Diary - Saturday, Sep 30, 2006 

Greetings from the entire crew here in Jambiani and once again, we are happy to report that all is well and as usual, busy!! Pat and I have been back on Zanzibar now for almost two weeks and we are pretty well back up to full speed... that's Zanzibar speed... which is usually a nicely balanced pace. :-) The two biggest news items are the impending arrival of about 16 eye specialists, representing TWECS (Third World Eye Care Society) and of course the commencement of the construction of the Juice Bar/Training facility. Both projects are enormous in scope and in their potential to affect such positive change in this community.

The eye Doctors are scheduled to arrive in November and you might recall from previous updates, they will be attending to about 3,500+ patients in just two weeks! We will be providing detailed reports on their work once they arrive so please check on the site regularly to keep up to date with those exciting developments.

I'm hoping Pat will add some details to this latest entry regarding her visions for the Juice Bar and Training School. This is a beautiful project and I have to say we, and all the people in Jambiani, are excited. As I said before, the funds to commence this program have come from a number of sources and if you refer to our update of 17/5/06 you will be able to see all of the individuals and organizations who have gone out of their way to help us to assist others. Thank you so much!!!

This picture shows the work commencing after three weeks of building the initial foundations. There are some construction challenges on our site but we have three outstanding engineers/ architects/ builders who are taking all the necessary steps to ensure that the final building is solid and built to professional specifications.

Ali on the far left is a Civil Engineer. He will be planning and supervising all aspects of the structural concrete work. This will include the building of arches, support columns, beams and ceilings. Khaled, second from the left is an architect and builder. He produced the final building plans and he has been overseeing the building process along with his brother Salim, who is the last person in this picture. We are very fortunate to have individuals of this calibre and experience to be involved with this work.

This picture is taken from the West end of the building looking east towards the ocean. This will be the main entrance to the facility.

This is a picture of Elias and a “Fundi” bricklayer. Elias (no relation to Pat!) is the general foreman. He, along with Khaled and Salim, has been monitoring the construction and he ensures that all of the workers are doing their jobs correctly. He too is very good at what he does and he has a lot of building experience here on Zanzibar, having been involved with many projects both medium-sized and commercial.

The entire building will be close to 900sqm and will contain two classrooms, a staff room, a kitchen, storage and change rooms/toilets plus the front end Juice Bar/ Restaurant. The second floor when complete will have extra accommodation for volunteer educators.

Here’s Pat with some more details.

The construction of this building has come about thanks to Ocke Schuttevaer, a very dear friend of my father’s, four Rotary Clubs in Europe who heard of us through Paul Terlouw (a friend of Ocke’s) and Jaap, (Ocke’s brother), plus Cordaid and Wild Geese (both Dutch NGOs) and fundraisers that most of you helped to create and support. Ocke and his wife Norma came to visit us a few years ago and he decided to fundraise to help us. This has led to a huge Dutch connection with us. The money that has been raised will build the training facility as well as a restaurant and juice bar component. The restaurant and juice bar will support a two-pronged arrangement. It will be used for the students to train in as well as support the clinic and school so that they can be self-sustainable. We will be offering organic tropical juices, coffees and teas plus afternoon tea, eventually leading up to evening meals.

As most of you know, we constantly need to have fundraisers when we return to Victoria, and although they are a lot of fun and a great way to get together, this is a more practical way of ensuring a “stream of income”.

The concept for the training facility developed as the realization came to us that it wasn’t enough to offer English courses and typing/keyboarding to interested students. The bottom line was that there was no practical use for these skills unless the students could further their schooling. A second realization was that all the cute little boys on the beach whom we first met in 1997, were now young men on the edge of being classified as “beach boys”! Many of them are multi-lingual, have great social skills and work hard trying to earn a living. These are the people who would benefit the most from being able to be trained in the field of tourism. We are also involved as an associate partner with an Italian NGO called ACRA that is being funded for a large project in Nungwi (on the northern tip of the island) and Jambiani. We will be using the school to offer Hospitality, Entrepreneurship, SME (Small-Medium Enterprise) training, education on the environment and the development of a Tourism Association for Jambiani. This last one already exists, but became defunct, so it will be easy to revive. All of this is leading to growth and development in a very positive manner and it is exciting to be a part of it.

We are offering a two-year training program in tourism based on a “hands on approach”. Besides the tourism courses we are also offering English, IT, Leadership, Basic Accounting, basic First Aid, and HIV/AIDS education. The hotels and guesthouses in Jambiani have offered to take our students for Work Experience so we feel sure that the students will end up with jobs in the village and not have to move away.

I am putting out the call to any educators who would like to come to Zanzibar starting in September 2007 to volunteer at the school. We would provide the same system as we do for the clinic which is your room and board, pay for your entry visa, pick up and delivery to and from the airport and a trip to town once a week and of course trying to enjoy the culture, beach and tropical life here. Your commitment would have to be a minimum of 6-8 weeks but of course you could offer to teach for a longer period of time. The teaching timeline would be non-tourism courses for the first semester except for a food safety course, so English etc. will start in September 2007 and tourism courses will start in January 2008. Class sizes for the first pilot project will be 10 students and we will also be offering upgrades to the present staff in the Jambiani hotels in Housekeeping, Front Desk, Food and Beverage Services and Food Production as most of the employees have only on-the-job training. It will be a wonderful experience and we hope to hear from some of you.

I want to take a moment to thank a few people who helped to gather curriculum together for me. Zoë Dhur (retired but not tired from Oak Bay) you are one-of-a kind, Corinne Prong (Belmont) and Dave “Hutch” Hutchings (retired Mount Doug), Chad Jacques and Lana Rahn (Oak Bay); you are all extraordinary people. Thank you so much for coming to my rescue!

The building progresses. Today, Khalid and I sat down and planned out the lighting and then walked over the ground floor to make sure that it all made sense. It is starting to come together and already one gets a sense of the vibrancy of the space; how it will look when it is completed and how exciting it will be when those first students formally enter the building.

The men are working late tonight under lights so that they can finish pouring the columns. Tomorrow the concrete columns will harden and the following day the forms for the second floor will be prepared. I’ll get back to you for the next update with more news as it all evolves.

Thanks Pat!!! Do you remember little Mussa? He was the boy with the congenital heart defect who we raised funds for to send to India for corrective surgery. Well, he finally left last month and although we haven’t heard whether he has had his procedure as yet, we are all confident that he will return with a literal new lease on life. We’ll keep you posted.
Here’s a few more pictures of the school construction just a couple of days ago.