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Goshen College

On service in Kemgesi

March 12, 2017

We are starting our visits to students on service!

Ben and Lydia are in one of the remotest villages: Kemgesi is largely settled by Ngoreme people. It lies on a broad plain between distant hills.

Ben is teaching Physics and Math at the secondary school.  One of Mw. Nyerere’s strategies for uniting the 120+ tribes of Tanzania was to send students to secondary schools in different parts of the country from where they grew up.  Like many schools, Ben’s has a dormitory for boarding students.  But most students are “day scholars” from the local community.

Lydia is teaching in a chekechea (nursery school) in the mornings.  She walks to school–about 30 minutes from her home.  Her mother runs a food stand by the main road, and served us midmorning chai of chapatis and tea.  We visited with Ben’s mom, and had lunch, tambi and maharage,  a bit later.

They are both finding great ways, including their work, to be involved in their community, and are speaking a lot of Swahili.

Ben with teachers
Ben with some of his form 3 students
Students’ study lights spread outside to charge for the night
Lydia reading to her class
Writing their numbers in the sand
With co-teacher John
School is out!
Neat houses with sisal fence rows
Lydia with her host mother, in front of Lydia’s window
Candelabra trees
Cattle stockade–They’re out to pasture for the day
Lunch with Ben’s host mother
Ben with host brother and mother
In front of the family granary–Pretty empty now at the beginning of the raining and planting season
With Lydia’s host father