Like much of the world our charity is in lockdown and in the year ahead it will be difficult, if not impossible, to do much in the way of fundraising through our usual events like art auctions and craft events. We had hoped to get the secondary school nearer enough to completion for the government inspectors to allow us to register the school this year. That aim is not helped by the the goalposts being moving, so that where we were told initially we needed to have the just first two classrooms, a toilet block and two laboratories finished before we register – we are now told we need all four classrooms to be completed.
With the money raised ahead of the cancelled Glasgow Kiltwalk to which the Tom Hunter Foundation generously added 100% we can fund the making of the concrete blocks for the second classroom block but will be hard pushed to find the money to roof the building. However our project manager, Ntimba Millinga, is determined to carry on even if it is at a slower pace and he also plans to lay the foundations for the admin block.
The other uncertainty comes from the pandemic which has yet to take hold in Tanzania and we cannot begin to forecast what effect it will have on a population with such poor access to health care. So we wait and we hope that the worst can be avoided and meanwhile the school has been closed, the students have returned to their villages, and as yet we do not have a date for the NMSE school to reopen.
Our volunteer Valerie Anderson did manage to visit the school in March but left early just before the flights back to Spain were cancelled. She took beautiful teeshirts for all the sponsored children, a gift from one of our supporters in Ibiza. She also arranged for microscopes to be delivered and carried one in her luggage, so we now have four large microscopes for our new labs.