Fusi News 2010-02 - Rafiki FoundationRafiki Foundation · Fusi News February 2010 News for Friends of Fusi Secondary School in Lesotho JANUARY was always going to be a busy — and

Start OfA NewSchool

Year

Fusi News February 2010

News for Friends of Fusi Secondary School in Lesotho

JANUARY was always going to be abusy — and important — month forFusi Secondary School.

Early in the month, the JuniorCertificate results would beannounced. How well would ourstudents — the first ones we hadentered — have done?

The new school year was to starton Monday, 18th January. We werehoping that we would have eightystudents registered. How well wouldwe do? And what would happen ifour students had failed their JuniorCertificate?

And then there was the decisionto introduce school lunches. Could itreally work to have the meals cookeddown in the village and then broughtup to the school — a twenty minutewalk away — by wheelbarrow?

On the Saturday before schoolwas due to start, things were notgoing too smoothly. The school hadno Principal and no-one to teachEnglish or Geography. Only 45students had registered. And therehad been a telephone call from thewoman hired to cook the lunches tosay that she had not got the cabbagesshe needed for Monday’s lunches,and had no money to buy them.

It was a very busy weekend!And it hasn’t stopped since.

LAST YEAR the school enteredits first candidates for the JuniorCertificate examinations. Wecongratulate them all on achieving aGrade 2 pass, which more thansatisfies the entry requirement toHigh School for them to continuetheir studies.

Exam Success

AssemblyJANUARY is not a good time for theschool year to start. Families are shortof money after Christmas and we wereoften told that a student would becoming in February once they hadmoney again at the end of the month.

It is also the rainy season. Ha Fusi isnext to the Caledon River, which is theborder between Lesotho and SouthAfrica. We had several would-bestudents working in the fields on theSouth African side who could not getback because the river was too high.

But, day-by-day, the students trick-

led in and there was a sigh of relief aswe reached our hoped-for roll of eightystudents.

Our volunteer, Elizabeth Dunford,tells us: “The school has suddenlygrown-up. As you approach it in themorning, you see small groups ofchildren walking in from everydirection. With nearly forty in Form A,the marking load has increaseddramatically!”

Our picture shows morningassembly being taken by Mrs Khesa,our new teacher of English.

Where did the money golast year?

HERE IS A LOOK BACK at how money has been spent atFusi Secondary School during 2009.

Over the year, the school spent a total of R222,700.What’s that in pounds? Well, it depends when you do theconversion. At the beginning of the year, we were gettingover fourteen and a half rands to the pound; but the exchangerate hit a low of eleven and half rands during the year andfinished the year not much above that low point. So, at theend-of-year rate it comes out at about £19,000.

Around two-thirds of the money was spent on day-to-dayrunning costs with salaries accounting for about 95% ofthose. So you can see why our top goal for 2010 is to gaingovernment grants to pay the teachers’ salaries.

Salaries R148,500Maintenance R 1,000Other R 5,0002010 Lunches R 3,000TOTAL RUNNING COSTS R157,500

Student feespaid during theyear contributedR28,710 to the run-ning costs. Somestudents’ fees werepaid by RafikiThabo Foundationand some others byindividual donors.Now that the school had been recognised and registered bythe Ministry of Education, some students will qualify forgovernment grants for their fees. Indeed we have already hadgrants confirmed for the double orphans that were in schoollast year and these will be back-dated ... although we have yetto receive any payment.

The rest of the running costs were paid by donations,primarily through Rafiki Thabo Foundation.

One of the biggest items under “other” was photocopying,especially of examination papers, which added up to R1,400.

Fortunately we now have a printer and a scanner, so ourvisits to the printers have greatly reduced.

When students and parents were asked what the schoolcould do to attract students, one of the most frequent replieswas “feed them”. We have taken them at their word and haveintroduced lunches for the students this term. You can readmore about this on the back page. We have had to outlaymoney to get things started and will be monitoring expendi-ture carefully over the year to see that we cover our costs.

As well as the running costs, we have spent R65,200 onwhat we have chosen to call capital items:

Desks R24,300Toilets (started) R23,900Burglar proofing R 7,000Generator R 5,100Staffroom (completion) R 1,500Textbooks for teachers R 1,400Other R 2,000TOTAL CAPITAL ITEMS R65,200

The “other” includes the scanner, which helps us toproduce the school’s exam papers as well as to keep pupiland staff records.

The school was also the grateful recipient of various giftsthat do not show up in the accounts. There was gardeningequipment donated by Nottingham Organic Gardeners, andbook shelves from the African Library Project - in anticipa-tion of a large donation of books by the Project early in 2010.The computers from Lesotho - Durham Link have been agreat hit and we were also gratefulfor the donation from supporters inWest Bridgford who raised themoney for the generator to powerthem. The year closed with adonation raised by Madley BrookSchool which was mainly used tobuy sports equipment but alsoprovided a wheelbarrow which hasalready been found to have avariety of uses.

