Digging for hope in Tanzania

By Hannah Richardson
BBC News education reporter

The children were very keen to practise their English

Helping to build a school for an African village is not a typical course of study for an English 16-year-old.

But this is exactly how 45 International Baccalaureate and AS-level students spent 10 unforgettable days in July.

While many of their teenage peers were enjoying summer holiday lie-ins, youngsters from Taunton's College in Southampton worked from 8.30am to 3.30pm in the hot Tanzanian sun.

They were helping to build classrooms at Msaranga Primary School in Moshi, about an hour's journey from the northern city of Arusha.

The college's Tanzanian project co-ordinator Dr Kerry Pringle said: "The school has 800 pupils in nine classrooms.

"So we went there to help build them another nine classrooms."

The pupils, and the six members of staff who accompanied them, travelled out every day to the school from the international boarding school where they were sleeping, on what became known as a "death bus".

The students formed a chain to pass building materials

"The students called it that because you could see the road through the bottom as it went along.

"It's the sort of vehicle that would have definitely failed its MOT here," said Dr Pringle.

Once at the school, they formed human chains and passed soil, rocks and other materials in metal trays from one end to the other in the red dust.

"They had absolutely no equipment and we were doing manual labour," said Dr Pringle.

"We said, 'Why don't you buy some wheelbarrows?' and they said, 'Wheelbarrows are expensive and they break, labour is much cheaper'.

"So we did everything by hand."

90 to a class

Wheelbarrows cost about the same in Tanzania as they do in England, she explained, at about £50, but on an average monthly salary of £4, they are far dearer for a Tanzanian.

"When the pupils came out for their breaks, they would help with the work too. That made me cry," she said.

Sixteen-year-old Maggie Callinan, one of the IB students who went on the trip, said even the smallest children in the school would come out and help.

"It was quite worrying in a way because we could be passing them heavy cement and you wondered if they could manage it."

She went on: "But the children were so excited when they saw us. They all wanted to talk to us and hold our hands.

"Most of them knew some English, which they had learnt at school. Some of them had really good English, I was quite surprised.

"Some of them would try to teach us Swahili words. These were mainly words like faster and slower that we could use as we worked."

The tools the students used were very basic

The fathers and mothers of the school children would come and work on the building project as well.

Dr Pringle said: "They really put us English to shame. They didn't take breaks or even stop for lunch, while we were pausing for water all the time."

By the end of their trip, the pupils had achieved half of the 100 hours needed for the creativity, action and service part of their IBs, but they left with much more than that.

Maggie says the trip made her realise how lucky she is and how much she takes for granted.

"The classrooms were very basic. They were concrete buildings with black boards at the front and there were quite a lot of children in them.

"That's why we were building the new classrooms so the classes could be separated out."

With such huge class sizes, one might expect behaviour to be a problem.

Everyone pitched in on the project, even the school children

But according to Dr Pringle, the children behaved beautifully because they really valued their education.

"Not all the teachers would turn up every day, but the children just sat there quietly and got on with their work.

"Their school uniforms were immaculate. It was their best outfit, sometimes the only outfit they had, except for rags.

"In Tanzania you can only go to school if you have shoes, so they all kept their shoes beautifully as well."

At the end of the trip, the students were so moved by the challenges faced by these Tanzanian families that they all left their shoes behind for them.