Headmaster of St. Margaret’s Academy wraps up two month visit to USA

Posted on May 4, 2010 by foae
Michael Magaya and US students

Michael Magaya visited schools in Minnesota and Spokane, Washington

Michael Magaya, headmaster of St. Margaret’s Academy, will catch a flight to Tanzania tonight, bringing to a close his two month stay in Minnesota. He shared meals, stories, and prayers with so many.

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He visited several Minnesota schools; sharing and exchanging ideas with students and staff;
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He traveled to Whitworth University in Spokane, WA to develop a “study abroad” partnership with St. Margaret’s Academy;
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Michael worked with the Friends of Africa Education board of directors to align goals and objectives;
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He shared stories of success with Friends of Africa Education partners like Books for Africa, Feed My Starving Children, Rotary Clubs, and local churches;
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And he expressed his deepest, heartfelt gratitude to sponsors and donors.

Thank you to all who made Michael feel so welcome.

(Mama Tesha, founder and director of St. Margaret’s Academy, was scheduled to visit this spring as well, however we are anticipating a fall visit instead.)

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Books for Africa, Feed My Starving Children, Michael Magaya, Minnesota schools, Rotary Club, St Margaret's Academy, Tanzania | Comments Off

Mama Tesha to Visit Minnesota! March 8 – May 4

Posted on January 30, 2010 by foae
Mama Tesha

Mama Tesha of St Margaret's Academy in Tanzania

We are thrilled to announce that Mama Tesha will visit Minnesota this spring.  She is the Founder and Director of St Margaret’s Academy, Tanzania, East Africa.

Mama first came to Minnesota nine years ago.  She traveled on a one-way plane ticket, searching for help for her small group of students–most of whom were AIDS orphans.  Friends of Africa Education answered her appeal, organized a charity golf tournament, and raised enough funds to build a school in 2001. St. Margaret’s Academy was born!

Since then, the school has grown to 450 students and is now ranked 9th in the nation out of more than 14,000 schools.  Mama has an amazing story– a story of what children facing unimaginable challenges can do when given the gift of education.
As an extra bonus, Mama will bring a special guest with her from Tanzania– Headmaster of St Margaret’s Academy, Michael Magaya.
We are delighted to welcome both of them to Minnesota!
FOAE is hosting their visit to:
raise awareness
thank sponsors/donors
generate funds for additional classrooms
Posted in Announcements, News | Tagged Friends of Africa Education, Mama Tesha, March 8 2010, Minnesota, St Margaret's Academy | Comments Off

Galen and Kathy Britz Trip to Tanzania & Kenya Jan 27 2010

Posted on January 27, 2010 by foae

January 27
Wednesday was a day of visits. We began the day by driving to Monduli, a village about 5 miles from Kisongo, where SMA has another nursery school. It is located very near the Tanzania Military Academy and has provided a place for there children to begin there education. There were about 30 kids in each of the two rooms. After visiting the children and hearing them sing for us we had tea in the shade of a tree just outside the classrooms.
The Maasae Girls’ secondary school is also in Monduli. The missionaries, David and Eunice Simonson, helped establish this school

Maasae Girls' School in Monduli, Tanzania

and it has a connection with Concordia in Moorhead because the Simonson’s are alumni of that college. This was a special visit for Boots, as she is also a Concordia alumnus. The campus is in a beautiful and quiet setting. Mr. Magaya, SMA headmaster, who was leading our tour, had never visited this campus and was impressed. He was very interested in seeing the design of the dormitories, as SMA is planning to build dormitories some day in the future.

After lunch at SMA we toured Peace House Academy secondary school. The campus was impressive and more complete than when we visited in 2007. Their 3rd class began this year. One of the students is a graduate of SMA.
In the evening we hosted Doreen’s family at our hotel. It was great to see her and Bethuel along with the children. The children were as well mannered as they were in 2007.

Posted in News | Tagged Friends of Africa Education, Maasae Girls’ Secondary School, Monduli Tanzania | Comments Off

Galen and Kathy Britz Trip to Tanzania & Kenya Jan 26 2010

Posted on January 26, 2010 by foae

January 26

St Margarets Academy Nursery School Students in Arusha

The next morning, Tuesday, we started our day by visiting the new Arusha Lutheran Medical Center in Arusha town. The hospital is part of Dr Mark Jacobson’s medical ministry which he began over 25 years ago at the Selian hospital in a small village outside of Arusha. After a nice visit in his office, Dr Mark gave us a tour of the facilities.
The St Margaret’s Academy (SMA) nursery school is in Arusha town, not far from the hospital and that was our next stop. We had morning tea, looked in on the classrooms and took pictures of the sponsored students there. The Nursery school is crowded into 3 rented classrooms housing the beginners (3 year olds), the middle group (4 year olds) and older group (5 year olds). One of the reasons that SMA has such good success is that during these 3 preparation years, the students transition into the primary school very easily.
St Margaret's Academy KisongoNext we traveled to the SMA campus in Kisongo, about 10 miles from the nursery school. As we toured the campus we were amazed at the growth of the school with the new library built by David and Kim Olson from Illinois, the multipurpose/kitchen and the new multistory classroom building. SMA started a

St Margaret's Academy School Board and Friends of Africa Education Board Meeting

nursery school on the campus this year to serve the children in the Kisongo area. There were two rooms of these little ones. We were joined for lunch in the new library with the SMA school board members. The meeting with them followed. The meeting provided a chance for a useful exchange of ideas.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Arusha, Friends of Africa Education, Kisongo, St Margaret's Academy, S\ | Comments Off

Galen and Kathy Britz Trip to Tanzania & Kenya Jan 25 2010

Posted on January 25, 2010 by foae

January 25

Missing Duffle Bag Found

Miracle of miracles, the missing duffle bag showed up in Iringa on Monday morning shortly before we left on the trip to the Iringa airport. It was wrapped in plastic. We opened it after we arrived in Arusha and nothing was missing! We wished the bag could
talk and tell us where it had traveled the last few days.

