Thursday the 17th in Iringa

We started today by visiting Tumaine University, the Lutheran sponsored University in Iringa. As I understand it, the entire University was built by donations from Lutheran churches in the Twin Cities area. It was an incredible campus. The head of the University was in a meeting, so one of his assistants gave us a tour. They have a building for teaching Information Technology and other science related classes, including basic robotics. The picture below is of the first building constructed on the campus. It has four wings, including numerous class rooms, a small grocery store and an ATM. They are currently adding on to their library. The current library has a computer lab with over 20 computers. Unlike Pommern Secondary School, most of these computers appeared to be in working order. They also have numerous dorms, split by gender. Each dorm is named after the sponsor church that raised the money to build it. If memory serves, the enrollment at Tumaine is about 2,700 students. Jack, Judy and Kay said that the enrollment is almost double what it was two years ago when they visited. Amazing growth!

After the University, we went to visit the house of Kiponda, the local minister who accompanied us to Magome to act as translator and liaison between our group and the local church. He showed us his home, introduced us to his wife and served us a snack of fried bananas and cookies.

Kiponda then joined us as we continued on to Humara Orphanange. This orphanage is located on the outskirts of town and houses just under 40 children that come from homes where both parents have died or there has been extreme neglect or, some of the children were taken off the street. Children at the Humara Orphanage range from 5 to 18 years old. We met with the assistant head mistress and all of the children in a gathering hall. We were given a brief talk on the history of the orphanage and who they help. The, we played some games with the children. First Sandy taught us all a group game and then Jack passed out some more of the small red balls we brought along and played a short partner game. After that, we got out some baloons and had some fun with the kids, ending in all kinds of popping ballons. Below is a picture of us playing with the kids. After a short tour of the facility (they raise cows for the milk and for sale to make money), we met with the headmistress who had been in a meeting. I was very impressed with her. She has been headmistress of the orphanage for many years - I don't think I could do her job for 1 week much less for many years. To the right is a picture of the headmistress and Jack.