Sleep
Mondays and Tuesdays are the days dedicated to maths, Wednesdays and Thursdays to English and Fridays to sport and outside activities. Week-ends are free.
First impressions
In addition to the adaptation required from a different way of life (heat, food, hygiene, etc.), the first two days at school are quite complicated. We spend this time trying to acclimate ourselves, observing the students and the educational process. We don't feel very useful. Let's face it, it's a bit of a jungle in there: the children scream, run, jump… we don't know where to look!
We are far from what we are used to, and it's tiring to just even watch! Our schools look like military service next to theirs. Also, although we are a little ashamed to admit it, let's be honest, our first thought was, "how beautiful are those kids, but how dirty they are!" On the other hand, they are so happy and they share it really well. We get caught up in the game, we let them jump around our necks and climb on us. We challenge you to resist it!
The first two evenings, we fall asleep like babies. Being called upon by "Teacher Maria" and "Teacher Simba" (we'll let you guess who is who) every second of the day is TI-RING.
We are also kindly welcomed in the village of Chamazi. People shout us “jambo!” (hello how are you?) everywhere, to which we MUST answer “poa” (fine), if we do not want to spend an hour each day learning Swahili in the street.
Adaptation
After our 2-day observation phase, we spend the weekend thinking about what we can bring to these children. Whether in the morning or in the afternoon, it is really difficult to establish a regular program and to maintain a structure for all the pupils, their level being very heterogeneous. Indeed, a 7-year-old will not have the same abilities than a 14-year-old ... If the atmosphere is crazy, the course and what they learn on the other hand are quite academic. Children learn the alphabet and numbers up to 10 every day, repeating all together after the teacher or a pupil at the board, or by following dots in their notebooks ...
We can see that this is not so understood, despite the repetition of the exercise. Children are having more fun yelling after the teacher than actually learning. Therefore, to facilitate and diversify the learning of numbers and letters, we implement activities, such as coded coloring. and other more advanced exercises.
The children are delighted, having for only property a notebook and (sometimes) a bag. The school does not lend more than a pencil to each student during each class, so colored pencils bring them some cheerfulness!
For sports lessons, we introduce them to some games such as “1,2,3 soleil”, “le béret”, “le relais”, “la passe à 10”, among others…
Here again, it is a real moment of sharing. We feel that they are happy to do new activities. In return, we find ourselves swinging our hips like Africans in the middle of circles of children and playing soccer with them. Well, we still have a lot to learn…!
What about the future?
We share a lot of conversations with Emmanuel who has a lot of dreams for his community. He would like to buy his own land to build a school on, where he could create different grade classes. Since the children walk to school, and the new building would be 4km from the village, he would rent a minibus that would make the round trip every day. Buying would allow him not to pour his money into rent, but because of Covid, his dreams fell apart. Since their income is only made up of a contribution of $10/day/volunteer and travel has been suspended, the family has not been able to host any volunteers since March 2020. Before that, they had about 2 to 4 volunteers per day, and 30 students attending classes each morning. Children's motivation has dropped considerably since then. Now, there are only 10 in the morning class. Chamazi's families and children are left doubtful...!
If you want to contribute to Emmanuel's project and support the community and children of Chamazi, you can contact us directly to make a donation to them. The funds will be used for the purchase of school supplies, the daily meals for the children at lunchtime, the salaries of the teachers, the rental of the building used to teach, and the daily life of this Tanzanian family.
We leave enriched by this experience. We found what we travel for: an authentic experience in a local Tanzanian family. We also feel lucky to have received so much love in such a short time from the children. They got attached to us, but we got attached to them. Some goodbyes are harder than others, especially with our favourite ones.
We remained in awe of so much simplicity and happiness. Children run in the streets and play with nothing, far from the technology without which we can no longer live normally in our developed world.
We would like to thank Emmanuel and Happy very much for this chapter of our humanitarian world tour. We will remember it.
Food for thoughts
As said above, education holds an important place for us, because we believe it is essential to create a fairer world.
But in our opinion, there are two types of education. There is the one that can be used for the bigger picture to solve problems such as poverty, famine, global warming, health, conflicts ... And then there is a biased education, which manipulates and imposes a way of thinking or living, pretexting it is superior: conception of happiness, wealth, success and place of religion...
This biased education creeps in everywhere, regardless of the country, and we regret that it influences a more than essential tool to achieve peace and respect for each other's differences. For example, in Western schools, when the curricula imply a superiority resulting from the colonial period. In our Western media, when the news focuses on the more developed countries and only on the negative aspects of the developing countries. In our societies, when manual and creative jobs are undervalued, although essential. In our cultures, when we are conditioned to fit into the “norm”... For example, in Tanzania, it is illegal to be able to love a person of the same sex and for the moment impossible to establish a real democracy. And when we realize what was indirectly imposed on us when growing up, we also realize that no human, system, country or culture possesses the absolute truth. We are all equal, superiority is just an illusion and it's all about perspective.
And you who read us, what do you think? Are you always the master of your ideas?
This is why it is so important for us to see what is really going on behind our borders... Because educating ourselves never stops to be able to find our own truth.