Bree discovers there's a real desire to learn

The students at our little school are mostly Maasai and Chagga. Their ages range from about 11 to around 55; proof that one is never too old to learn! (It's not customary to note birthdates in this region, so ages are often anyone's guess.)

Their tribes and native languages are different, but their common desire to learn unites them and it's truly humbling.

I remember with shame my pathetic excuses to avoid attending school a few (OK, several) years ago. I think I even once feigned laryngitis, (although everyone, as I remember, was delighted to have a bit of peace and quiet for once, and in the interests of authenticity I had to sustain the charade for several days). Yet here they are, genuinely eager to come to school to learn.

Roughly-hewn

No computers - just a blackboard

Our Boma school building was built by fellow volunteers like myself and is a quaint construct of roughly-hewn desks and a thatch roof supported on log posts.

Its only concession to conventional teaching aids is a makeshift blackboard; no froufrou computers here! Where would we plug them in?

But it does have a magnificent view of the savannah flatlands and it's frequently the teacher who is distracted, never the students.

Sneaking suspicion

The Maasai Women's Market

We also run a small school at the Maasai Women's Market, a thatched stall on the road to Arusha at which the Maasai women sell beadwork, jewellery and curios which are all their own handiwork.

They turn up for class every day in all their beadwork finery (and Maasai ornamentation is highly decorative and colourful), with their exercise books and a good deal of cheery enthusiasm, but I'm developing a sneaking suspicion that their primary goal in attending school is to teach me Maa; I have found no evidence of a burning desire amongst these ladies to champion the Queen's English!

It's a fun battle and they'd have got their way by now if the Nilotic tongue weren't so damned near impossible to master.

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