Helping Doris - Africa and Asia Venture

Helping Doris - Africa and Asia Venture

We, four girls from sheltered backgrounds, arrived at Ilkidinga nervous and apprehensive about the apparent lack of proper toilet. However our woes quickly disappeared with the smile of a gorgeous little girl, who was to become not only our neighbour but our surrogate daughter! This three-year-old girl was called Doris, and lived in the community we co-habited with during our time volunteering in Tanzania.

The first time we met her she was shy and quiet, took the balloons we gave her and went and played with them on the grass outside of our house. Pretty soon we had all fallen in love with her. She was the most confident of the younger children, even though the only thing she could do to get something off us was to say "Hi, hi" and point at it! We spent all of our spare time with her and the other children, playing, cooking, and even cleaning.

Doris lives with her Great Aunt, as her mother was just a teenager when she gave birth, and has since run away. Her father probably doesn't even know she exists! This only leaves her extended family to care for her. 

When it came around to half term 3 of us had decided to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, and came up with the idea of getting sponsored and using the money to buy things for our school, as they were desperately shorts of desks, textbooks, and the classrooms were dark and dingy. We managed to raise £2414, using the justgiving website and the AV foundation. After buying equipment for our school we were left with more money and needed to decide what to do with it. We decided the remaining money should be used to sponsor Doris, through the first year of a private primary school. We looked around a couple of schools, but several people recommended one school, so after visiting and speaking to the teachers, we decided to send her there. Her great aunt, who has her own daughter, and also cares for two other teenagers, can't support Doris through private school. Public schools in Tanzania are so bad that children who go there can't possibly reach their potential, as the classes are just too big and so sadly most kids are overlooked. Private school is only £400 per year, and so easily achievable when 4 of us are fundraising. All the classes are taught in English, beneficial as all secondary education is taught in English, in both the state and private sector. Therefore her standard of English will be very high, which is vital for a good job now, especially in tourism, which is where most of the money lies in Tanzania these days. She is the most kind and wonderful little girl and we hope to sponsor her for the entirety of her education, so that she can have the best future possible.

The school we have sent her to is one of the best in the area, and has achieved high results with all their children passing the exams to go on to secondary education. They have sports and art lessons, which is exceedingly rare in Tanzanian schools, and there are less than 20 children in each class. The classrooms are smart and clean, each child having their own chair and sharing a desk with just one other child. They even have western toilets, with sinks! They have a playing field, with football goals and netball nets, and even a slide. The school is run by sisters, who, we are assured, turn up for all their lessons, We have also paid for her school bus, her uniform and her school books. They send us term reports and lots of her work to go with it, so we can see how she is doing.

On our last night at Ilkidinga Doris's family invited us for dinner in their home. Before we left one of the English speaking teachers came in to say a prayer to thank us for what we had done, and thank god for bringing us to them. All the family cried and it was probably one of our most emotional moments at Ilkidinga, but it was then that we new we really had done something amazing for their family. If you can do something like this to change a child's life then it's more worthwhile than you can imagine.

We all plan to go back and visit her, hopefully every year, starting this summer. She gives us a connection to Ilkidinga for a very long time, we were told by our teachers what we did at Ilkidinga will never be forgotten, and we know we will never ever forget our time there.

Celia, Jess, Anna & Flavia - Ilkidinga Primary School, Tanzania 2010

 

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