Many of you have reached out to let me know you are praying for me, the school and Tanzania after the recent civil unrest after the elections and I thank you for that. I will talk about what happened and how we were blessed at the site during this time, but first I want to talk about some good things and since neither talking points has pictures to go with it (the civil unrest because it is unlawful to share those images here) I will disperse some random photos of our sweet kids after school started meeting again.

The first bit of good news is that we got our Primary School Leaving Exam (PSLE) results this week and they were wonderful. This is the exam our Standard 7 students took in September that determines if they can graduate from Primary school and go on to Secondary School (High School). Our standard is that all our students get A’s or B’s on the Tanzania grading scale. All of our students did and the class average was just shy (I mean 0.3 points shy )of 80 which would have been an A by the Tanzania scale. We also did very well in subjects of Math, Science, Kiswahili and English. This is our second time our students have meet the standard of all A’s and B’s but the first time on the Standard 7 exam.

The next bit of good news is that we have had some folks take on fundraising or group funding of more projects from our list last week. In case you missed that blog you can find it here: https://steveandbarnabas.com/2025/10/23/join-us-in-transforming-lives-at-tumaini-evangelistic-pre-primary-school/

Right now we have two of the three water projects funded leaving only the new backup tank water project remaining in that group. We also have had over half the Computer classroom donated leaving only 4 computer stations left for that project. This means we are about 50% of our fundraising needs which is an excellent start to our fundraising.

Now to the bad. October 29th Tanzania had their big election which is for President and nearly all members of their parliament. This was the third election I have been in Tanzania for (big election) and during all of them the internet gets shut down/heavily restricted but normally just for a day or two. A short history lesson is needed here to really understand what went on. Tanzania was basically granted their independence after serving as a British administered United Nations Trust Territory in 1961 as Tanganyika. In 1964 it merged with Zanzibar to become Tanzania. It became a single party that was based on socialism until 1992 when the Political Parties Act was passed and the first multi party election was held in 1995. However, the original political party has retained the presidency and a majority of parliament seats.

In the first election I was present for, there was considered to be real challenges to the ruling party because a front runner of that party was not selected to be their candidate so he jumped to another party to be their candidate for President. However the ruling party won the election and the Magufuli era started. He was nicknamed the bulldozer from his time in the Public Works department where he pushed ahead with paved road projects across the country. Those same roads that are failing everywhere. At first he was seen to be anti-corruption as he cleaned up some of the more corrupt branches of the government but somewhere along the way as with many leaders who are heralded for fixing things he seemed to get power hungry (think Hitler who was praised before the wars for rebuilding Germany, then became the tyrant who was responsible for the Holocaust).

During the 2020 election the ruling party controlled the election process and made it unlawful for opposing parties to hold political rallies or to put up advertisements. The police enforced these new laws with a little too much zeal. So to nobody’s surprise he was re-elected as president. Suddenly cartoonist that made fun of him were put in jail and journalist were brought to heal with restrictions on publishing of information the government did not approve. Then COVID hit and it was denied here despite many photos of mass graves and funerals at night so it was kept quiet. Then the president died of a congenital heart problem after much speculation that it was actually COVID. Then Tanzania got its first female president and she started off well by freeing jailed journalist and promising to sit down with opposition parties to discuss election reforms.

That lasted maybe a year then we were back to many of the same issues. Then in the year before the election there were mass disappearances after opposition parties held meetings. There were people who voiced concerns that went missing individually as well. Then Lissu the main opposition candidate who survived an assassination attempt was arrested for treason because it appears he called for election reforms. Then the other viable opposition party was disbarred from running because of a technicality concerning a new form. So again the ruling party is running with no real challenge. Her face is plastered everywhere (and I mean everywhere) but in no picture is she smiling instead she appears to be looking down her nose disapprovingly at her subjects.

Then the election. Monitoring agencies from other parts of African and Europe complained they were not allowed access to monitor the election. Their biggest problem was that polling places were empty when they were allowed access. However they recorded 87% voter turnout with the current president getting nearly 98% of the vote. People were upset and they took to the streets and the government overreacted. Normal crowd control measures were abandoned quickly for more lethal measures. The crowds grew more upset and things spiraled out of control quickly. Curfews were put into effect and the Internet was completely turned off to block information getting out and the ability to coordinate attacks. Police checkpoints went up everywhere. All this happened in the cities. Here at my village other than no internet and restricted electricity you would not have known anything was wrong. But they did stop all transports (dalla dalla and buses). People were told to stay home and not go to work. And things got worse especially for those not involved but needing medicine or medical and could not get to them. Petrol prices shot up as did food and people became angry.

It took a week but things across most of the country settled down and travel was allowed, the internet was on for a couple of hours a day. International flights resumed. Eventually we got the school reopened and I got to go to town to restock my emergency stash of water bottles. The only real problem I personally went through was my cooking gas tank was empty the first night so I could not cook food. I survived on beef jerky, canned tuna and crackers. I have survived a lot worse in my life.

I don’t know what will be next for their election process, I am just glad I will not be here for the next one.