Bridge 2 Aid : 'Restoring Smiles - Changing Lives'

Wafadhili has been fumigated and we are happy to say that there are no cockroaches at the moment. We are encouraging the women to keep on sweeping out the cupboards so that they don’t creep back! 

The men are also doing their best by trying to sweep their cupboards however sometimes the rooms get unexpected guests – we found a lizard who was happily living on top of one of the mosquito nets!!

When water is scarce, cleaning tends to become less of a priority, so at the buildings committee today the problem of having no water to clean the toilets was solved by the community themselves, they decided to use a small amount of money from the water committee to pay for a few buckets of water to clean the toilets twice a week.

The children’s attendance at school for the month of April was good overall except for a few children whose families will be visited. Also the sports kits for Kigongo School are being made so they will be able to take part in the schools sports competition. (FM)

Today was an exciting day as I had the opportunity to follow up on the trips that the teachers had made to the Montessori schools. The aim of the workshop with the teachers was to introduce some simple teaching ideas and resources.  Within Tanzanian schools the emphasis is very much the teacher talking and the children writing- today was very different!
The teachers were the students and actually did the activities themselves - they had a lot of fun! Starting with brain gym - an activity that gets all parts of the brain working, a good starting activity for lessons. The deputy even got up and had a go showing the teachers how to use the ideas in the classroom.

Then onto “Maps from Memory”- a game where you have 30 seconds to look at an image then go back to you group and draw yourself- it was funny looking at the finished “map”! Then a maths trail which really worked the brains, involving the teachers moving around the class to find the right answer and the next question.

The teachers had fun and had some ideas to use in their own lessons- they even suggested workshops twice a month! I am looking forward to seeing how they use these ideas in their classrooms! (FM)

Anthony Windibank our locum dentist at Hope Dental Centre visited Bukumbi with Nancy our new nurse at the clinic and carried out a ‘tooth camp’ in the very different surroundings of a rural clinic room. They saw several people and 2 have been referred to HDC where they will receive free treatment and be taken out of pain. One lady fainted on them as she had been out in her field farming all morning and not eaten since the night before .She was fine and looked after by Anthony and Nancy as well as the resident clinical officer at Bukumbi. The community are so grateful for these visits as otherwise they would be waiting around in pain for months. (JT)