School visitors

The first building at the School of St Jude was started in 2002 by a working-party of Australian Rotarians. Each year, several groups of Rotarians come to help out at the school and do some sightseeing.

In an earlier post I showed the work accomplished by a group of Rotarians in September. Well, November saw the arrival of another group of eleven hard working Australian Rotarians who assembled the timber cut by the earlier working-party into around 170 desks and chairs for next year’s newly sponsored students.



While they were on the job, no one at the school could have a sleep-in because the group would be up at 6.00am hammering away! However they did a great job and by the time they had left had assembled around 170 desks and chairs. It’s great to know that all the new sponsored kids who will enroll next year won’t have to sit on the floor!!

After the rewarding work of making something useful, there is the fabulous chance to see the Serengeti!

Wildebeest migration – one of the Seven Wonders

The School has always welcomed visitors –

We love visitors! The children and staff love visitors! Even our supposedly ferocious Alsatian guard dogs love visitors! We are very proud of our school and so we enjoy being able to show it off. For this reason we have a special visitors program for people who would like to drop in for a day or up to two weeks and join in activities, explore the area or just relax and soak up the atmosphere in and around the school.

Visitors tend to fall into one of two categories: younger backpacker types who are travelling the world in an adventurous way, and older people who wish to contribute their skills and energy to a worthwhile project that is making a real difference. I think this kind of travel is called ‘values-based travel’ or ‘authentic tourism’ some such marketing category.

We are excited because it looks like we may be able to visit Tanzania this year. There are some good flight deals in May, so that might be the time!

REMINDER: The ‘3 peaks 3 weeks’ challenge starts on 6 January. Ten women will climb three mountains (Mt Kilimanjaro, Mt Kenya and Mt Meru) in three weeks as a fundraiser. The School of St Jude is one of the beneficiaries, and they have raised an amazing $220,000 so far. Check out!