And then we were open!
22 07 08 - 11:14I have been ordered to do the official opening day blog entry!
After a late night collecting my new dress from the seamstress and finishing decorating the stage in the new assembly hall we were up early again to help with odds and ends.
The Moshono campus boarders arrived at 6.20 am (!) to have breakfast with our boarders which caused some excitement as they knew that after the opening day the Usa boarders could show the Moshono boarders around their houses. This also meant our sponsored boy, Liston was to visit too.
After breakfast and ensuring every child was a smart as possible (they were taking so much pride in their dress today) they all went to play on the field. Chris went to test the sound system and i went with the other HODs to welcome VIPs as they arrived out of their cars and make sure they had a badge, signed the visitor's books and were sent on a tour
Chris taking over the story now, as George is teaching today... Our day was preceded by this fantastic item of journalism: Arusha times. Nice to see the school in the local press. The day's events included speeches by all the dignitaries invited to the event, but the highlights were the kids performances. Each year group from prep up to standard 7 did a song or dance (one class even did an acrobatic display)
We had poems & raps as well as traditional dances. Some of the costumes must have taken all term to organise!
Here the Tanzanian Minister of Education cuts the ribbon to officially open the school:
The couple holding the ribbon, are Helen and Gordon Smith, who run the Smith Foundation in America. They are very special friends of St Jude's and they paid for Usa campus to be built!
The school is enormously grateful to their family for all their help.
After the ceremony, the school laid on lunch for nearly 1700 people (with all the kids & staff from both campuses we've 1300 ourselves!) Then the kids from Usa got a chance to show their classmates from Moshono around the school. Since the school was split, some of the kids have only seen some of their old classmates once, at the term1 reunion day, unless they live close enough to visit on foot. Turns out that our sponsored boy Liston is very good friends with a couple of kids in our boarding house, so they took great delight in showing him their dorm. Now all we have to do is organise an event where the Usa boarders can go to see the Moivaro boarding school!
The day was a great success, showing off the very best of our school and our kids to the important visitors.
Now we're ready to start thinking about the secondary campus next year!
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