The Bible College
You may have noticed that we are spending most of our time at the Bible College. Kasulu Bible College is very near to our hearts. It provides training for local priests, but it is even more than that.
There has been a tremendous growth in the Anglican Church in Western Tanzania, and with the increased number of churches there has been an urgent need for more priests. The Bible College was established to provide this training. The minimum training for a priest is a two year certificate program. This program is taught in Swahili and English is not a requirement. There is also a three year diploma program which not only provides a deeper theological education but requires a minimum level of English. When I was here five years ago, I taught some of the diploma students English for 8 days. I don’t know how much of it “stuck”.
Right now it is the growing season and all of the theological students have returned home for two months to help with the crops, but the Bible College is still a very busy place. Students whose secondary schools are now closed are here attending tutorials to get a head start on the next year and to do better on their all-important exams. The Bible College provides computer training; basic computer use and how to work with MS Word and Excel. These classes are very popular and a key to doing better financially. Of course, when the Bible College is in session, the students use the computers for research and there is also wireless internet available for priests and others who have been issued laptops for their work. Finally, the computers at the college provide one of the best internet cafés in the area. Any one in the area can come and use the computer to do email, do research on the internet, etc. They pay a small fee, depending on how much time they spend logged on. (The fees are used to pay for the power used to run the computers and satellite system.) If the bench sitting on the side of the room is any indication, there is usually a number of folks waiting to use the computers when the café is open. The café has been closed this week to allow us to work on the system, but every so often someone will see the doors open and hope that maybe….
When we first installed the café, the only source of power was an old diesel generator that did not have a good voltage regulator. The generator was also prone to running out of fuel at unpredictable times. None of this was healthy for the server and even a battery backup was not a help as the battery quickly died do to the bad voltages. A few years ago, batteries and solar power was installed which has helped a lot. A less than a month ago, central electric power was installed. What a difference.
The central electric power is MUCH cheaper than running a generator, but paying the bill is a little different than in the U.S. There is no such thing as credit in Kasulu. Everything must be paid for in advance. So instead of a meter that shows how much electricity you have used, each installation has a meter which shows how much electricity you have paid for. You go to the power office, pay a 10,000 t-shilling administrative fee (about $7.00 USD and then pay for as much electricity as you want to buy. The meter box is reloaded and you can see how many units you have left at any time.
We are happy to report that TTCL was able connect the Bible College to the internet today. The wire was run in the early afternoon, but it was taking some time for the circuit to go live and for a while we were worried that they might not be able to complete the work today. It turns about that today is the last day before we leave that the installation could be completed as tomorrow is the Tanzanian Independence Day – a national holiday. We made two more trips to the TTLC office, the first to pay for the first month’s service and the second to verify how to set up the modem/router and load the service credits to the account. Buying the first month’s service meant buying two TTLC service cards, to make up the total amount needed for the service. You scratch the cards (like you scratch a card for a long distance minutes card in the U.S. and enter the card numbers and pins into a special account on the internet. That “charges” the account for the month. Right now, the TTLC internet speed is not quite as fast as we had hoped it would be, but it is no worse than the satellite internet speed and is much more inexpensive. Bill is planning to do some “tweaks” and experiments tomorrow to see if he can get a little more speed out of the connection.
We had choir practice the the Kasulu Cathedral Choir this evening. They had already learned the chorus of the song will be singing together on Sunday, so the practice went quite quickly. Another delicious dinner at the house of another old friend, affectionately known to us as “Rev. Fred”, and now it’s time for bed.