Link Letter no. 12 | July 2021
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Name: Stephen Hatch Location: Kilimatinde, Tanzania My role: Working as a maths teacher and head of the science department, and supporting the headmaster and chaplain at St John’s Seminary My call: Providing education to those who would otherwise have none. Continued over the page The call in action Dear friends, My recovery from the after-effects of COVID has been steady, and while I now feel fine, I do find myself slightly paranoid that every ache and pain is COVID-related. When I returned to teaching I tried to take it carefully, so I decided that to start with I would limit myself to contact hours with pupils only (paperwork, admin tasks, etc could wait), however this still meant that some days I was at school by 6.30am and leaving at 10.00pm. I doubt that a doctor would count that as resting even though I did go home and sleep in-between. During our Easter break, the school arranged for the teachers to go on safari together. The plan was to take the school bus, food, a cook and a guide with us to keep the price down for everyone (luckily the bishop’s son was a qualified tour guide). I was undecided whether to go or not, as I knew I would be charged far more than the others, but in the end I decided to join them, so we were together outside of just working. To start with things were fine, we had a stop to register the bus to leave the region, but from there on we had big trouble with the bus, and in the end we were stranded in the middle of the Serengeti. We had to stay another night and leave the bus driver there with the bus until someone could go to the nearest city buy a new part, return and fit it to the bus. In the meantime, the rest of us found public transport back to the school. (I think it was three days later when I saw bus driver again.) On the upside I surprised many of the staff with my Swahili. At the school I only speak English (except with Bible school) as the school rules on the front of many buildings say to speak English and all the exams are in English, so we want the pupils speaking and hearing English all the time. However, at home or in the village I will happily speak Swahili, and the same applied while on tour. Every week around half of our pupils attend Ukwata, (Umoja Kijana Wakristo Tanzania) which is the union of young Christians in Tanzania. Many schools and colleges have Ukwata groups and they meet up nationally sometimes. This year one of our pupils, Imani Frank Mdumi, has become the vice president of Ukwata at their annual Easter conference. It is good to see our pupils representing young people across Tanzania. It is also good to see what pupils do after finishing. We now have a new staff member who I remember being the head boy when I arrived at the school in 2013, who is now back as a physics teacher. I am always trying to do things in a different way to what pupils are used to, whether that is in a service or in my lessons, so… Stephen Hatch Link Letter no. 12 | July 2021 Imani Mdumi being confirmed as vice president of Ukwata churchmissionsociety.org/hatch
Transcript of Link Letter no. 12 | July 2021
Name: Stephen Hatch
Location: Kilimatinde, Tanzania
My role: Working as a maths teacher and head of the science department, and supporting the headmaster and chaplain at St John’s Seminary
My call: Providing education to those who would otherwise have none.
Continued over the page
The call in action
Dear friends,
My recovery from the after-effects of COVID has been steady, and while I now feel fine, I do find myself slightly paranoid that every ache and pain is COVID-related. When I returned to teaching I tried to take it carefully, so I decided that to start with I would limit myself to contact hours with pupils only (paperwork, admin tasks, etc could wait), however this still meant that some days I was at school by 6.30am and leaving at 10.00pm. I doubt that a doctor would count that as resting even though I did go home and sleep in-between.
During our Easter break, the school arranged for the teachers to go on safari together. The plan was to take the school bus, food, a cook and a guide with us to keep the price down for everyone (luckily the bishop’s son was a qualified tour guide). I was undecided whether to go or not, as I knew I would be charged far more than the others, but in the end I decided to join them, so we were together outside of just working.
To start with things were fine, we had a stop to register the bus to leave the region, but from there on we had big trouble with the bus, and in the end we were stranded in the middle of the Serengeti. We had to stay another night and leave the bus driver there with the bus until someone could go to the nearest city buy a new part, return and fit it to the bus. In the meantime, the rest of us found public transport back to the school. (I think it was three days later when I saw bus driver again.) On the upside I surprised many of the staff with my Swahili. At the school I only speak English (except with Bible school) as the school rules on the front of many buildings say to speak English and all the exams are in English, so we want the pupils speaking and hearing English all the time. However, at home or in the village I will happily speak Swahili, and the same applied while on tour.
Every week around half of our pupils attend Ukwata, (Umoja Kijana Wakristo Tanzania) which is the union of young Christians in Tanzania. Many schools and colleges have Ukwata groups and they meet up nationally sometimes. This year one of our pupils, Imani Frank Mdumi, has become the vice president of Ukwata at their annual Easter conference. It is good to see our pupils representing young people across Tanzania.
It is also good to see what pupils do after finishing. We now have a new staff member who I remember being the head boy when I arrived at the school in 2013, who is now back as a physics teacher.
I am always trying to do things in a different way to what pupils are used to, whether that is in a service or in my lessons, so…
Stephen Hatch Link Letter no. 12 | July 2021
Imani Mdumi being confirmed as vice president of Ukwata
churchmissionsociety.org/hatch
When I was asked to preach for a family service (which here means secondary pupils, Bible school and all staff rather than just secondary pupils), I thought, Great, we have some tall teachers who would make great lighthouses. You wouldn’t believe the laughter after covering my “lighthouse” (our discipline master with a torch on his head) with a blanket to demonstrate being led astray and the need for a light and guide. (Sometimes we translate English services into Swahili for benefit of Bible school, apparently there is no Swahili word for “wreckers”, but I couldn’t talk about lighthouses and not mention them.)
When I was asked to cover some lessons for a week I decided that one of them would be a practical outside. The look on pupils’ faces when I announced a maths practical was great. So we proceeded to calculate the height of our flagpole with homemade clinometers, with a growing number of teachers looking at what was going on and some even joining in (although it did mean taking the equipment off of the pupils to let the teachers try).
June is normally a holiday for pupils between the two terms here, but sometimes we keep the exam classes behind for extra studying. This year we also kept behind those pupils who will be taking vocational exams (mainly tailoring and mechanics). I had been teaching computer application, so I expected a few extra lessons during this week. I ended up with 12 extras, as I was also given technical drawing, which had been given to another teacher for the last few years, but which I had taught previously. We continued as expected for a week, and then received an announcement from the government that all schools had to be closed for June and to send all pupils home. This resulted in slight chaos for the patron and matron of the school, who had to contact the parents of every child and tell them that their child was coming home without any notice. A couple of days later we got a follow-up message to say there was no need to close the school, but by then it was too late. We still have not worked out when we will catch up on missed lessons, the only plus is that this week (as I am writing this), I am the teacher on duty and as such am responsible for the entire school and all pupils here. Since the school is closed it makes the work far easier. This is actually the first time in seven years my name has been put on the list, all because a teacher told the deputy head that I “wanted to do it”. My actual words were, “If my name is on the list I would do the duty, but it would be a bad idea to put me on the list because if any visitors come I may not have enough Swahili”. So far, no problems, but we shall see later.
Stephen
Photos from top to bottom: Ibrahim (discipline master) becoming a
lighthouse; gathered outside for our maths practical; clinometer at the ready
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