Our flight from Iringa to Arusha was about an hour later than expected, but MAF (Mission Aviation Fellowship) is not on a schedule. We arrive in Arusha after a 2 hour flight and were greeted by Mama Tesha, Mr. Magaya, several teachers, our driver Tim Mdinka and 5 grade 2

Tim Mdinka

girls who each handed us a bouquet of flowers.

Our first stop was at Doreen’s home. Doreen was the teacher who visited Minnesota for 3 months 3 ½ years ago. She had a lunch prepared for us and we really enjoyed seeing her and her

Doreen Caroline Emmanuel

children again. Doreen’s husband was at work, a temporary job. He is still waiting to get a job in the tourism business. Following lunch, we went to our hotel and got settled in for our 5 day stay there.

Posted in News | Tagged Friends of Africa Education, St Margaret's Academy | Comments Off

Galen and Kathy Britz Trip to Tanzania & Kenya Jan 24 2010

Posted on January 24, 2010 by foae

January 24

Kids at Kilolo

Our visit to Kilolo was very exciting and inspirational as always. They have made great

Kids at Kilolo

progress and just got electricity in the church in the last couple of weeks. We had a productive meeting with their Companion committee. We hosted 25 people, including the 5 of us, at the Lutheran Center in Iringa Sunday night. Both Godlove and Blandina, who KOK’s sponsored at Tumaini and are now teaching at the college, were present.

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Galen and Kathy Britz Trip to Tanzania & Kenya Jan 23 2010

Posted on January 23, 2010 by foae

January 23

Graduate With A's Not AID's

Sign on the Tumaini Campus

This morning Pastor Lamont Koerner (just finishing his 3 month stint on the faculty at Tumaini University and ready to head back to MN) gave us an in-depth tour of the university. It has grown to almost 4000 students; most of them were studying for the final exams at the end of the semester. Later we visited Huruma orphanage on the opposite side of Iringa town. After lunch we did a little shopping and later were frustrated by the antagonizing slow speed at the Internet café.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Huruma Orphanage, Iringa, Pastor Lamont Koerner, Tanzania, Tumaini University | Comments Off

Galen and Kathy Britz Trip to Tanzania & Kenya 2010

Posted on January 22, 2010 by foae

January 22
About 1:30 AM we had a knock on the door and our luggage arrived, hooray!! That is everything except one of the duffle bags filled with gifts and school supplies that we won’t need until we get to Arusha.
The trip to Iringa was over 9 hours. First we had to get a new battery for the van and also a couple of new tires to bring back to Iringa. Finally we were on our way out of Dar around 10 AM. It is about 300 miles to Iringa and the first 200 is in the lower country so it continued to be hot and humid, fortunately the “air conditioning” helped keep us cool. At around the 200 mile mark we entered Mikumi National park. We were very fortunate to see numerous giraffes, elephants, impalas, gazelles and baboons along the road. Lasttrip through this park we didn’t see one animal, so needless to say we were ecstatic, especially Boots and Larry Paulson who are on their first trip to Africa.

We arrived in Iringa around 7 PM and had dinner at the Lutheran Center. We joined about 18 students and 2 chaperones from Gustavus Adolphus who have been in Tanzania since early in January. The accommodations are very nice.

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Galen and Kathy Britz Trip to Tanzania & Kenya 2010

Posted on January 21, 2010 by foae

Dar es Salaam – January 21
The flight to Dar es Salaam went without a hitch. Security checks in Amsterdam were about as stringent as the last time we traveled in 2007. We arrived in Dar ahead of schedule but had to wait for our luggage which did not show up! We finally arrived at our accommodations around 1 AM with the uneasy feeling that we may never see our luggage again.

Mama Tesha, Edmond Azaza and Mama Dorcas at Graduation

Today we attended the graduation of Edmond Azaza, one of the first class of St Margaret’s Academy graduates (Standard 7) from Form VI (high school). Edmond had been attending high school in Dar. Also attending the graduation were Edmond’s parents (Pastor Azaza and Dorcas) and Mama Tesha. It was fun to see how graduations are done in Tanzania. There were 360 graduates that day. Dar was hot and humid (over 90 degrees). Our van had no air conditioning, except for the open windows. Our van also had generator and battery problems. It caused us some problems, but luckily not until after we had met up with Mama Tesha and the Azaza’s, so they helped get us to graduation on time while our driver dealt with the van problems. We had a very delightful dinner at the Cliff Side which is located on the Indian Ocean.

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Galen and Kathy Britz Trip to Tanzania & Kenya 2010

Posted on January 20, 2010 by foae

Amsterdam – January 20

We made it to Amsterdam, but last night in Montreal there was a question about whether or not the KLM
flight would be cancelled. As it turned out it left about an hour late and we arrived in Amsterdam about 30
minutes late. As there is a 3 hour wait until the flight to Dar es Salaam leaves we are making the
connection without a big rush.

Weather in Amsterdam is cloudy and 34 degrees F. We’ll see how the security is for the next flight. The
women in Montreal was a real tyrant, but at least she didn‘t do a pat-down search!

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Kenya, Tanzania | Comments Off