Arusha Campus News – 22 Feb 2020

My highlight of the week could be one of many amazing events this week but if you were there you will never forget the Polish (and Ukrainian!) songs sung by the wonderful Rejman family. They were simply AMAZING!

The old Isuzu truck school poses under an endless Tanzanian sky as it reaches the end of its journey to Lake Eyasi this week.

Plenty to read about in this week’s newsletter, so my column shall be brief. A big thank you to the tireless work of our teachers. Each week there is someone who rises to the plate and works for everyone to create something special. This week our heroes are  Miss Coralie (Mother Tongue Day), Miss Anoek (M1 IDU trip to Eyasi), Miss Larpent (Alliance Concert) and Mssr Olivier (Personal Project Workshop)! None of these people get a penny extra from me for doing this additional work. Its just for the love of the job! I think you will agree that we are very lucky to be working with such dedicated people.

Remember not to come to school on Monday – its a holiday!

Phil

Teckla and Nadine teach a traditional game from Tanzania

This was a wonderfully busy short week, in light of the long weekend coming up. It started Monday with a fabulous magic show for the primary students, followed by the M1s interdisciplinary trip to Lake Eyasi, safeguarding training for some of our teachers in Dar and the M5s personal project workshop at TGT.

D1 and PYP students prepared exciting performances and activities celebrating International Mother Tongue Day on Thursday. It was great to see the diversity of our school in action and the wealth of knowledge and experiences students bring with them to school. A big thank you to the life skills teachers, secondary volunteers and primary teachers for making this learning experience happen.

The weekend is also looking exciting and full of learning; we are hosting a pre-debate workshop this Saturday for a number of participating schools, in preparation for the first edition of the Arusha Open Debate Championship scheduled for Feb 29-Mar 1 and additionally sending a group of students to the MUN conference in Nairobi for the entirety of next week. Enjoy your four days away from school if you are travelling and will see you all back again on Tuesday!

With best regards,
Ciprian

This week’s highlight was the celebration of World Mother Tongue Day (see D1 performers above). Parents and students from D1 and PYP celebrated languages starting with a variety of performances and then a rotation to different stations represented by the D1 students who organised activities for the primary classes. Well done Miss Coralie who organised the event.

What is Mother Tongue Day?

International Mother Language Day is celebrated every year on 21st February. The main purpose of celebrating this day is to promote the awareness of language and cultural diversity all across the world. It was first announced by UNESCO on November 17, 1999. Since then it is being celebrated every year.

The date represents the day 21st February 1952 when four young students were killed in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, because of Bengali and Urdu language controversy. Languages are the most powerful way to preserve and develop culture and to promote it all across the world. Because of this unfortunate incident, International Mother Language Day is celebrated in all over the world, while it is a public holiday in Bangladesh. 

Information from https://www.calendarlabs.com/holidays/international/mother-language-day.php

Amanda

On Thursday, 20th February 2020, UWCEA hosted one of the most entertaining events ever to happen on our campus, the Mother Tongue Day. Prepared and coordinated by our very own teacher, Ms. Coralie, the event started off with performances all the way from PYP to the Diploma. A lot of incredible songs were sung, dances, stories and all sorts of entertainment. It is unbelievable how diverse our campus really is!

After that, groups of Diploma 1 students who were already very much prepared went to their respective areas and kids rotated so as to get a glimpse and taste of all the different activities, from diverse Nationalities and Culture.

At the end of the day, the event was a success! Everyone really loved it, both students and teachers. Great thanks once again to everyone who made it happen. We look forward to more events throughout the year 2020.

Below are some of the pictures taken during the Mother Tongue day event.

M1 students travelled to Lake Eyasi this week together with their counterparts from Moshi campus. We visited the Datoga and Hadzabe tribes and camped for 2 nights near the lake. The Datoga are pastoralists and specialise in metal work and during our visit we learned about their language, how they build their houses, what they eat, how they divide responsibilities between men and women and how to make an intricate arrowhead out of a simple nail! 

On Day two, students woke up early to visit the nomadic Hadzabe tribe and join the men on their hunt. Our students did great and ran with and after the Hadzabe hunters for almost two hours. They learned how the Hadzabe obtain their food; the different groups found honey, tubers and hunted for small animals. After the hunt, we looked at the Hadzabe shelters, enjoyed some target practice with bows and arrows and danced with the tribe members.

Currently, there are only about 1000-1500 Hadzabe left and on our way back to camp, we had lots to reflect on: what can we do to make sure that these tribes can continue their traditional lifestyle?
Once back, students worked in groups on tasks that brought together the subject groups of Individual Societies and Design. They explored their own tribal identity, thought of ways to survive and organise themselves. We also visited the lake and swam in a nearby pond. Overall, it was a great trip and we returned with dusty, slightly tired, yet happy students!

