Summer 2024 newsletter
Steve and Loyce Veryser, Tanzania
Although it still needs to be finished, the court is already being used.
After receiving a generous donation of $5,000 at the end of March, we started the next phase of a real team effort to get the 92-feet-by-60-feet slab poured.
Juma, the civil engineering teacher revisited all the plans and coordinated everything with the second master, Dan. Students put in lots of hard work again to collect stones from hills behind the school and sand from the lakeshore. People living in the area sold the school literally a ton of rocks they broke to make gravel (to use in the cement mix).
Students carry stones used in the construction.
Emmanuel, the carpentry teacher arranged for a tree at the school to be chopped down and cut into boards for expansion joints. Teachers at Kitangiri, the school next door where Loyce teaches, loaned us 1-by-10 boards for formwork. We arranged for purchase of a truckload of cement (240 bags of 50 kg each) and eight rolls of steel reinforcement from the wholesale vendors in town.
By May, we had a rented cement mixer and a team of almost 20 people on site to pour the slab. They hoped to complete the job in three days.
After two long days in the hot sun, the team only had half pf the slab in. Sand and aggregate were also running short, and we realized we did not have enough to complete the job. We had no choice but to use the balance of funds that we had set aside for finishing to cover the additional sand, aggregate and additional day of labor to get the slab pour completed.
After watering the cement for a week, the backboards were back up, just in time for an interschool tournament being hosted at Bwiru. I didn’t think it was ready, but the sports teacher Hussein drew lines on it with a piece of charcoal and they played games on the rough cement slab right away.
Our investments in the court and the efforts of the team resulted in two Bwiru students travelling with a regional all-star team to represent Mwanza at the national level in a tournament in Dar es Salaam over the school break in June.
This week we played a students-against-teachers scrimmage on the slab. We teachers held our own — granted, one of the rims was set at 11 feet and teachers were shooting on the 10-foot side. We played by ones to 25 and teachers had a comfortable lead at 20 to 13. But we must have been tired because we missed shots and turned over the ball until the students overtook us and had the lead at 23 to 21.
The team pouring the cement slab
I was glad I happened to wear my low-top hiking boots, which held up on the rough cement. Incredibly most of the students played in knock-off Crocs. We rallied to tie them at 24, but they got the last bucket.
We agreed that it was a good fair match, but teachers realized it’s a little scary to play on the rough cement. We did have one teacher who fell and got scraped up after playing just a few minutes. We agreed to make another push to finish the court.
After adding up all the costs, we still need $5,500 to complete the cement screed, finish the floor, paint lines, reset the goals in better poles, build benches for the spectators, and put in a fence at the high end of the court for safety (since it’s built level into a slight slope, one corner of the court is about four feet over ground level). It would also allow us to put up some solar lights so the court could be used after dark. Being close to the equator, it gets dark at 7 p.m. year-round here.
I added up all the costs since we remade the backboards in October 2023 and realized we have put almost $8,000 into it so far. I had not figured we would be able to come up with such an amount. From the whole Bwiru community (three secondary schools and two primary in the area), we thank you so much for all of your support!
Through planning this project and gathering support, I am learning what it means in practicality to have faith. I am learning not to be afraid to ask for what is needed and that you have to ask in order to receive.
We have updated our fundraising page with new numbers for the next phase. We need your help to finish the project. The easiest way to make a donation is by clicking the button below.
We invite you to walk with us as our “COMPANIONS IN MISSION.” Companions in Mission are friends and generous donors who give financial gifts on a regular (usually monthly) basis. For more information, visit Become a Companion in Mission. Thank you so much for your generosity!
Based in Mwanza, Tanzania, Steve Veryser is Maryknoll Lay Missioners' area director for Africa and Asia. He also teaches math to deaf students at Bwiru Boys Technical Secondary School. Steve and his wife, Loyce, have been Maryknoll lay missioners since 2018.
