Arusha Campus News – 18 Dec 2021

Our hard working support and ancillary staff (above) were also on their holidays this week – Arusha Campus embarked on a present day invasion of Bagamoyo for a long weekend! 

P6 are pictured above, having packed and prepared bags of gifts for distribution to Plaster House.

Hopefully, every single member of the UWC East Africa Arusha community is affording themselves some relaxation time as I write this newsletter.  As we should know by now, being a member of UWC means helping each other become helpful citizens whose positive attitudes towards community service will be a powerful catalyst for change in our world. The Christian festival of Christmas is the season of goodwill, and can be a tough time for many people, including those who are homeless, recently bereaved, lonely or struggling to make ends meet. In this, last newsletter of 2021, some of our stories celebrate acts of goodwill on the part of our community members.

Our support staff have done exactly that – support us all – throughout 2021 and their weekend last week in Bagamoyo was the very least they deserved in the way of an end of year celebration.

Fiker Tesfaye is a D2 student from Ethiopia who took it upon herself and some friends to organise a blood drive to help the patients at Kivulini Maternity Centre in the last week of term. Later in this news bulletin, I have published the letter of thanks from Michael Hynds, Director of Fundraising at Maternity Africa to show everyone how much Fiker’s gesture was appreciated.

Miss Carmen and Miss Anoek have been exceptionally kind and helpful, organising the bags of food and gifts for the children at Plasterhouse and also for our own support staff families. Each family was able to take home a kitenge bag of goodies for the holiday. P6 are pictured above, having packed and prepared the bags for distribution.

Incidentally, Kivulini is now an official COVID-19 vaccination centre, in case there are those in the UWC community who wish to be vaccinated.  The current vaccines available are Pfizer and Sinopharm.

The most exciting news comes from Miss Kate our College Counselor. Thanks to her amazing dedication and hard woirk, I am able to publish a hefty list of studenst who have received early offers of admission into Universities for August 2022! Congratulations to all thiose students and big Well Done to Miss Kate for guiding these students to success so expertly.

Phil

Monday 10th January 2022 – First day of School

Friday 21st January 7pm – ‘Freaky Friday’ drama production

Saturday 22nd January 7pm – ‘Freaky Friday’

Chloe can’t quite beiieve the news!

Congratulations to Chloe Woodley, pictured above, who was accepted by Hampshire College on a full scholarship. Hampshire only awards one full ride for UWC students and we are so proud of you, Chloe! We also are thrilled to have a hat trick at Cornell University! Congratulations to Akshita, Atkins and Kritika!
This is the very earliest round and we are so pleased that many students have secured a spot at their dream university. I know there are others who are sad this week as things did not go as they hoped. But we have not even started the regular admission season which will be in January and February.
Just before we went on a break, I had a lovely note from a student who graduated last year who had been unsuccessful in the early decision round. She wrote to say “ This is where you get to say I told you so, Ms Kate”. She is so happy at her current university and cannot imagine being anywhere else. It is difficult to remain positive when you are uncertain about what the future holds. By I am certain, there are great things waiting for all of our students.
We are still waiting and hoping for more good news in the coming days. But here is a brief list of this first wave of acceptances, thus far:

Magnus Fischer – Northwestern University

Collins Mkude – Pomona College

Akshita Shaw – Cornell University

Ali Saber- University of Pennsylvania

Amr al Deyah – Amherst College

Atkins Dube – Cornell University

Bashiir Adam – Lewis and Clark College

Collins Mkude – Pomona College

Chloe Woodley – Hampshire College

Hakim Lasuba – St Olaf College

Yll Ahmeti – Concordia College

Vanessa Amasi – Furman College (see our instagram for her acceptance video!)

Cherish Nyakoon – Earlham College

Lennox Magak – Earlham College

Mahdi Alkhaqani – Worcester Polytechnical Institute

Kritika Oli – Cornell

Lulu Nyiti – College of the Atlantic

Lukas Decker  – Groningen University

Kim Stegeman – Groningen University

Bethany Sseruwagi – Oklahoma State University

Alseny Boiro – Oklahoma State University

Sylvia Uguanga – Oklahoma State University

It has become a tradition at Arusha Campus (above) to finish the Primary year with a lyp-sync extravaganza which we call ‘Top of the Pops’. Each Primary Class selects a well known pop song to which they mime and ‘sing’ along to with their own choregraphed stage movements. Great fun. This year was no different and even the teachers stepped up to perform their own version of Blame it on the Boogie.

All around the School, classes celebrated getting to the end of a difficult year. 

Pictured below, P1 even made some fake snow to try and simulate conditions in Lapland!

Due to the early departures to homelands for several cast members, the Secondary Production of Freaky Friday has been postponed to the New Year. It will now be held on Friday 21st and Saturday 22nd January. See you then!

Click on any month (below) to link to the live School calendar on our website