MY JOURNEY. A TRAVEL DIARY.: Day 209 - Background of the School

Here is a little background about Mama Tesha and the school (this was over a three hour conversation I had with her and I am trying to condense it into a couple paragraphs). Mama Tesha was born in 1948 in central Tanzania. She was the 4th child of 9 and came from a family who had no means of income. Mama attended the local primary school that was built by the Austrilian Anglican church, and passed her tests to move onto middle school. It cost her family 2 shillings (US pennies) for her to attend the school, but when they could not afford it the school was ready to send her home. The night she was packing to leave the school, the Head Mistress approached her and said that an Austrilian man had left enough money to pay her fees at the school. She was able to finish middle and secondary school through the support of this sponsor and then finished high school at a government school. Mama Tesha was accepted into university, but her family did not have the funds for her to attend. However, with the help of the local foreign doctor she was able to complete her diploma at Teacher's College. She took a teaching job at the Teacher's College soon after where she taught for 4 years.

In 1970, she married Baba Tesha (Baba means father in Swahili) and his job took them to Northern Tanzania. For the next 29 years she taught English in Mawanza and Arusha to primary students. She discovered her love for the younger children and dreamed that one day she would be able to return the gift of education to the less fortunate, just as someone had done for her when she was a child.
In 1989, she became ill and was forced to stop teaching. Over the next few years the family struggled immensely after Baba also lost his job. Mama starting teaching private English lessons to students in her home to earn enough for food to put on the table for her family. In 1992, after much prayer and with the help of her students' parents, a room in a local guesthouse was found where Mama could teach these children after school. The small room (maybe 10x12ft.) with no furniture, was in a prostitution area, so they endured the trials of teaching under horrible conditions. Mama really felt that God had said the time was right to start giving back to others, so she went to find 3 orphans to teach on the guesthouse floor during the day. She supplemented their supplies with the money she received from her tutoring.

In 1993, Mama decided to start a full time school for the children she tutored and mix them with the orphans she was teaching. This was the start to St. Margaret's School. Over the next few years she was able to expand the school into two more rooms and the guesthouse and hire additional teachers.

In 1997, a man offered her land about 17km west of Arusha which she bought and paid off over the next couple years with the funds from the school. This was where dreamed of building a school. As the children she tutored entered the primary school, the parents asked her to continue teaching them but she did not have enough room at the guesthouse, so she started teaching them in her home, day after day. In 1999, some men from a church approached her and said that they had a couple rooms at a place in Arusha that she could use as her primary school teaching facility. She was thrilled!
Mama Tesha was also working as a coordinator for an NGO in Vermont, helping teach Americans Swahili when they came to Arusha and in 2000 they flew her to America to attend a conference. Due to a mix up on her airline ticket, when she left the States she had a round trip ticket, but never really expected to use it.

Later that year Mama met a group of students from St. Olaf College, in Minnesota, who were traveling in Tanzania. They really wanted to help the school, but had little funding to do so. They encouraged Mama to return to the States. She used that old return ticket to do so. She met many people in Northfield, at St. Olaf, and in Minneapolis church congregations. Through these contacts she raised enough money to start building the primary school with 7 classrooms on her land in 1993. Now Mama was able to give these children the education they deserved. But most of these children were orphans going home to live with a relative in awful conditions (usually no food and mistreatment). So Mama started cooking noon meals from her home and bringing the food out to the school for the children each day. Then, a couple years later, a small outdoor kitchen was built.

Today the Primary school has expanded to accommodate 370 students with 16 teachers in 9 classrooms, a library (in progress), and a large assembly/dining hall/kitchen area (in progress). They are also working on adding 2 additional floors above one of the classrooms. Poli, poli (which means slowly, slowly in Swahili) as Mama Tesha receives money she lays another brick or buys a bucket of paint. She prays each day that God will get her through the day. She also continues the nursery school at the guesthouse with 4 rooms, 100 students and 12 teachers.

Mama's vision right now is to complete the buildings in progress so they can educate 600 primary students, expand to support a secondary school, and build dorms where the students can stay during the week to ensure they receive 3 meals a day and a bed to sleep in at night.