A bridge between Sweet Home and a rural village in Tanzania, Africa is being built in small pieces by three local women who will soon embark on a journey to help bring education to girls of the African plains.
Missionaries Esther Bennett and Sharon Pryor, along with their friend, Peg Wirth, will leave Oregon February 19 and spend two days traveling to the MaaSae Girls Lutheran Secondary School located on a 750 acre coffee plantation near Monduli, Tanzania.
They are part of a 13-member team from the U.S. and Canada that is offering aid to the school, which was founded in 1994.
Bennett and Pryor have spent the last 25 years traveling around the world offering aid to other missionaries. Bennett has made two previous trips to Africa and Pryor one. Bennett will teach about the Bible and Pryor will offer her musical talents to the troupe.
This is Wirth’s first worldwide adventure. She brings along valuable tools as a handy person who will help with much-needed building maintenance projects. “I’ve always wanted to go to Africa,” Wirth said of the adventure. “God gives you the desires of your heart. I’m also interested, as a single American woman, in seeing how women are treated in third world countries.”
“There are seven church denominations represented by the 13 persons who will make this trip,” Pryor explained. “They include Lutheran, Nazarene, Mennonite, Evangelical, Episcopalian, Catholic and Baptist.”
The group will spend almost three weeks helping at the school, located 45 miles from the nearest community of any size. There is a small village about four miles away. Women will sleep in the school’s cement block buildings, but the men on the trip will bunk in tents.
The school was founded by Jean Wahlstrom and her husband Marvin Kanannen of Minnesota. The Maasai tribesmen are nomads who move their animals frequently throughout the Tanzania plains in search of grazing land and water.
The Maasai men are known as warriors, hunters and protectors of their herds, but Maasai women often lead a life filled with hard work and little to no formal education.
The first school buildings were started in 1994 with a dedication held in 1995. Students were selected from the area based on academic skills, motivation and character.
The students are interviewed in Maasai, English and Swhili because they are accepted.
Girls are accepted as classes of 45 and spend seven years earning an education equivalent to the first year of college. Courses include physics, chemistry, biology, math, English, Swahili, civics, history, religion, geography, agriculture and more.
Students are supported through scholarships. It costs about $250 per year per student. Without the scholarships, the school’s founders say, only a few of the girls could attend school.
The three Sweet Home women will take with them many needed items such as 11 pounds of vitamins (donated by a local store), 200 tooth brushes donated by local dentists, and Slip and Snip Scissors donated by Don Gallogly.
They would like the community of Sweet Home to help them fill one special needs…50 red sweatshirts. Large size would work best.
“The local Lutheran ladies donated funds so we could purchase a starter hydroponics kit to help introduce the students to hydroponic gardening,” Pryor said.
A list of items needed by the school is included here. Local persons who would like to donate sweatshirts or other needed items may leave them at The New Era, 1313 Main.