Our collaboration between the Unicorn school and Mwalimu's school

We have just received £ 3,562.34 raised through Tusk Trust for Nomad Trust and Mwalimu's school in Ololosokwan-next to Nduara Camp.  This amazing amount was raised by the Unicorn School in Abingdon in the UK, and the amazing Christine Davies who just completed a hat-trick of half marathons for a classroom at Mwalimu's school.  

The Unicorn School raised this money by a coin collection around the school as well as a sponsored walk. 

A copy of the  letter from the head master can be found on my last newsletter.  Below is a picture of the sponsored walk

 A huge thank you to everyone who fund raised for this, especially Mike Pickett and Christine Davies, your support and hard work are making a real difference to the school and the lives of the children at the school.

A Christmas Present for Katumbi Primary School

Trackers Stockholmn www.trackers.se  have very generously donated USD 1200 to fund a primary teacher for Katumbi School, near Greystoke, Mahale.  It is truely a gift that will keep giving-not only to the student but to the community as a whole.

A special thank you goes out to Peter Jonsson.  I am very excited to visit Mahale early next year to find a suitable teacher to join the school for 2012.

Computer training

When the Gates family donated $16,000 to Ololosokwan Primary School for a small computer room and photocopier machines, it seemed like a pipe dream that the teachers would ever get the hang of using the laptops.  However the effect of their donation has had a huge impact on the school, as well as the surrounding community.  We saw a huge desire from people in the village to learn not only how to use the laptops but to learn how to maintain them.  Nomad Trust used the ever patient Evans Shirima from AA computers to do the training at the school and  AA computers here in Arusha have taken the training they provide a step further.  Very kindly AA computers have taken on Gabriel-a teacher from Ololosokwan Primary School for his second course in computer maintenance.

The course is free for Gabriel as he will go back to the school and share his skills with the other teachers there.  The Nomad Trust is very grateful to AA computers for their support. 

Teachers Training

Zulufa Rashidi, a girl from Katumbi village, Mahale is about to head to Kigoma at the weekend to start a 2 year  Teachers Training course.  I spoke to her yesterday and she is incredibly excited and thrilled to be able to further her education.  Zulufa is being sponsored to go to college by Linda and Ian Parsons from the UK.  We hope that she will enjoy her time there and ultimately come back to teach in Katumbi.

There is no secondary school in Katumbi, and the primary school currently has about 790 students in it with 6 government paid teachers.  It is hugely oversubscribed as children come from the surrounding villages and rural areas to study there.  The teachers have to travel to Kigoma-a 2 day boat trip one way-monthly to collect their wages which means that the school barely functions for about 10 days a month.

The opportunity for some one from the village, let alone a female, to go to college is incredible.  A big thank you to the Linda and Ian.

Book Donations

I wanted to thank a number of people who have very generously donated books to our new environmental library in Usevya:
Annette Lewis for contributing so much as well as sending books from Amazon, Toni and Quentin Heim, Suzanne and Joy Barnes, Melanie Gowans, Linda Broome, and Janine Kleerup.
Your support in getting our book collection started for the Environmental Library has been invaluable-THANK YOU ALL. 
If anyone would like to make a contribution to the environmental library or has any educational material they would like to donate please contact us at: Nomadtrust@nomad.co.tz

Usevya Youth Center and Environmental library-Katavi

Nomad Trust partnered with Winters Rotary Club, The Besom Charity and Professors from UC Davis are building a youth center in Usevya, just outside Katavi National Park.  The youth center will provide a greatly needed educational and recreational outlet for the youth of the community.  
As part of this amazing initiative, Nomad Trust is sponsoring a small environmental library in the Youth centre.  The buildings are coming along nicely.

All the furniture for it is made and ready to move in once the building is finished and we are working on sourcing solar power for the center in order to run a projector and lights. I will be running, on behalf of Nomad Trust, the Kilimanjaro half marathon in Feb 2012 to raise funds for the solar system.  To donate to this cause please clink of the following link:
http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraise/showFundraiserProfilePage.action?userUrl=LaliHeath 
A number of companies have donated books and environmental material for the library already:  Our special thanks goes out to: The BBC for their wildlife magazines, Book Aid, Cabrini College and Cabrini College Philosophy Club.

Books for Kakuni Primary School-Katavi

Very kindly David & Gay Campbell and Bob & Mary Anne Budin donated money for Kakuni Primary School to buy school text books.

 Jerome-the head master of Kakuni- showed us all of the books he purchased with their generous donation he bought 45 textbooks. Jerome is very proud of these books and gathered them from the classrooms to be seen. 

If you look closely you can see the subjects written in swahili: geography (jographia), swahili, science (sayansi), civics (uraia), etc.  For a school without any prior books, this is a very big deal! 

