The clock is ticking and there is now less than two weeks before Alice and Louise set off for Tanzania. The third member of the party this year will be Valerie who is a hat maker and teacher of English as a foreign language. They are meeting up at the airport in Dar es Salaam and plan to spend a couple of days in Dar before heading down by bus to the school project.

One of their tasks in Dar will be to buy some coconut oil and esential lavender oil for the Namanditi soap making group from Tahery supplies. The idea is for a small group of women from the Namanditi area to set up an IGA ( income generating activity) based at the hostel. The women have ordered up most of the ingredients for the soap already and Louise has bought silicone moulds, jugs, safety golves and glasses and spoons to use in the  soap making process. The group also have a lovely tag label for their soap, designed by Gary Gowans, a graphic designer from  Dundee and the plan is to find somewhere on line to make it into a stamp so the soap makers will be able to print their own labels – hopefully this can be done before we leave. We also need to source some more ribbon, choose which cello bag firm to go with and buy a few thousand to take over with us. Louise is trying hard to resist buying more silicone cake moulds as it is going to be difficult enough to squeeze all the soap making equipment into her case as it is.

 Many of the sponsors have sent a letter and photo to Louise telling the reader a little about themselves so they can be introduced to their sponsored child. As usual  new photos of all the children shall be taken to send to sponsors when Louise gets back plus a report from the teachers about how each child is doing at their lessons.  A sponsor was found for the last remaining place yesterday so  they will be looking for a child from Namanditi village to bring the number of sponsored children up to thirty.

Baraka has taken over the nursery class and the children are making great progress with their English. Alice and Louise will see a big difference in all the children and they will also get the chance to meet the new children who have joined the school this year. They will also see all the work that has been done on the school buildings and the newest classrooms which should be ready to get their roofs fitted.

Since they are staying at the hostel in Namanditi which has electricity (when it is available) it should be much easier to blog while they are away than it has been in the past when it was necessary to bus into Songea and find an internet cafe with no guarantee that the electricity wouldn’t go down half way through the blog. The school has electricity too now powered by a new generator so this will mean the children in grade one can soon begin to be given basic computer instruction on six of the computers sent in the container and there are lights and power in all the classrooms.