Terrawatu School Project visits

Today Carol and I got a tour of some local schools that Terrawatu is working with. Terrawatu's mission is to provide a bridge between indigenous and modern worlds. One approach they are taking to fulfilling that mission is working with some local public schools that are attended primarily by Maasai children. Computers are not largely not available to children in public schools (or many private ones too)If there are any computers they are generally being used by administrative staff.
Today we visited 2 schools that Terrawatu secured computer donations for and helped them set up internet access. The first school we went to today on the outskirts of Arusha had over 600 students attending and a computer lab with 32 computers. The computers were half pentium 1 and pentium 2 and the other half pentium 3 & 4. 15 of them connected to the internet. We had a hard time imagining how 600 students would utilize these 32 computers. The students with the highest marks get to use the computers..and if I remember correctly mostly the students in the higher grades. The classrooms are very basic with a chalkboard and a bunch of desks with sometimes as many as 4-5 to a desk. On average there were 100 students in each class!! Hard to imagine that's very effective. We had a chance to sit down with the headmaster and hear about his school. One of the biggest difficulties they have is to get parents of these children to value school. Because school is so different than the traditional Maasai life that mostly consists of raising, eating, selling cattle for the men and gathering water, firewood, and cooking for men. So the integration of computers has been an approach to making school more attractive for both the students and the extended community. Family can come into the school and use the computers. Sululu the Terrawatu director says it has been difficult to find ways to keep these computer labs running due to the cost of electricity and internet connection. Given that they often don't have enough reading and writing materials for all their students, it's hard to justify the expense of the computers for administrators.
We proceeded to visit 2 primary schools as well where we were quite the spectacle for the kids. They don't see a lot of mzungu come to their school. MOre later....