Post Emmanuel stress: a new teacher

After the Emmanuel incident, which left me a quite disappointed, to say the least, as I was really counting on him to become my star teacher, I found another suitable candidate. Lauma was his name. He had all the right papers, lots of experience, a good view on helping others and was pleasant to talk to, so I offered him a job, as head teacher of the Zanzibits centre. He accepted, and we started to plan things out a little. We went to the bank, where I introduced him to the manager so that he could retrieve funds from our account. All seemed perfect. A few days later I had to leave for Europe, as I really needed to start worrying about the whole fundraising aspect of the school, and left Lauma in control of setting things up locally.

Never again did I hear from him.

I don’t really know or understand why this is, but then again, I should have learnt my lesson from Emmanuel. I honestly don’t think they’re bad kids, but for some reason they did not want to tell me to my face that they weren’t happy with the situation… so something of the sort. I can only guess, but once again, some good insight in Swahili culture. Interesting.

(My advice to you guys is, be direct to others, be open, and if you have issues, try to solve them; don’t run away from them).

Looking back, I should have realised a lot earlier that my trainer did not specifically have to from Zanzibar or Tanzania. Zanzibits was rapidly becoming fact and an experienced, stable trainer was needed. Having spoken and complained to Ineke of Butterfly Works numerous times about the ‘disappearing’ of my potential trainers, she advised me to take a look at other options. The most logical and feasible of these was to hire an ex-Nairobits student to take on the task of trainer, for the first year, at least.

This changed my vision drastically, and I am now so thankful for having listened to Ien, as it is turning out just wonderfully. More about this later on; first things first.