Too hungry to learn: Going to school in Manzese

 A young girl dressed in white shirt, messily tucked in her long navy blue skirt that reached her ankle and a white headscarf was dusting off dirt from her black shoes. She was standing by the blue gate of her school.

She was a standard six pupil of Manzese Primary School guarding the gate. Two young boys were sharing a laugh at the other end of the metal gate, also guarding the gate. Set amidst this informal settlement of Manzese, in a very highly populated area, is the Manzese Primary School.

While some pupils of Manzese Primary School were loitering around the premises, others were peeping from the metal bars of their class.

Passing through the classes, it was nostalgic to witness the blackboard with neatly drawn lines and date on the far left hand corner, three pupils sharing a desk, teachers with the white chalk and a cane on the other hand, pupils repeating words after their teacher and the open windowed classrooms. In 13 years, the setting of a public school had not changed. 

Moving from one class to the other, two other boys in navy blue shorts and white shirts shared a bucket of water and passed through the sign ‘Keeping environment clean’. Gazing through the school’s garden, the environment was neatly kept and showed that the pupils took good care of their surroundings.  

The school boundary abuts another primary school of Ukombozi and these two schools cater for about 56 per cent of Manzese ward’s children. 

Guarding the school gate

The first observation that was made still resided in my thoughts. Why were the children guarding the gate? One of the discipline teachers of the school, Ms Halima Kayagwa who has been teaching in Manzese primary school for the past five years, spoke to Sound Living, “We do not have a security guard and for the safety of all, the children who volunteer during the lunch break, be by the gate on rotation, so that the other pupils can be monitored not to go out of the premises and also to make sure that a trespasser could not easily walk in and out of the premises.”

Within minutes, on the other end of the school, children aged between 6-14, surrounded the strange and new faces, as if wanting all their voices to be heard. 

Ms Halima further continued to explain the ground reality of redundancy of a security guard to protect more than 1600 students. “We did have a security guard, he was being paid through the contributions the parents used to give. Those who had the will paid Sh400 per month that encompassed security guard fees, maintenance of toilets and sewage and ensure proper sanitation. After the free education was introduced, all the contributions were stopped, which were basic, leading to cutting down of costs and employment,” she explained. 

The environment and coomunication gap

To get a better understanding of this over-populated pre-urban setting of the school in this area, Sound Living spoke to Amina Zuberi, a local resident of the area who works in the city. She said, “Some people fear to dwell in Manzese, there are a lot of improper things that happen here. For example, black magic is prominent here, especially among women. Also, unemployment is very high especially among the youth and many people are engaged in petty trading activities and hard manual labour, there is also prostitution.”

According to the book, ‘A common wealth of learning, - revisiting millennium development goals’, Manzese is reputed to be the largest squatter settlement in Dar es Salaam, in terms of population and area. She added that during the 1970’s, it was notorious for robberies and ‘lawlessness’ and earned the name ‘Soweto’ (Kironde, 1995). Overall, there is lack of basic infrastructure, resulting in overcrowding, poor sanitation and poor waste management. It was observed that the area was a hostile one, especially towards women who were subjected to sexual violence intensified by the lack of street lighting, narrow streets, congested housing, and too many guest houses and bars. 

Against this backdrop, the question often pops, are the Manzese Primary School children ‘safe’ to be studying with such conditions and to be walking to and from school?

Most of the teachers at Manzese Primary School confirmed that there are security concerns in the settlement. The discipline teacher, Ms Halima said, “The insecurity sits on the unsafe surrounding of the place. We as teachers get worried when a child doesn’t report to school for a week, even a month. We do know if something is wrong, and when we try to call the parents/guardian to ask them about the problem, they don’t get back to us with a feedback. Eventually, we go to the police to report the case of a missing student.”

The teacher went on saying that in a class of 65 students, it is normal and constant for at least 4 to 5 children to be absent each day. “You need to understand that most of the pupils who attend this primary school stay either with a single-parent or their relatives, clearly who neither follows up on the child’s learning activities nor cares whether the child is regularly attending school or not. We get to know this because when we ask the parents or guardians to come to school for a parent-teacher meeting regarding their child’s performance, the parents don’t turn up,” Ms Halima explained that the communication gap between the teacher and parents is terrible, and this degrades the learning capacity of the child. 

The end of school feeding program

In 2015, Tanzania joined the long list of countries to cancel school fees at the primary and secondary level. The new policy aims to free families from any fees and contributions to education for 11 years of schooling. It is in line with the new commitments made by countries as part of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), and for encouraging universal primary and secondary education.  

“The concept of free education is good, no doubt on that. But the way it is implemented in this country, to my opinion, has not made a significant difference in the improvement of education. 

First, the environment created after the free education is the primary concern of this school and many in that we are not capacitated to feed the children. The school feeding program had to stop because the school stopped receiving contributions from the parents,” Ms Halima said while explaining why the feeding program had to stop.

During the break, the children used to receive porridge made out of unrefined maize flour, rice and blue band. It was a nutritious meal that motivated pupils of the school to study, concentrate and attend classes. “The porridge was an incentive for the children. Each child, those who had the will, contributed Sh200 per day for food. And this contribution also helped other children who could not contribute that sum every day. We definitely witness a reverse effect, for instance, pupils fall asleep in the class because majority of these children who attend the school come from a poor family. Imagine studying for 7 hours without food,” one of the schoolteachers, Ms Amina Bakari who was seated next to Ms Halima, told Sound Living.  

Ms Halima added, “Secondly, there is no clear understanding between parents and school. The parents have misinterpreted the concept of ‘free education’; they assume everything should be free, from an exercise book to other basic needs. Most of the pupils come to school without basic materials, which we then cater for because we care.” 

The budget revealed

Manzese Primary School was built in 2002 with a total of 1602 students (804 boys and 798 girls) and 35 teachers. Currently, there are 1674 students (872 boys and 782 girls) with 50 teachers. 

The head-teacher of Manzese Primary School, Ms Laura Tesha said that there are still a lot of challenges the school is facing and reiterated the issues the teachers explained. “Change in education is the slowest among all the societal reforms to take effect, but yields the most progress for the society. 

This area was a dumping site before it was fenced with concrete borders. The aftermath of this is still witnessed in the poor sewage system of this school. The feeding program has come to an end, because the contributions have stopped, as addressed by the teachers. 

The ground area is insufficient to conduct all the sport activities and one of the underlying and least talked about issue is the absenteeism of students that has become a routine among few students and there is little or none cooperation from parents with regards to their child’s performance,” she explained few challenges. 

Ms Tesha revealed that the school received a total sum of Sh887,000 last month, of which, 30 per cent is used for school needs such as conducting tests, chalks etc. 30 per cent is used for maintenance and repairs. 20 per cent is used for the 50 teachers, 10 percent to be used for transport for field trips or inter-school sports and first aid and the other 10 per cent for sports.

The school doesn’t have a library; hence all the books are piled up in a cramped space in their storage area. Ms Tesha concluded, “The text-books shortage is persistent. 1 book is shared among 8 pupils, which becomes a challenge. To run a school like this, with a classroom environment not only conducive to learn but also teach with good learning materials, would need a sum of Sh5,000,000.”

Tanzania was among the many countries that domesticated the implementation of sustainable development goals (SDGs) to achieve the 2030 targets. Quality education is fourth SDG goal adopted by Tanzanian government to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.