Two years ago, the land where now nearly 400 children now learn and grow was no more than a field of banana trees at the base of Mount Meru. Now, enough trees to feed the children fresh fruit still tower tall over a facility that now includes six classrooms, a technology lab, two gardens, a kitchen, restrooms, a playground and a school bus that shuttles many small children down bumpy dirt roads to school.

Now, her dream bolstered further by funds and global support raised during TweetsGiving 2009, Mama Lucy is expanding even further. Construction has begun on the school’s first library and an additional classroom at Shepherds Junior School! The classroom will allow the school to expand to the seventh grade next year when the oldest students will take national examinations to qualify for secondary school.

In the midst of a busy beginning to the new school year, Mama Lucy sent us a quick note with a few photos to keep us updated on her amazing progress. She wrote:

Habari zenu?

I’m SO happy to write to you and send few photos, hoping this might make you feel as if you are at Shepherds compound:) I’m so excited to see the work is moving so fast.

The photos show students at our Nursery and other pics taken at our Primary school – Moivaro. The new babies are so cute! They are very active and they are happy to be at school. You can tell from the pics:) The pics showing construction were taken 3 – 4 days ago.

The construction is going well especially for classroom 7. At least you can see we are moving. The Library is moving but not as fast as the other one. They’ve been dealing with metal work for some days, after getting the blue print for the metal work. The work of roofing the ground floor will start within these 3 days, and they said we’ll have to wait for 21 days to dry. I’m sure they’ll be doing some other work while waiting for those days. I don’t know:( As this is our first time to do this kind of work, we have to be patient:)

I’ve attached few photos showing classroom 7 and Tech/Library to show how far we’ve moved.

It would be great to see you again after few months!!!!! Say hi to all.

Love you all!!!

Mama

The slideshow pictures below show the exciting construction progress and as well as the incoming preschool students that Mama Lucy mentioned. You can also view the Flickr photo set directly here.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

And, just as a reminder of how this classroom & library will impact your world and mine, check out this tweet from Glory, one of the students who will move up to seventh grade next year:

Posted: February 15th, 2010 under Updates from Mama.
Comments: 2

Hallo my friends!

I’m SO excited to inform you that today I received an email from my daughter about the results of our class 4 national exams.  Out of more than 100 schools in Arusha district, our school  scored 2nd position, only 2 points behind the top school.  When I heard this, I feel it’s good to write to you and share the good news!!

Posted: December 9th, 2009 under Updates from Mama.
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Mama Lucy sent me this email today – a bitter update from which she’d shielded us as we celebrated the sweeter moments of the last few weeks.  In a text I received during our Ideablob voting process, Mama Lucy mentioned she was dealing with an “emergency.”  Emergencies run a gamut when one leads a school for hundreds of children, so I asked to make sure she was okay, let her know I cared, but didn’t probe much more when she responded that “it is very ok” and that she’d “solved the issue.”  Of course, she was fine…but there’s so very much more to the story:

On 22^nd May 2009 I had the chance to experience the two tastes – sweet & bitter – which I’ll never forget. You may ask me why it took so long before I’ve shared the taste with you, but the tough job hindered me to do that! We were busy voting with the Ideablob competition, waiting for the results, you were getting prepared for the 140 conference Stacey, and thereafter so many other things. Though it’s just a story now to share with less impact, but you deserve to hear the story. Just relax as now we’ve only one taste. The sweet one! The bitter has gone.

The night before we started voting, on 22^nd May we were attacked by robbers at our home, at 2:30am. We were all in deep sleep before we heard a huge stone breaking the front door of our house. Within a minute, they were inside, and broke the door of our bedroom. My husband and I were not in a position to respond to the attack as they were already inside, without knowing how prepared they were. We ran and hid in the washroom before they broke our room’s door. They entered in the bedroom and started picking what they wanted. Fortunately, I was able to take one mobile phone of mine. I sent text messages to 5 friends of mine, alerting the situation. Good enough, one was able to inform the police. Before the police arriving, they broke the washroom’s door and pulled my husband to the bedroom, asking him to give them money. They didn’t touch me at all. They cut him with a panga (machete) on his arm and shoulder. But it was not very deep. My husband gave them the little we had in the room. They insisted for more, but my daughter Brenda told them we don’t keep money at home as the students’ parents are paying at the bank. They pushed my daughter and husband to the washroom. They continued with taking things from our room and Brenda’s room. The police came after half an hour, while they were still in the house but the gate was locked. After they heard the horn of the police car, they ran. After getting out, we came to realize that the watchman was tied with a rope both hands and legs. He was left helpless in the garden. We went and opened the gate, and our neighbours and policemen came inside.

The robbers took all the valuable things which they found in our house. Among many were: Money, Radio, Laptop – 1 pc, camera – 1 pc, mobile phones – 5 pcs, just to mention a few. That was the bitter taste of the day.

For the sweet taste, we were left alive and the next day which was the 23^rd of May, we were able to join others in the voting process. After the results of Ideablob that Epic Change won, the sweet taste increased.

The police are still on investigation, hope one day to hear good news about the stolen things. Two weeks ago, we were called at the police station to check laptops found, but unfortunately ours was not there. We’ve settled and things are okay now, though it was a great shock! We are trying to take all the measures to make sure this can’t happen again. Steps taken: 1). Hired KK Security and they installed alarm in and outside the house. 2). Two security guards instead of one.

Hope this will not shock you as it would have a month ago…

Much love,

Mama Lucy

All this while she was mobilizing a village to win $10,000 for a technology lab.

“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.” – Booker T. Washington

Posted: July 10th, 2009 under The Foundry, Updates from Mama.
Comments: none