We arrived at ZTC at 08:30 and where introduced to Joanna Martin and Julian Gordon-Hastings, the film crew that would accompany us on our tour of places that had benefited from donated computers from Computers 4 Africa. I just had time to conduct a confidence test on a workstation to be sure I could join it to the domain, before we all jumped into Zooms bus to be whisked off to the first destination, which turned out to be Tanzania’s main library in Dar Es Salaam. On the way there Joanna said that she would like me to do a piece to camera, probably at the next venue, which was a school, in fact I didn’t like the idea as in the words of my sister “This is Mark, he does computers he doesn’t do people” aptly describes me and the prospect of being interviewed for a TV piece left me cold, so I agreed and put it out of my mind. Once there we were shown into the office of Dr Alli A S Mcharazo FCLIP;PhD, MA, BA (London); DIP.Lib; Cert.Law (Dar), who with all those qualifications after his name was obviously a very well educated man and the Director General of the Tanzania Library Services Board, who answers to the Minister for Education. I have to say I was surprised, as I wouldn’t have thought he would have the time to talk to me. What he said made perfect sense in that in his view the best place for computer resources was a public library as in schools donated computers where only used by the pupils, in libraries the same computers were available to everyone. His point was that whereas a school tended to protect the resources of donated computers to only pupils of the school and at any time outside of the school day they were locked away, in a public library they were available during the whole day to anybody that wanted to use them. The library had been given 40-45 of them and they were now being used (with a similar amount supplied by the Ministry of Education) by between 500 and 700 people per day, which I have to say, amazed me!
Once we had finished there we drove about 50 Km north of Dar Es Salaam to the town of Bagamoyo to the Baobab Secondary School for Girls, which is where the computers donated by Holy Trinity had gone. This left me wondering if it was possible that they could still be there and in use, three years later which would make them nearly ten years old now. Imagine my surprise when I walked into their computer suite and after having a look around I was able to say that one’s mine and that’s mine as well. After another three years of use, which doesn’t include the six years they were used at Holy Trinity, three of the ten we donated were still going strong. It was while standing next to a student who was using one of the computers my school donated that Joanna had me do my piece to camera, asking me to explain why the machine I was leaning on was so special to me. Having completed my bit I left the crew to get on with interviewing some of the students, staff and headteacher and had a wonder around the school, everybody I saw was so nice and wanting to talk to me about how and why I was there and when they realised my school had donated some of their computers they all wanted to shake my hand and thank me, making me promise I would return to England and thank all the people at my school as well.
On the way back to Dar we stopped at the Library School for Archives and Document Studies, which is a specialist college that trains librarians and had also received a number of computers from Computers 4 Africa. We were introduced to the principal and the school’s ICT teacher, but unfortunately there were no students as they had already started their school holiday. We spent about an hour looking around their facilities and were shown two new classrooms that would be in use once the school returned along with their computer suite, which I must say was very impressive. With that it was time to return to our bus as we were going to Bakoba tomorrow and it would be an early start.
Back at the hotel we just had time to grab a quick bite to eat before hitting the hay, as we would be picked up at four in the morning to fly from Dar to Mwanza on the shores of Lake Victoria and then a short hop in a small aircraft from Mwanza to Bukoba. At least we wouldn’t have to worry about our suitcases as Danny, Aseri’s brother, was going to drive the 1,500 kilometres to Bukoba with the pencils from Holy Trinity, our luggage and anything else we might need for the coming week of visiting schools to show us the sharp end of what happens to the computers that are donated in the UK and find there way to Tanzania.
