Kibo, what a difference a town makes!

Kibo School is right in the middle of urban Moshi, and only a few minutes walk from Childreach International’s office.  From the moment we stepped inside the school gates it was obvious that these children were much more self assured than the children we had met at Mgungani School which is in a more rural area, about a 40 minute drive out of Moshi.

The first workshop went really well, they took to the drama game and had no qualms with individually presenting to the whole group at the end of the workshop.  This would have been a real challenge in the other two rural schools, at Singachini some children showed difficulties presenting to a small group of seven.  Certainly, our visits last week to Mgungani and Singachini would of been the pupils first [o1] and possibly longest encounter with external classroom visitors, this got me thinking.

It makes sense that the children are more confident in towns as they are familiar with the hustle and bustle, the cars and tourists.  I wanted to find out more about the discrepancies between urban and rural, perhaps living away from the crowds and noise of the city naturally fosters quieter and more introvert people? I interviewed Childreach International’s Programme Manager, Lorna Yoyo to find out more.

It seems that the daily activities of the children can vary very little between the towns and villages, chores are a huge part of childhood in Tanzania and many children will be at school at 6am to clean the classrooms before lessons start. It is also compulsory by law to bring five sticks of fire wood a day, imagine that.  As well as chores, children will often take on family commitments from a young age, if there is a new born baby in the family girls as young as seven will begin caring for them after school whilst the mother tends to her errands.

The most noticeable difference between town and rural communities is electricity, there is none in the latter. With no light households can do little after dark and if you still have homework or chores to complete they are done using a flickering oil lamp or candle, the cause of many fatal fires in villages.

Our conversation then moved onto television sets and whilst I am in no way about to hail the TV as a powerful tool for a childs development,  it was interesting to think that the television, amongst other media  like music and  film could play a crucial part in developing children’s cultural, social and global  awareness.   Along with observing the daily dynamics of commerce in the towns, these different media help cultivate a much broader cultural and social understanding, enabling children to contextually locate themselves within society.  In Tanzania the owner of the television network IPP is a well respected entrepreneur from the Chagga tribe in Moshi.  Reginald Mengi made his fortune selling pens and sweets and now heads up the largest industrial groups in East Africa.  With his fortune Mengi sponsors many schools in Tanzania and every year he hosts a ‘take over day’ where he busses in a thousand disabled people from all over Tanzania and broadcasts an empowering television show  with interviews, games and entertainment from this marginalised community. Far from the likes of the media tycoons in the UK!

TV is still a very minute part of a child’s life in Moshi, there is by no means the ‘TV dinner culture’ in urban Tanzania as seen in the global north and if children are fortunate enough to watch some it will only be after chores and homework are complete. However, being exposed to these electronic media, local businesses and commerce obviously plays a significant part in helping children become aware of the world around them and hence they are much more self assured.   Electricity lights up an opportunity to learn after dark, catch snippets of the evening news, discover different cultures and even learn about complex family dynamic in soaps, some of which are broadcasted in English.

Another indicator is that our first workshop the drawings produced at Kibo were significantly larger than those at Mgungani and Singachini, we measured this by the area of paper used in each drawing.  There is also a trend that the boys drawings are generally larger than the girls.  It will be very interesting to see how these drawings and pupils develop over the coming months!