Some years ago, in 1984, the late Bishop Madinda of the Diocese of Central Tanganyika made a request to Tearfund UK for a Hospital technician to carry out repairs to equipment at two of his Diocesan Hospitals, Kilimatinde and Mvumi. In order to decide the best response to this request Tearfund contacted ECHO International Health Services Ltd UK for advice. They discovered that ECHO already had ideas of setting up a technical training School for the Hospitals of Tanzania. This resulted in visits by ECHO personnel of Dr. John Townsend and Mr Paul Lawrence. After consultation it was decided to set up a training School at Mvumi Hospital. This is very much in keeping with the training already being carried out at Mvumi. Also as Mvumi is in the centre of Tanzania it makes an ideal location for such a School.

The first Tear Fund personnel finished their contract in 1992 when the School was handed over to a Tanzanian Principal, Jackson Shansi. Jackson has continued to run and develop the courses since this time. In December 1994 another tutor was employed and in 1995 an expatriate arrived from Tearfund on Secondment to the Diocese to help with teaching, administration and developing the courses.

The School is built as a self contained unit and has capacity for ten students per course. We currently offer three Courses: A Foundation Course, Advanced Course and a Motor Vehicle Maintenance Course. The Foundation and Advanced courses are for a duration of ten weeks and the Motor Vehicle Maintenance Course for a duration of four weeks. The School is self financing (and financially independent from the Hospital), relying on income to pay for expenditure.

Hospitals are encouraged to select suitable candidates for the courses. Since engineering is heavily biased towards mathematics we encourage applications from students who have a flair for this and if possible have attained Form IV Schooling. Each student is given an aptitude test as part of the selection procedure.

A new Advanced Course has been developed which first commenced in January 1997. For this course a workbook has been written, which the students keep. This contains all the course notes, so saving time in copying notes and enabling more time to be spent on practicals. It also includes results of all the practical experiments and provides useful reference material for the students..

Jackson Shansi is a local man. He attended a Technical Secondary School in Singida, which specialized in Science subjects, where he reached Form IV (equivalent to GCSE). He then attended Arusha Techical College to get his Full Technician Certificate in Automotive Engineering. After this he worked for two years in the Technical Department Garage at Mvumi Hospital. He was then selected for further training at the Hospital Technicians Training School, joining the 2nd Course that was run in 1990. He then worked at the School as a Tutor until 1992, when he became the Principal. He has also attended a course on Teaching Methodology, specifically for technical teachers, in September 1997.

Jackson's Wife, Avelda, is a Nurse Mid-wife at Mvumi Hospital working in the pharmacy. Currently she is away on an upgrade Course till August 1999. They have two children, Betty aged five and Gloria aged two.

Kennedy Ndurumani is also a local man. He attended a Secondary School for two years, but as often happens here in Tanzania, he was financially unable to afford to continue. He attended a Vocational Training College to get his Trade Test Grade 1 in Motor Rewinding. After this he worked for 9 years in the Diocesan Technical workshops in Dodoma. When these closed down in 1995 he was transferred to the Hospital Technicians Training School in Mvumi working as a Tutor. He has also attended a course on Teaching Methodology, specifically for technical teachers, in March 1997.

Kennedy's Wife, Joyce, is also a Nurse, but at Dodoma District Hospital. They have two children, Neema aged nine and Baraka aged five.

The School also has a Warden and a part time Gardener.

The programme of Courses for 1998/1999 is as follows:-

2nd Foundation Course 1998 (10 weeks)

Start Date 3rd August 1998

Finish Date 9th October 1998

Motor Vehicle Maintenance Course 1998 (4 weeks)

Start Date 9th November 1998

Finish Date 4th December 1998

1st Advanced Course 1999 (10 weeks)

Start Date 11th January 1999

Finish Date 19th March 1999

1st Foundation Course 1998 (10 weeks)

Start Date 19th April 1999

Finish Date 25th June 1999

Other things developments in the future will be:-

The writing of a booklet for the Foundation Course. After the success of the Advanced Course Booklet, we want to do the same for the Foundation Course.

The development of a Mathematics Correspondence Course. The majority of our students struggle with their mathematics skills. To help with this we have started to develop a Correspondence Course. To date we have completed modules on Fractions, Percentages, Square roots, Monomials and Logarithms. This has very recently been introduced, please pray that it will be a success. Distance Learning is a new thing here in Tanzania and it may take some time for them to learn of it's advantages.

Future plans for the School include getting Government accreditation for the courses and combining and extending the duration of existing courses to one year.

The School has a computer, a 386 25/sx. We use this for office administration, preparing teaching notes and booklets and also for some tutorial software for the students in Maths and electrical technology. However, it is difficult to get ten students to use one computer beneficially. It would be really useful if we could obtain several computers that we could make available for our students to use, whatever specification we can get. Our current computer only has a hard disk size of 100Mb, which by current standards is an antique, but for us it is very good starting point.

This could also mean that we could introduce courses on computer training, something that is much needed here in Tanzania.

We also have a small technical library, so any books covering any of the subjects in our courses would be very useful. This would include books on Mathematics and physics as well as electrical and electronic technology, plumbing, automotive technology and computing.

For more details on ways you can help this Technical School please write to the principal at the following address:-

JACKSON SHANSI,

PRINCIPAL

HOSPITAL TECHNICIANS TRAINING SCHOOL

PO BOX 37

MVUMI

DODOMA

TANZANIA

EMAIL:- ANK-MVUMI@maf.org