A school built and developed by the combined efforts of a Perth couple and a Catholic priest has started classes with its first group of students in the African country of Tanzania.
Les and Bronwyn Mutton joined forces with Fr Melodious Mlowe several years ago when they recognised a shared desire to assist youth in the poverty-stricken country to receive an education.
Mr Mutton was in Tanzania as part of his work for Lonmin Mining when he first met Fr Melodious in 2008.
“I needed a place to stay and I ended up in a village where I found thousands of pine tree seedlings all growing and hundreds of grafted fruit trees,” Mr Mutton explained.
His curiosity sufficiently awakened, Mr Mutton eagerly sought the person responsible for the “unusual innovation”.
It was Fr Melodious Mlowe, a Catholic priest and a man passionate about his country, the environment, and caring for his local community.
Along with members of his family, Fr Melodious had begun a unique venture to plant thousands of pine trees that would sustain the local community in the future.
Intrigued by Fr Melodious’ ambitious project, Mr Mutton maintained correspondence with the priest after his return to Australia, before returning to Tanzania in 2010 with wife Bronwyn.
“I saw he was an excellent priest, he always had time for the people, he cared for the children, and he mentored orphans,” Mr Mutton said.
“I asked him if we could be of any help to him and he told me the village people of Njelela had asked his family, if possible, to give them a secondary school.”
The Muttons decided to support the project financially, with the guarantee that Fr Melodious’ pine tree planting initiative would sustain the school in the long term.
Fr Melodious then organised for about 500,000 pine trees to be planted on his family’s land and on the school’s land, which was donated to him by the villagers.
Looking back, Mr Mutton said he felt “God wanted us to do it”.
“I felt confident that this project with Fr Melodious could succeed,” he said.
“I feel he’s such an effective person that we can work through problems and come out the other side.”
Two years later, the school opened and 72 students from near and far are receiving an education they would have otherwise foregone.
Fr Melodious, a priest of the Njombe diocese who is currently teaching at Lighano seminary, said he was pleased to see the school begin classes.
“It is an ambitious project to be sustained by the community itself and my family have currently guaranteed and will guarantee its sustainability,” he said.
“What is lacking is only at the beginning when a lot needs to be done to get things going. Our estimation is that after five years, the school will be self-sustaining.”
Mr Mutton, himself a retired teacher, said his family shared the same goals as Fr Melodious for education in Tanzania.
“Fr Melodious has a vision of a school based on justice, compassion and service,” he said.
“We share the God-given hope that Njelela Environment Secondary School will be a stone in the foundations of the kingdom of heaven, on earth.
“My hope for the long term is that it will be a school which serves the local community with an excellent science education and that it will be self-sustaining through its agriculture.”
But undertaking such a large project in a remote African village has not been without its challenges. The Muttons communicate with Fr Melodious almost every day via the internet, without which the project would be almost impossible to coordinate.
“We take an active interest in all aspects of building and planning,” Mr Mutton said.
“There has been constructed a school with six classrooms, two laboratories and an administration block, plus two dormitories for 110 children each plus a teacher’s house for nine teachers.
“These were all constructed from bricks made from clay that the local people had dug out of the valleys. Everything is very basic.”
Tanzania is a country that survives on what is known as a subsistence economy – where each person produces enough food for him or herself and where wealth is measured in terms of natural resources.
Levels of education are low, and typically schools in Africa struggle to support students and teachers.
“At present, the Tanzanian schools are mostly closed down, teachers are on strike, and in any case the standard of education is very poor, and there’s almost no science,” Mr Mutton said.
“There is a phone tower near the school so the school can operate on the internet, which is virtually unheard of here.”
Financially, the school receives no government assistance, although the Australian High Commission in Kenya has provided some monetary support.
The Commission purchased solar power panels for the school and an array of biology, physics and chemistry apparatus from China.
However, without an immediate financial harvest from the timber of the pine trees, there are many initial costs that still need to be met.
“There’s a need for more infrastructure,” Mr Mutton said.
“There’s no dining hall for the students to eat in, there are no cooking facilities, and we don’t have a van to transport students in.
“The villagers can provide labour, fruit trees and animals to feed the students with, but they haven’t got money.”
Furthermore, the school is committed to providing an education to those who need it, whether they can afford it or not.
“This school cannot turn away children who can’t pay the fees,” Mr Mutton said.
Of the 72 students at the school, 25 presented for admission without any money at all.
Mr Mutton said he was desperately seeking sponsors for the 25 students to pay the $500 cost of tuition, board and food for the year.
The school intends to specialise in the sciences, and has a capacity to educate 200 students.
For more information, or to make a donation, visit www.njelelaschool.com.au.
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