We had another Christmas today - five cards arrived from Australia!  All had been posted in early December so have taken 4 months to arrive!  Thank you Brenda & Keith, Nonie, Don & Joan, Marg & Ron and Pam!  We’ll bring the cards home and put them up for Christmas 2011.

 The week just finished has had its ups and downs.  Monday the officer responsible for examinations found time for me to show him how to use Equation Editor to type maths exams.  He was quite excited when he saw what his computer could do!  He asked me to type him out a tutorial so he’d remember how to use the program.  I did that on Monday night (and I also relented and typed out the 2^nd practice exam)

Tuesday I visited the ELCT and St Francis Teacher Training Colleges to give them the promised copies of the Teaching Aids & Resources book.  The Mathematics Tutors in both colleges were very pleased; at St Francis I also talked to two classes of students and demonstrated the teaching aids I had brought with me.  It went very well.  The St Francis maths tutor later rang to thank me again and to check we’d arrived back in town safely.  (Although maybe that was because I ran over their flag pole as we were leaving and he was worried about my driving skills!)

Wednesday I reluctantly started typing out the 3^rd practice exam, but only the english version!  Someone else can do the kiSwahili probably faster than retyping to fix my mistakes.  At 3:30 the exams officer came to see how I was progressing (Would it be finished by Friday?) and proudly gave me the news that funding for my training days had been approved and they would start Monday.  Thursday being a Public Holiday (Thank you Mr Karume, first President of Zanzibar!) that gave me Friday to contact the schools to be invited, train the mentors and assemble the equipment needed!

Wednesday night we had a lovely dinner at our friend Leen’s house with some other local volunteers – a UN of Belgium, Scotland, USA and Australia – and were happy to toast Karume with several bottles of South African red.  There was a minor misunderstanding about his height (I thought Rhona was telling me he was short, but that’s actually Glaswegian for shot!) but all in all it was a very merry evening.  Luckily Thursday could start late and we had an afternoon trip to Katoke for some birdwatching after the rain cleared.

Friday was frantic!  Found phone numbers and rounded up mentor teachers to meet at 12 noon, finished typing Exam 3, designed and printed the master for attendance certificates, found the DEO to sign it (had to sneak in through his assistant’s office to by-pass the queue waiting at his door) and packed the bag of equipment to take to mentor training.  Then down to town to have the certificates printed on to card and to buy sodas, samosas and maandasi to feed the mentors.  We made it to Makonge PS just after 12 noon, had our picnic and started work on planning the Training Days.  By 3 pm it was all sorted out.  Then we headed back to the office to stamp the printed certificates with the official Bukoba District Education Office stamp and round up the last of the equipment needed for Monday.  Whew!

Saturday I bought the sodas and biscuits for the training days and the last of the other odds and ends needed.  I went to the bank to swap seventy thousand shillings in Tsh10,000 notes for Tsh1,000 notes to give the teachers their travel money.  There was hardly even a queue! (Though I’m a bit suspicious now that I have been given notes destined to be destroyed as many are missing the holographic strip – I hope I haven’t been scammed!)  We even had time for a bit more bird watching and another Shoebill at the Kyanyabasa Ferry in the afternoon.

Steve's photo of Ngono River taken at the Kalebe Bridge.

So now we are ready to start this new adventure in Teachers training Teachers – my raison d’etre. Hooray!!