Mikuuni Primary School: Classrooms and Rainwater Harvesting

The normal routine here in Arusha is to spend the first six months of the year in frantic building activity which eases off in the second six months. The latter part of the year is mostly used for Capacity building and the general administration and development of the Foundation.

Today I was travelling with Tim Carr from the US who has come to help with a new technique of roof construction we headed out to the Eastern schools to start work. First we went to Mikuuni Primary School where we are about to restore two classrooms build a veranda and install a rain water harvesting system with a 40,000 litre water tank. If funds are available we will be completing a teachers house which will be used by volunteers, trainers and guests. As well as this there is still a fair bit of landscaping work and tree planting.

We were met by Marcelina Mrukwanba the head teacher who was very happy to see us as we had just succeeded in getting one of her teachers transferred . He had been disrupting the function of the school for more than two years and now it seems that peace is being restored. While the builder was working out the specifications of his work we sat and talked with the teachers and the village leaders. I explained that we were taking a new approach to the adopted schools which required us to chair the school board and take a much more active roll in school administration. I was surprised that everyone welcomed the idea and in fact were enthusiastic about it. I had expected some worries about loosing control but if there were any they were not apparent.

There had been a lot of political problems in this school. Where most schools serve only one village this school serves two and there is often conflict between them. It is often hard to get the villagers to help with the work in the schools as they don’t want to work together and are jealous that they may do more work than the rival village. For months I had been explaining that this was not a village matter it was a school matter and they should put aside their differences for the benefit of their children.

This seems to have worked and there has been assistance with the recent landscaping work and with the continued digging of the drain to carry away flood water. The drain is a village job and I have been on their back for 9 months to finish it. This time I said there was no way we would start on the current work until the drain was finished and if there were further delays I’d take the funding elsewhere..

This put the wind up them as I had just done that with the Mareu Health Centre nearby that had been presenting a lot of problems. They gave the usual excuses but I said I had been hearing them for nine months and that was long enough. Now I think they will get the job done.

It is not always that we leave a school with a positive attitude but today this was the case with Mikuuni. It feels good to be making progress.