Mvumi School Trust

Living and Rising

We Gap Year students are perfectly placed here in Mvumi - equidistant to school and village by about 20 paces and housed in two comfortably furnished bungalows on the edge of the school grounds near the vegetable garden, kitchens and temperamental water system.

At 6.45 am I rise and get ready to leave for school by 7.15. Mysteriously, despite the short distance to the school, arriving promptly in the morning still remains a challenge but most of us make staff meetings at 7.20 am. Lessons begin promptly at 8 o'clock after the flag ceremony and whole-school prayers.

Mvumi Hospital

The first volunteer, fully-qualified doctor came to the hospital here in 1938 and there has been at least one, with other qualified medical volunteers, ever since - until three weeks ago - when the last one left. It is looking unlikely that there will be a replacement. It is strange that after next weekend, I shall be the only expat resident in Mvumi. We have two outstanding young men here working as ‘gappies' for two-and-a-half months though. I shall leave the school in December and it will be a painful wrench. We have heard there is a new Bursar coming in January. (I have been covering this job since June, when John Clark left). There is also a search on for an English teacher to replace me and someone to do the sponsorship work that I do.

Tree Nursery – Reforestation Project

Our new tree nursery has begun under a Gogo structure entirely made with local materials, including palm fronds for the 80% shade and baobab bark made into rope. Everything was delivered by handcart or oxcart and can be copied with tiny expenditure. We will be able to train local people as well as our students in some techniques of water harvesting and management. It is a trial project but has the advantage of being at local level from start to finish. No one can milk it except in a good way! The official opening with our partners from Makang'wa and Makulu is tomorrow and photographs will follow.

I am better able to get the odd podcast now and have just listened to Bunny Guinness talking about the recovery from the hard winter in gardens in England.

We are watching crops wither and die in all but the best soils. The rain just won't come.

Walking to a home visit I saw sheets of card in the air which at first seemed to be enormous birds but so high it was bizarre. They were immediately over us but tracing them down and realizing there were also branches and rags in the twisting air we slowly and stupidly concluded we were walking beside a whirlwind. The spooky part was that the air around us was quite still. It ripped a roof off a house less than a hundred yards away.

I am enjoying late evening sun. The weather is balmy: a hot 35 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. Idyllic in theory but unfortunately not as good as it seems. Rainfall has been just a few showers in what should be the rainy season. Crops are distressed: millet and groundnuts are progressing but maize has the appearance of the weedy adolescent. This will be a difficult year. There is plenty for our local farmers still to learn about what crops to grow…