What a show on Wednesday night! A group of 20 students and staff (pictured above) joined a fantastic musical event at the Alliance Française. The concert showcased Thaïs Diarra (from Mali/Switzerland) and Noumoucounda (Senegal) ; they mixed modern and traditional African sounds and immediately rocked the house – keeping the audience dancing until the very end.

M5 Students spent Thursday morning at TGT ground for their Personal Project report writing workshop. This annual writing retreat is intended to equip students with skills that will enable them to write good reports. During this cooperative learning session, using the jigsaw classroom technique, students analysed assessment criteria within their expert group, shared their findings and reviewed each other’s draft report. Everyone received constructive feedback that must now be used, along with their supervisor’s written feedback, to edit and complete their final personal project report due on March 9.

P6 and M2 are both having a unit on food waste. We’ve been trying to understand how bad the food waste is, not only in our school but also out of school. When we were researching we discovered that annually about 1.3 billion tonnes of food gets wasted. That would be one trillion three hundred billion kgs per year, that is a crazy amount of food just imagine all the people that could benefit from that food and all of those innocent little chickens, pigs or cows that get killed for absolutely no reason, all of those lives lost.

Primary is doing a project to see which part of the school wastes the most food. We’re also trying to educate people on how food waste affects the world and how various people could benefit from all the food that gets wasted. We have tried to implement this into our daily lunch routine by making it a competition to see who wastes the most food per week. So far the staff have been dominating the race to see who wastes the most food. I feel this is both very exciting and very educational because it allows students to learn about food waste at the same time as reducing food waste. Our school is doing pretty amazingly compared to the average American, who wastes approximately 420 grams per day.

First of all, we would highly appreciate it for all of you to reduce the amount of food wasted because there are many people in the world who are not privileged enough to get good food. Reducing food waste also saves resources, and we can limit food waste by cooking or taking the right portion of food as you will really eat so that it will not go to waste.

At school, from the canteen lots of food is wasted because students either take too much food or don’t like the food. If you are one of those people you should take smaller portions at a time and just come back for seconds. In grocery stores you should try buying foods with a longer expiry date so that it can last longer, if a food’s expiry date is over that doesn’t necessarily mean that the food is bad so try the food it may still be good and you must not waste it. For any fruit or vegetables you should not leave them in the fridge too long otherwise they will rot or not be nice any more, you could make a fruit juice or smoothie out of it and it will be just nice. And finally for the leftovers from lunch or dinner, you could warm it up or keep it for the next day. Lastly, please try to waste as little food as possible.

The M2s

The walk from Data/Tower Hill down to the lower gate on Sunday afternoon (4-6.30pm) went well, and thanks again for granting permission.  Seven students and one tutor (Chris Green) participated.  The focus was a general overview of the landscape that the site, and UWCEA (visible from the top of the hill) is a part of, including land-use (e.g., farming types), the different habitats and their characteristic species of plant and animal.  Our walk coincided with the peak day for Pieridae butterfly migration, with tens if not hundreds of thousands of white butterflies (of 2-3 species, mostly Belenois aurota, or Caper White) streaming southward across the hills.  That more than made up for what was a relatively quiet afternoon for birds.  Despite the heat, the group were very engaged throughout, asking a constant stream of questions ranging from natural history to social and cultural aspects, and are keen to do it again.
 

Pete Davidson

Outdoor Pursuits Programme
Please note that there has been  a slight change to the Ngorongoro-Natron Level 4 hiking trip. It is now open to students from M4 to D2 (rather than M5-D2). Students can sign-up by clicking on this link:

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/9040E4FAAAA22A6F94-outdoor

Please find below the OP trips for the rest of the semester:

 

 

Black History Month is a month dedicated to the achievements, and actions of African Americans that were not recognized due to the whitewashing of our history. It is the remembrance of the black man’s struggle and perseverance, during a period when the color of one’s skin dictated the importance of a person in society. We celebrate black history month not only to reflect on how far we’ve come, but it is also to pave the way for where we’re going; a future in which history does not only portray the subjugation of the black man to the cruel systems that were slavery, colonialism, and racism. Instead, it is to shine a light on the misconceptions that purposely ignore the involvement of black people in various pivotal moments in history that only the white man was credited for. 

Join us, as we commemorate Black History Month!
#blackexcellence #BlackHistoryMonth

Anyone who’s interested, please let me know either via email http://davidratsakatika@uwcea.org or in person. Also, for those who would like tennis coaching, Arusha Campus has access to the best tennis coach in Arusha in Lembris. He’ll be on the tennis courts with his coaching team every Tuesday from 4:30pm-5:30pm. All UWCEA-Arusha parents and teachers are welcome to attend coaching sessions, all abilities welcome. Lembris charges a 10,000TSH pay as you play service so karibuni.