I have been trying lately to write more to go along with the photos. I have turned to various AI engines but find they mainly add more verbiage to the descriptions I write them and therefore save me very little time. I do read them and have drawn some ideas from them. The fact that most love to talk about the majestic setting of our school beneath Mount Kilimanjaro. In fact most people here don’t notice it even the few times it is visible from the cloud cover. It makes a nice inspiring blog sentence but does not really capture the essence of our school.

Things I think we should talk about: Start time versus show up time, student presentations, Graduating classes, The beauty of students being happy and working hard. First is to acknowledge the two groups graduating: Standard 7 is above and this would be their last days at our school except when they actually take their exams September 11 and 12 so please continue to pray for them and Pre-Unity pictured below is graduating from Preschool.

Let’s first get out of the way the discussion of show up time versus start times. I have mentioned this before, but Tanzanians (Africans in general) tend to publish or advertise one time for the event and then expect everyone to actually be there several hours later. Unfortunately that happens at a Graduation ceremony as well but the school is bad about planning too many events so it must start before people actually show up if they want to finish within a couple hours of normal school closure (i.e. the buses need to leave).

As you can see from the pictures above most people did not arrive until 3 hours after the designated start time. Which meant only an hour before school normally closes. They did however show up in time to crowd the diploma ceremony and keep me from making photos of the students as they get their diploma.

Now let’s talk about things that are more fun. The students putting on presentations about computers, fruit, careers and dances. We start out with the Students dancing in.

Next the Middle preschool class does a presentation about fruit.

Next was Standard 1 students.

Next is a dance and presentation by the Pre-Unity students

Then a dance by the Standard 7 students

Standard 4 students dance. I know this looks like all boys, but Upendo, Ester, Juliet and Helen are a part but with their hair shaved or close and in the track suits it is difficult for someone who does not know them to tell.

Next is the Pre-Unity presentation.

Next are the Maasai students dancing (next two clips)

And last of the videos is the parade of careers. While they did include Engineers this year, they included the Tanzanian version which is just a person who builds things. They still are preoccupied with modeling careers.

Next is our Pre-Unity Graduating Class

Standard 7

Having Fun