A Big Thank You to Good Sam's and My Mum and Da

Two weekends ago, I went to the post office to have an incredible surprise waiting.  Two packages chock full of donations and supplies for my school.  Now allow me to explain a wee bit.  My wonderful mum and fantastic da have been spreading the word about the needs of my school to people they work with and their many incredible friends.  The amount of rallying has been astounding.  The boxes that I got were full of supplies.  When I emptied out the boxes onto the bed at my hotel, it took up quite a bit of space.  Colored pencils, books, National Geographics (which I enjoyed in particular because they’re not only good for the students, but I get to enjoy awesome reading material too!), candy, pencils, a mount-on-the-wall-or-table big pencil sharpener, erasers, flashcards, chalk, playing cards, stickers, postcards, puzzles, crayons, and then stuff for me (yay for quick meals, canned chicken and wondrous cliff bars!).  

The boxes full of goodies from my parents, the great people at Good Sam's, and my dad's school.

I was blown away and super excited to show my students and the staff the wonderful things that people were kind enough to send.  When I showed my school, I tried to get a student to videotape it, but he kept pressing the button on my camera so they’re only 5-second splits.  But there were enough pencils to give every single student one.  The excitement was tangible as I tossed pencils across the classrooms at my students (I guess I didn’t need to throw them, but frankly, it made passing out 120+ pencils a hell of a lot more fun for me).  The new pencil sharpener is something that none of my students have used before, so it’s been kind of entertaining to show them how to use it.  Their excited faces at seeing a sharp pencil (that they didn’t have to spend several minutes sharpening with a razor blade) has been quite the awesome distraction in the staff room for me.

            The supplies are now all in the school’s possession, and I’ve seen students around the village and at school clutching the books.  The other day, when my awesome kids finished a reading assignment early, I brought out some of the National Geographics (which are all from 2007 or 2008, but that doesn’t matter in the slightest, they’re still interesting).  I was laughing pretty hard when one group kept calling me over, asking me what things are.  Literally every three minutes, they would raise a hand and say loudly “Madam!  Njoo.”  Pictures of Israel (trying to explain in only a few, simple sentences about Israelis and Palestinians is kind of hard), China right before the Olympics, modern-day Celtic culture, coal country on the U.S. East Coast, Untouchable women helping supply their communities with health service in rural India…life from all around the world.  The students pretty much just looked at the pictures and the maps, but it was fun to see their faces excited at seeing something different.  In all reality, seeing the world outside of Tanzania is something that most of them won’t do in person, but if they can be exposed to a little bit more, I think they’ll be better in the long run. 

            Overall, my students and the staff at my school are incredibly grateful for all of the gifts.  When I busted out the colored pencils, it was a wee bit difficult to get all of them back at the end of the period.  Thank you so much to everyone who contributed and has helped my school.  I’m incredibly touched and my school is quite excited at the kindness you’ve all shown us.  Thank you again.

I videotaped my students saying thank you, but the internet is being incredibly slow and irritating, so I was only able to upload 2 of the 6 we made.  Here are two of them, and I will continue to try to get the other videos to load in the future.  Until then, enjoy seeing my students say thank you.

My form 2 class.  One of the kids said "And God bless you" close to me, which made me laugh a little in the video, but you can't hear him saying it.

My form 3 class.