WEEK TWO IN KOWAK March 12, 2013

            Well it’s been a busy few days. This is Tuesday night. The bishop was here today visiting with the Indian sisters from Nairobi and our pastor and the Head Master (Elias) of the Kowak Girls’ Secondary. These are exciting times for the school. The Indian sisters will take over the school in June and 4 new sisters will be brought in. Alex will remain as the school bursar (accountant) and Elias will be demoted to Second Master and teacher, which he prefers after three years in administration. The new Head Mistress is currently a Head Mistress at Mafinga Girls’ Secondary in central Tanzania, which is the second ranked school of the 4400 secondary schools in the country. She will bring a personal secretary with her and two teaching nuns, with more to come in the future. Our current Tanzanian teachers (20) are a little nervous. The two new teaching nuns are science teachers and the new Head Mistress will also be teaching (math and physics).

            Yesterday I took my friend Vikki to the border to get another 1 year visitors visa since her residence permit has not yet been approved after a year of waiting. The delay has been due to lost papers by the immigration people in Dar es Salaam and she had all the documents to show that. She was finally able to talk them into giving her a residence permit for two years so we were very excited about that and it was a big relief after worrying about getting another visitors visa back to back. While at the border I met two former Kowak graduates who had just finished junior college at other schools. It was great to see them again. They will start University in the Fall. Then I met another one who was home in her village near Kowak as we were driving home. She is in her senior year at University. He father is on our school board so I had just stopped to say hi to him when I learned she was home. Her two older and younger sisters also attended Kowak so I know them well also.

            Our electrician was finally able to repair the generator which runs the new well water pump so we are finally getting some water in the school tanks after 3 weeks of rationing using the old smaller pump which requires electrical power from the grid. That has only been available at nights for the last 10 days. So that repair just occurred yesterday and was well worth celebrating. We will not have to close the school due to lack of water.

                      

            I had a fun Sunday with the village kids flying kites I brought last year, and then later in the day we had a fun game of softball with my experienced team from last year (now seniors). The sophomores watched us play Saturday and were begging to learn the game, so we had our first practice session after the seniors game on Sunday. The new girls did very well so I may need to practices several days a week after classes, to get them up to speed.

            The new doctors office building and out-houses are just about finished. The doors and windows of the office were just finished and the paint and tile finished today. So, most of the construction will be finished until more money comes in for more projects. We had a near disaster today when our security guard at the hospital started the generator and left the oil cap off. It blew oil all over the place so he shut it down and put the cap back so he would not get caught. Then he claimed he did not know where the oil came from. While we were waiting for our mechanic to figure out the problem the surgery theatre lost power and had to finish a caesarian in the dark. Fortunately it was still day light so they were able to finish with low light. An hour later the mechanic figured out what had happened. So, we plan to buy a smaller generator to mount just outside the theatre for lights and instruments. Never a dull moment here, as usual.   Tom  in Kowak