WHATELY — Whately is an agricultural community. So is Bagamoyo, Tanzania. However, the similarities pretty much end there.
But programs like Asante Sana For Education bridge these cultural gaps and generate money for a good cause at the same time. Founded in West Hartford, Connecticut by Ashley Washburn in 2010, ASFE works in partnership with village governments in Tanzania to build primary schools. Asante Sana means “Thank you very much” in Swahili, one of Tanzania’s national languages.
Whately Elementary School is in the midst of its fifth year of fundraising for schools in the east African nation. The school’s student council buys wholesale hanging flowers from Brent Young of Mill River Farm and sells them for $20, for an $8 profit margin donated to Asante Sana. Students are sent home with order forms.
Young said he will bring the flowers — some best in the sun and others in the shade — to the school on May 5, the Thursday before Mother’s Day.
“Every year it gets bigger and bigger,” Young said, adding that he has been involved with the fundraising efforts since the beginning because his daughters attended Whately Elementary School. “I think it’s a great cause and I love the school. It’s a great small school and I enjoy working with them.”
Washburn visited Whately third-, fourth- and fifth-graders on April 11 to explain how their hard work changes lives in Tanzania. She said the money raised this year will help to build a water tower for Mnindi Primary School. She used a PowerPoint presentation to show the students photographs of Tanzania — the home of Mount Kilimanjaro — and its people. She also showed photographs of school desks (with “Donated by Whately Elementary School” painted onto them) that Whately Elementary raised money to build.
“These kids are all sitting at your desks,” Washburn told students in the school’s library. “You guys have been very busy in Africa. Did you know that?”
Washburn said she and her children are avid volunteers, and she founded ASFE a couple of years after volunteering with Cross-Cultural Solution, based in New York. She said volunteers with that organization, though well-intentioned, would travel to Africa for only weeks at a time and she wanted to find a way to have more long-term impact.
“When we left, everything left with us,” she recalled. “And I knew that (the Tanzanians) had the will to do it, they just didn’t have the support behind it.”
Washburn explained Whately Elementary special education teacher Terri Anderson contacted her several years ago after Anderson’s husband, who works at Northfield Mount Hermon School, brought home a letter Washburn sent to New England high schools requesting volunteers to generate money for and communicate with Tanzanian schoolchildren.
Before Washburn’s presentation, Anderson shared with the students what some of them wrote to Tanzania to explain something the children there have never seen — snow.
“Trust me, you would love it,” one letter read. “It’s like magic from the sky. When you touch it, it feels soft as silk.” One letter described a snow day as the ground looking like it is covered in sugar. Another read that when snow gets wet it turns to slush, “like really damp cotton.”
Washburn told the students roughly 60,000 people live in Bagamoyo. She said it used to be the top port for exporting ivory and slaves, though it is now a fishing community where cows, chickens and goats roam free. She said rice, fruits and vegetables are grown in large quantities. She also said all cooking is done over charcoal.
Washburn said Bagamoyo has a vibrant art scene and Tanzania’s top art school is located there. She said there are hundreds of tribes in Africa, but ASFE is most associated with the Maasai people, who are known for raising cattle. She said the men often dress in red or dark purple and the women wear blue. Washburn told her Whately audience they are fortunate to have the education system they do, because the Tanzanian government only recently requested that Maasai families send at least one child to school. Also, the government tells children which schools they attend and what they study.