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Visits to TEAA Supported Schools
Ed Schmidt
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Henry Hamburger and I spent virtually the entire month of November in Africa, including three weeks in East Africa. Henry had been invited to give a paper at a conference in Kakamega, and the trip expanded to include me, 5 days in Senegal -- because neither of us had ever spent any time in West Africa -- and visits to 10 schools and one university that have received funds from TEAA or a TEAA member. We were interested to see how the funds had been used and to assess future funding possibilities. The ten schools were clustered around Lake Victoria, so we flew into and out of Kampala. We visited MacKay and Nkumba there, then traveled by land and lake in a counterclockwise direction around the lake, visiting four schools in Tanzania (Nyakato near Bukoba and Bwiru Boys, Bwiru Girls, and Nganza near Mwanza) and five in Kenya (Mukuyu and St. Mary's Mabera Girls near Migori and Bishop Atundo, Butonge, and Wamalwa Kijana near Bungoma). When we returned to Uganda, we spent a couple of days of R and R in Sipi Falls on the western slopes of Mount Elgon before returning to Kampala. Neither of us had been to that part of Tanzania. We enjoyed our time in Bukoba, a relatively small manageable place after Kampala. We stayed at a church-run guesthouse near the lake, dined at a couple of restaurants on the lakeside, and visited a museum exhibiting local traditional items and a fine collection of wildlife photographs. Two teachers from Nyakato conducted us on a tour of a village on the Kagera River where Idi Amin's air force had bombed a Catholic church and a bridge in 1978. The overnight ferry from Bukoba to Mwanza was another treat, and a quite comfortable one, too. There is something nostalgic about steaming across Lake Victoria in the dead of night. A rooster in third-class announced the impending dawn at first light. We flew South African Airways in order to get a nonstop flight from New York to Dakar, so we were routed through Johannesburg, where we rented a car and drove out to the Sterkfontein Cave, an important paleontological site. If you ever want to spend two hours in a rental car trying to find a hotel three miles from the airport, both Henry and I are experts! On our return we prepared a report on our school visits which was presented to members of the TEAA Steering Committee, the Grants Committee, and other interested individuals. Henry has posted photos from the trip on the web at http://cs.gmu.edu/~henryh/LVic/ , including my photo of Henry sipping the local brew from a recycled transmission fluid can. A few more photos are among those from school visits on the TEAA website. Just click on schools in the upper left. |