As everywhere, the last two months of the year are always a busy time for us – schools are closing for the summer holidays, children are travelling to visit extended family, there are preparations to be made for Christmas. This year is no exception!

All our primary school graduates (Alex, Fatuma, Eliza, and Careen) have passed national exams and have been allocated places in government secondary schools. A great achievement! In addition, Fatuma, Eliza and Careen have been studying hard for entrance exams for private Secondary Schools. Fatuma and Eliza were successful in being accepted to Notre Dame, and Careen was accepted into Star High. Both are excellent boarding schools, and our girls are as thrilled as we are!

James, Zainabu, and Ally have graduated from nursery school and have interviews at St Francis Primary school coming up.

In fact, all our children have done well in end of year exams. In particular we congratulate Arnold, Mwajuma, and Iddy for their good efforts.

Other news

• We were blessed to have a visit by a team from Jerry Savelle Ministries led by Joe McCroskey, who brought gifts and very essential new school bags for all our children, stuffed with exercise books, pencils, pens and striped school socks!! A huge thank you to the team, and to everyone who gave donations towards our blessing.

• We were given a lot of fresh beef bones one day by our friendly butcher – we spent a happy afternoon sawing them up to fit in the freezer!

• Our volunteers, Anna, Michael and Miriam spent hours designing and making very professional alphabet and number cards to decorate one of our nursery classrooms – they are leaving quite a legacy here having also installed a water tank for us! We are very sad to say goodbye to them, and wish them well in their next adventure!

• We are in a state of transition right now with some of our older children. Elibariki, Kanuti, Alex, and Johnson have moved out of the residential centre and are living either with family or in a couple of cases are renting their own rooms. Still sponsored by SWTz to ensure they have money for food and other essentials, this is a time for them to learn to live more independently, and get to the point where they are able to sustain themselves. This also means that we can start to take in some new residential children. In particular Alex wanted to move out so that another child would be able to use his bed and have the same opportunities he has had.

• Birthdays in November: Johnson (18)