High School in Tanzania

Today is the last day of touring for our Fish Lake group. We visited the Ilula Hospital and the Image Lutheran Secondary School. The Ilula Hospital is located an hour east of Iringa in a town along the main highway back to Dar Es Salaam. The hospital began as a dispensary for the local population by some of the early Swedish Missionaries. The locals were wary of the Swedish Doctors and didn't want to be treated with some of the "new" procedures and drugs. The Tanzanians did present an injured donkey to the doctor and the doctor was able to treat its wounds so the natives deciced the missionaries knew what they were doing and allowed them to treat the natives.

We toured the hospital and saw the outpatient clinic, well-baby clinic, labor and delivery, and the general medical ward. The operating room theatre was in use so we were unable to take our tour through there, but we still got a good tour of the hospital. Here is an interesting view of the hospital price list.

The hospital does not provide food for inpatients so usually someone must accompany the patient to bring them food during their stay. They have a separate little rooms for those who come with the patients. We ate lunch at the guest house overlooking the valley below Ilula.

After lunch we headed further east to Image (Im-Aag-Aye) to the Image Lutheran Secondary school. This school is a boarding school for 750 students from age 14 to age 21 or so. Age is not closely correlated to grade level as many students drop out or delay their schooling for many reasons. The students come for 3 month semesters and then return home for a couple of weeks of class. Right now some of the grades are taking their standard tests to allow them to continue to the next level. We looked in on the English test this afternoon.

The kids in the group went back to the orphanage to just spend time with their kids. When we visited before there was a graduation ceremony and much goings on. This time the neighbor kids were not around and many of the older orphans were off at confirmation class. This gave our kids a chance to play soccer and just sit and do crafts with the locals

This evening we celebrated a great visit with dinner at the nice restaurant up the hill a couple of blocks. The only drawback of this place was the one hour it took between delivering the first meal to our group of 20 and to deliver the final meal. It makes for a nice evening of conversation, but is a little hard on the kids when some get fed at 7 and others at 8 (at the same table).

We ended the evening with a round table discussion of our experiences ("yeah, Gods") and communion around the room. This is always a great way to top off our mountain top experience connecting with our brothers and sisters here in Tanzania.