Vegetable garden-Mahale

The Nomad Trust recently partnered with a local CBO (community based organization) called the Tongwe Trust to run a small but productive vegetable garden at the airstrip in Mahale.  The vegetables are sold to Greystoke camp at Arusha Market prices, and the profits go back to the Tongwe Trust.   We have noticed that for the first time in 10 years this garden is making a profit suggesting that vegetable gardens oriented toward a specific market are more likely to be successful.
Nomad Trust recently provided a new water pump and a back pack sprayer with some fertilizer for Pai, the gardener to use to irrigate the garden and maintain soil nutrient levels.  This is not viably a long term solution, and we are currently looking for funding to do a training course in soil improvement through the use of organic fertilizers and pest management through sound cultivation techniques which would reduce dependence on some of these inputs from the Nomad Trust.

A meal a day-Katumbi Nursery class

We were recently lucky enough to get funding to be able to continue to provide the nursery class with one meal a day.  The older school kids help prepare and hand out the porridge to the kids during their mid morning break.  This simple meal not only increases school enrollment and attendance but it aims to combat classroom hunger, slowly we hope to be able to address the issues of malnutrition.

Katumbi Nursery Class-Mahale

I just got back from a wonderful trip to Mahale.  I got to spend a day with the kids in the nursery class that the Nomad Trust started up and continues to fund.  The kids now all have little uniforms and black boards and look very smart compared to 6 months ago when the project first started!

Climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro for the Nomad Trust

The wonderful Nigel and Nicki Palmer have single handedly transformed Katumbi Primary School, in Mahale through their incredibly generous and continued support of the work that the Nomad Trust does there.  Through the Palmers we have been able to installed solar power-the first source of electricity in the area, a computer lab for the students and teachers, and provide scholarships for deserving students to carry on their secondary education at a private school in Kigoma.  The impact of their generosity has been far reaching and life transforming for the students of the school.
Nigel and Nicki are returning to Tanzania at the end of the month to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and raise more funds for Katumbi.  Please support them in their endeavor.

http://npnomadtrust.blogspot.com/ 

 

Chimp murder in Mahale

This is incredible-please have a look.
http://www.nomad-tanzania.com/blogs/greystoke-mahale/ 

Nomad Trust - latest newsletter!!

To read more about the Nomad Trust and all the projects and activities that we support, please download our latest newsletter HERE.

Included this month is an update on the Mwalimu school in Ololosokwan, Loliondo and a very generous donation from a UK school group.

Maasai Culture

During my time in Ololosokwan I had the following conversation with a Maasai teacher at Mwalimu's School.
Teacher: Do you have cows?
Me: No
Teacher: Where do you get your milk from?
Me: The shops, but I have two horses
Teacher: Is horse milk nice?
Me: I dont know I only use them for riding
Teacher: Riding to go and have a look for milk!

I had to laugh!
Below is a picture of the school cook, a Maasai woman.

Mwalimu's School-Ololosokwan

This is a fantastic little school just outside Ololosokwan that Nomad Trust has been supporting for a number of year.  Through it's biggest donor, Christine Davis, the school is now partnered up with The Unicorn School, in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.  Some of the kids from the Unicorn School sent out letters to kids at Mwalimu's school.  Here are some of the pictures.

Ololosokwan Primary School Vegetable Garden

A while ago Gabriel, one of the teachers at the school approached me about starting up an environmental afterschool project-which included replanting of trees around the school to try and control soil erosion, as well as starting up a small vegetable garden to supplement the childrens food they got at school. The vegetable garden is looking amazing, and they have replanted plants around all the school lawns and classrooms-see below picture-the new plantings are covered with thorn branches to stop the local goats eating them! 

It is also great to see that the WFP (World Food Program) is now also supporting Ololosokwan Primary School. 

Trip to Nduara-Ololosokwan

It was great to make it back to Ololosokwan to follow up on some of our projects there, I spent the first day at the Ololosokwan Primary school checking up on the solar, laptops and printers that the Gates family kindy donated.  They were still in use and all I had to do was update the anti-virus software.  The teachers love having the use of the laptops and being able to access internet! when exams come round it means that a huge amount of time is saved as the teachers no longer have to hand write out hundreds of exam papers!

Gabriel, a teacher, connecting to the internet-the best signal is by the window!

Kilimanjaro Marathon

THE MT. KILIMANJARO MARATHON
HAS WON THE #2 AWARD AS
"WONDER OF THE WORLD MARATHON"
FROM "RUNNER'S WORLD"

 #4 BEST INTERNATIONAL ADVENTURE MARATHON" BY FORBES MAGAZINE

Running for charity.

My half marathon training has begun in earnest and I am finding it a painful experience!  The altitude, the blisters, the lack of running fitness.

I will be running in the Kilimanjaro Marathon in February 2012 to raise money for the Nomad Trust. http://www.kilimanjaromarathon.com/
My boss, John is putting my efforts to shame by doing the Kili Man http://kilimanjaro-man.com/

Please sponsor us-a dollar goes a long way in this part of the world.

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/nomadtrust