Video: Teaching at Gyetighi Primary School

As a volunteer with the Rift Valley Children's Fund, an orphanage in Tanzania, I was lucky enough to teach English to the Cheke Chea (kindergarten) at Gyetighi Primary School. Gyetighi (prounced geh-tee-gee) is about a 5 minute walk from the Children's Village. Every day at 1pm I'd walk over to school, where I'd be with the 17 kindergartners in the afternoon class for about 2 hours, teaching English, helping them with math (in Swahili!), and playing with them outside. None of the kids in my class lived at the Children's Village, where there is a relatively good supply of clothing, toiletries and food. The differences in clothing and health were apparent on a daily basis. But their smiles and spirits were 17 of my most favorite parts of being in Tanzania.


This video highlights the fun that we had as a class, but there's still lots of work to be done. Renovations at Gyetighi are on-going, and necessary to bring more sunlight and supplies into the classrooms. For the upper level students, who have full days of school, class size makes learning difficult. There is no electricity at the school, there are very few textbooks, and because most students do not have access to light in evening hours, there's no homework. RVCV runs a lunch program for the 450 children at school. For many of the children, who walk over an hour to get to school, this is their only meal of the day.