The school is over

I just came back from the graduation ceremony, this Friday. I’m happy to say that all eleven remaining students have completed the course successfully, the certificates are in their pockets and some of them have already gone home. The last week was certainly quite hectic, with the written exam on Monday and the oral the day after. After that, we hastily prepared for the graduation ceremony.



In the weeks prior to this one a few students showed amazing improvement, especially two of our Maasai and Rehema, our oldest student. She can keep on talking in English for hours now, it’s absolutely no problem. And for the eight and a half page written exam everyone did very well. In fact, everyone scored over 70%, truly a unique achievement. I have to add though, that the oral went slightly worse, but everyone passed that one too.



We were a little late in preparing for the graduation... We really had to work for it on Wednesday and Thursday. Especially the ladies. I thought women in Europe were very conscious about their looks, but here I think it’s worse. Everyone has to have their hair done, preferably as close to the graduation as possible. Josephine, fellow teacher and leader of the school, asked us to sponsor her for it, but I thought her hair was fine as it was.



The various things the students wanted to do at the graduation added to the pressure, of course. They prepared testimonies, a play, songs to sing... Eventually, through all our hard work we didn’t even have enough time at the ceremony itself, a few things had to be skipped. I suppose in African style we began a little late, which contributed to that. But in spite of all this it was a great success anyway. The people enjoyed the testimonies, the play, I think most of what we did.



Unfortunately, besides the students, we had to say goodbye to two staff members too... Namely Bebe and Niwael, my other two fellow teachers. It’s the official goodbye, they will stay here for a few days more. Niwa is going to study in Dar Es Salaam, while Bebe wants to go back to Rwanda, though she might want to get her drivers’ licence first. I was thanked wholeheartedly by the students and the staff, received gifts and hugs, and the other teachers did too of course. We can be very proud of our students, I think all achieved their goals and are quite able to have a talk with you.



Finally and very importantly, we had some good food. The students had insisted on bringing chicken, and since staff already got beef and pork, we had all three now. Unfortunately I think I got an artery for pork, which tasted very strange, and what I got from the chicken I couldn’t even identify. It was actually hard to imagine that a chicken even had that part... But the beef was fine. Afterwards I had to continue my job of being a photographer, realising their time was almost over everyone wanted me to take a picture. I filled my 1Gb card to the brim and had to print dozens today. At least I have plenty of pictures of everyone there myself now.



It will be very quiet at the base now... And where it isn’t, the noise will probably be in Swahili. Since we were only allowed to speak English amongst the students, my Swahili vocabulary is very limited. At first half of the words I knew came from the movie “The Lion King” (what language did you think “Hakuna Matata” came from?), though now I know some more. Which is still only about fifteen words... They promised me I’d learn very quickly though, maybe in three weeks or so I can actually get somewhere.



I really don’t know what’s in store for me, there’s not much of a strict planning anymore, which feels rather strange. I don’t really know where I’ll sleep either, the whole school building will be very quiet now. Hopefully plans will shape along the way.