Introducing TheNew School Principal

THE HA FUSI PROJECT benefited a great deal over the Christmasperiod through the sale of various ‘packages’ that could be given in lieuof a gift. Through this programme, a total of twelve students will havetheir fees paid through the coming year, and various other items such asdesks, chalk and text books are able to be bought. A total of £650 wasraised — thanks to all those involved.

Future fundraising initiatives include running the Bath half marathonin March — but in the meantime, please consider how you might be ableto support the project. We desperately need a consistent flow of capital inorder to make sure we are able to fulfil our pledges and sustain initiatives.A monthly donation will help us to budget for future projects — andensure that we are able to continue to serve meals etc for students. Formore information on this, please contact the trustees of the Rafiki ThaboFoundation at [email protected].

RafikiThabo

FoundationAndrew Uglow writes

Our picture shows the Chairman of the School Management Board, Mr Marabe(far right), introducing the new Principal, Mr Ramaqele (far left), to the students.

Also in the picture are two other members of the Board: Mr Masupha who representsthe Village Chief, and Mrs Molefi, Vice-Chair of the Board.

One of the milestones of lastyear was the Ministry of

Education’s agreement to paythe salary of the schoolPrincipal. So the position hadto be advertised and suitablecandidates found. Weapproached this with sometrepidation because, so often,the success of a school hingeson the person at the top.

We are pleased to reportthat we have been fortunate —indeed blessed — with theappointment of Mr Ramaqeleas the school’s Principal.

Mr Ramaqele brings withhim a wealth of experience —gained not only from havingserved as a School Principalbefore, but also from a distin-guished career in the Ministryof Education. The latter hasfurnished him with acomprehensive list of phonenumbers to unravel the papertrail of bureaucracy — startingwith the paperwork to confirmhis own appointment and tostart his salary paymentsflowing!

Mr Ramaqele is alreadyputting his mark on the school.His opening remark to theteachers was that he neededthem to be well-disciplined —as that would lead to well-disciplined students.

If you have e-mail, it is easy to sign-up for future issues of Fusi News.Just send an e-mail to [email protected] with subscribe in the subject.You will automatically receive future issues, but can unsubscribe just as easily.If you know anybody who might be interested to follow our progress in Lesotho,please pass on this copy of Fusi News, and tell them how easy it is to receivetheir own copy in future.You can also learn more on our web site at www.fusischool.org

It’s easy to be a Friend

WORKING CAPITAL is a scarce commodity in Lesotho.Only the biggest of shops hold much stock. When a studentneeds a school jumper, it has to be ordered especially. Whena builder does work for you — like building the schooltoilets — you have to order and pay for the bricks andcement yourself and organise their transport.

So when it was decided that the school should offerlunches to the students, we knew that the money would haveto be put up-front — there was no question of a supplierbeing paid at the end of the month. But how many studentswould enrol in January and how many of them would payfor lunch?

We bit the bullet at the end of last year, worked on thebasis that there wouldbe at least 50 studentswho would take lunch,found someone whowould do the cooking,agreed how much wewould pay her, andgave her money to buymaize flour and otheritems she would need.Most of the cookingutensils could be borrowed, but we found that we needed tobuy a large, traditional cooking pot.

At the startof the schoolyear inL e s o t h o ,students expectto be givenjobs — likecleaning theclassrooms andpainting theblackboards —to get theschool ready

for work. This year, the jobs included collecting firewood forthe cooking pot.

School finishes early on a Friday, so lunch is justprovided from Monday to Thursday and follows the patternused in the primary schools. On Monday and Wednesdaythey have papa (made from maize meal) and moroho(vegetables, at the moment cabbage). On Tuesdays there issoup and bread, and on Thursday samp and sugar beans.For this, the students are asked to pay R600 for the year —about £50 — which is more than the school fees.

Last year, wewere approachedby the local chiefwho offered theschool the free useof a field. Wewould have to payfor it to beploughed andplanted, but coulduse it to growmaize, which wecould then have milled to produce our own maize meal forthe lunches. We sought advice from others with moreexperience, who assured us that it should prove cost-effective. So money was found, the field ploughed and theseed bought. Unfortunately, the weather turned very dry andonly a quarter of the field could be planted — but it’s a bigfield. And it needs to be weeded — another job for thestudents! It’s no coincidence that the school has introducedagriculture to its curriculum this year.

Despite expectingteething problems, thefirst week of providinglunches went verysmoothly. The food iscooked down in the vil-lage and brought to theschool — a twentyminute walk — bywheelbarrow. As youmight expect, we’ve added a kitchen to our wish list ofbuilding extensions for the school.

The lunches have provedvery popular — with staff aswell as students — and onlya handful of students havefailed to sign-up for them. Sowe’ve decided that, ratherthan have a few students lookon enviously, lunch will haveto become compulsory —even if some of the studentshave to be sponsored.

We would also like to vary their diet and give them anoccasional treat of a hard-boiled egg. A donation of £5,gift-aided to Rafiki Thabo Foundation (see previous page)would give all the students an egg with one of their meals.Could you help us to do that?

Food and Field