Feast of Don Bosco

The day started with a Mass for the 100 students and 40 staff in the big hall in the centre. This hall serves as a church, meeting room and a recreational space – with table tennis being played every evening for half an hour. I have yet to take part but, of course I will!!  Mass was long and relatively lively with a lot of great singing. It is the first time I’ve ever heard the bidding prayers being sung!  It was quite comforting to know that teenagers everywhere are the same; a few of the boys at the back were not just slouched in their chairs but asleep!

After Mass Zelma and I joined the community for a drink which for some consisted of the liqueur that we had brought for them. In fact Fr Thomas soaked his cake in it!

The students celebrated with a morning of games – netball and football. The netball was teachers versus students; the teachers won though not before the Head, Brother Francis, had been sent off for foul play, for moving the goal posts when the opposition were shooting! There were four teams playing football simultaneously on the same pitch. An interesting way of solving the numbers problem and it seemed to work.

These games were then followed by lunch for everyone. The students always get lunch but normally ugali (maize flour mixed with water) and beans. Today it was rice, piri piri and meat. I sat with a young man who was in his first year doing electrical studies. He has come down from his village near Kilimanjaro to live with his aunt so he can study here. He told me – almost incidentally - that he used to have a brother who died in a fire. The same fire that left him very scarred on his face and with a hand that is now disabled.

The school is a technical school that serves young people who have failed their Form 4 exams (equivalent to GCSE) and although it is private, the fees are only about £50 a year which just covers the lunchtime food. Despite being a government approved technical college it receives absolutely no funding from the government: salaries, materials and all other expenses have to be found by the Salesians. When I asked the Rector where they got the money from, he said ‘providence and some benefactors’. I have learned that this is a typical Salesian approach of optimism and one that believes it will happen somehow and before it is needed. Welding, electrical studies, carpentry and secretarial studies are all taught here alongside English and computer studies.

The feast ended with most members of the Salesian family  - Sisters, Brothers and Priests including the Papal Nuncio to Tanzania -in Dar Es Salaam coming together for prayer and then for a riotous meal and evening of celebration.