Project period: November 2021 – June 2022
Total cost: 14.590 EUR
Part Misingi: 0 EUR
Financing: Zuiderhuis and Endallah Cultural Tours
Many travelers travel to Tanzania every year via Zuiderhuis and Endallah Cultural Tours. Most of them also stop for at least 2 days in Endallah, at Lake Natron and a few also in Nyamburi. In the context of ‘conscious travel’, Zuiderhuis and Endallah Cultural Tours pay a ‘community contribution’ for each of these travelers that varies between 30 and 60 EUR per person, depending on the total travel budget.
Beneficiaries:
Lake Natron Secondary School – Ngorongoro District – Arusha Region
700 students – 14 teachers – 1 cook
Realised:
Coordination Tanzania: Elibariki A. Dimme
Coordination Belgium: Vincent Van Baelen
This is not the first water project on a larger scale for Misingi, but it is the first water project in Engare Sero. We built a kindergarten here in 2012 and we had a study fund between 2013 and 2018. Lake Natron Secondary School is located in Maasai area, near Ol Doinyo Lengai and adjacent to Kenya and the great rift valley. It is very warm, averaging 35°C with very little rainfall.
This makes a water project the more important. Like many Tanzanian schools, Lake Natron Secondary School also suffers from a structural shortage of teachers and financial government support. The parents are too poor to make up for this deficit. For 667 students, there are currently only 14 teachers and 1 cook. The students receive daily ugali and uji, both cornmeal porridge and have to sleep with a few in 1 bed. The number of students has increased significantly in recent years. Nationally compared to the other secondary school results, this school scores above average.
There is a natural water source 1 km from the school. The students, cook and teachers had to cook or wash themselves or their clothes by walking 2 kilometers with full buckets. In such heat a famous daily effort and time investment.
At the natural water source, this project provided a water pump powered by solar panels and protected by a stone enclosure. Pipelines with 4 strategically chosen tapping points, centrally in the school, near the kitchen, the teachers’ houses and the sleeping place for girls were constructed. For maximum storage capacity throughout the day, we installed water tanks near the school. The sun shines so much and so brightly that the filling of the tanks is sufficient via solar panels.
This project has an enormous impact: more school time, more hygiene, easier cooking, less sunstroke… The school also started its own microclimate campaign. Each student is responsible for watering two trees: more shade, more cooling…
With a view to the near future, we installed 3 water tanks with a corresponding protective fence and pipelines, right next to the school domain and at a height of 100 m. Electricity connections will be made in this more desolate area within a few months. A more powerful pump due to more electrical voltage can pump water to these tanks and then gravitationally supply even more tapping points in the school.