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Dodoma European School

Started by Valerie Dobson, 07 July, 2009, 02:15

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Valerie Dobson

Dodoma European School was built in 1951. Funds were raised by having an Entertainment Evening", with many people performing many acts. It was performed at the Dodoma Club.
Previous to the school being built, up by the golf course, classes were held in the club and at the mission school run by Miss Cole and her New Zealand Missionaries. Miss Cole was the headmistress at the school and there was another one or two teachers. I remember the Wiggins, especially Margaret, going swimming at the D.C's pool, Carole ? Aileen? Ian? also involved with the mission. The pageant at the school to celebrate the Coronation. The wonderful Ngoma at the Boma on Coronation Day when hundreds of tribespeople came into Dodoma to dance. The ground shook. How priviledged were we to see Africa in those days.

jooms

Stockley Avenue Primary School

I and my sister attended the school for 3 years from 1961 to 64. We lived in a government house just opposite the school. The headmistress at the time was Miss L.M. Wheeler. My class teachers were: Miss Wendy Poole, J. Hector, M. Every.
The fees were 200/- per term or 20/- per week for part-term. In cases where 2 months notice was not given for withdrawing children from school, half a term's fees (100/-) were charged.

In 1963 the school was managed by the Diocese of central Tanganyika for the Ministry of Education.
I am not sure how long this arrangement lasted. I have some receipts of payments  made to the diocese and others to the regional educational officer.

There was also a school parents association.

I still have my term reports.
I have also a piece of paper regarding an open day with names of helpers and contributors. Presumably, most of these were the mothers of the children at the school?

The teachers were New Zealand missionaries and I recall a lot of emphasis was put on the teaching of bible stories.

Imagi hill was easily visible from our house and the school and with binoculars one often saw lions on the rock. Elephant were frequent visitors to the golf course at the club and once we woke up to find lion prints in our garden.  It was a great place for kids - the pori was just a stone's throw away from our part of town.

rajneeshvk

hi, i am rajneesh, i was in stockley school from 1975-77. the haedmaster during that period ws mr. perini, an australian and our class teacher/ maths teacher was miss. maben, a nice irish lady.

i m aactually looking for my friends of that period.

rajneesh

Stuart

Stockley Avenue Primary School

My sister and I attended the school for two years (my sister only one year) from 1964-66. I remember that the teachers were from New Zealand. I have a class photo somewhere which I will dig up and post on this forum. It was around this time that a giant concrete "bottle" was erected at the Dodoma Club (it contained lots of empty bottles cast inside). My Dad (Eric Walton) was their to commission a Castor Oil plant (I think) and my Mom (Rita Walton) started a small newsletter at the Club. Does anyone have photos of the teachers etc at the time?


kenyagirl

Hi Valerie

My family live in Dodoma and Dar es salaam.  We met your family in Dodoma. My mum and dad were good friends of Roy your dad. You did live with us for a while in Nairobi before you married and went to Australia.

Would like to hear from you

Velia White-Rogers (nee Bates)

traveler

Quote from: rajneeshvk on 18 September, 2009, 10:42
hi, i am rajneesh, i was in stockley school from 1975-77. the haedmaster during that period ws mr. perini, an australian and our class teacher/ maths teacher was miss. maben, a nice irish lady.

i m aactually looking for my friends of that period.

rajneesh


Yes, Hello Rajneesh! I was your classmate and stayed at the boarding house with Miss. Maben in the 75-76 school year. I remember trading stamps, walking to school with Paul and Marcel, scaring the ravens away at lunch time, and writing a lot with fountain pens (copying from large chalk boards). Have a Facebook nickname of tropicalescape. Those days the play yard was sand as it is so dry there. On weekends we road home to Mvumi in a very fully packed land rover. I see that Stockley has a new name now. Think someone should start a Facebook fan page for the school Alumni! Darrell

Yuki Ouchi

Hello,

I went to this school but the have since changed the name twice to Stockley and finally to Canon Andrea Mwaka.

It was an amazingly beautiful school and the community was so diverse with up to 31 nationalities. Our principal was Mr. Warren Parker, then Mr. J.Horrocks.

My favourite teacher was Mrs.Window who taught us English and Literature. She is now a deacon in the Anglican Church. These are some of the most beautiful memories I have of my life.

jooms

The following website http://www.cams.ac.tz/ is the school now and it contains a 1950 picha of some of the pupils in front of the school.

Ingrid Harris

I am glad to be able to get into this Forum at last; for months/years there was no reaction to my registration.  About the Dodoma European School there have been all kinds of misnomers and misapprehensions over the years.  It was actually founded by my father, John Henry Harris, who was the Research Metallurgist (the only metallurgist in fact) at the Geological Survey Dept in Dodoma 1935-1955, when I became of an age to need schooling.  In 1950 there was no primary school for the growing number of European children in Dodoma, so when we came back from leave in that year (I was 5 years old) my father started applying to the Education Department for a school to be built.  The funding for the building came from the Government. The school itself was run, like so many others in Tanganyika at the time, as a private enterprise.  It was a fee-paying school.  My father was himself the Manager for the first two years of the school's existence and he hired the teachers that were around at the time, i.e. the New Zealand missionaries, and paid them out of the school fees. While the school was being built, Valerie and myself and a handful of other 5-year-olds did indeed sit in a store cupboard in the Dodoma Club in front of a blackboard and learn to read THE CAT SAT ON THE MAT.  I think Valerie is right about the year the school opened (1951) but not about the funding.  It would not have been possible from a party at the Club to pay for a school building!  (The show Valerie remembers was also organised by my father, who loved music and conjuring, but it was the following year 1952 and was in aid of the Red Cross, not any educational project.  That show was called Midnight Blues.  My father stayed up and wrote the whole show in one night, songs, dances, jokes, conjuring tricks, and it had just one performance, as Valerie remembers, at the Club. I still have the original script and recording). The fact that the European School was fee-paying and staffed by missionaries gave it its character from the very beginning.  My father ran the school for 2 years and then when we were due to go on leave again in 1953 he handed the management over to the Anglican Diocese in the person of Archdeacon Cordell and that is why the school has an Anglican character to this day.  Canon Andrea Mwaka must have taken over this responsibility but he was certainly not the founder as he took office more than a decade later. The standard of teaching in those first years was not very high: just as in the mission schools the teachers concentrated on crafts and Bible study but were not well-trained to impart the 3Rs.  I suffered all my life from a poor Maths foundation and I can see that spelling remained a problem for some pupils!  My father must have recognised this as he took me away from the Dodoma European School in 1954 and sent me to the Southern Highlands School at Sao Hill, where my elder brother already was. In 1985 I was able to return to Dodoma with my parents.  By then I was a higher education lecturer myself in the UK and JH Harris was a world expert on mining and metallurgy working for the United Nations and he was charged with the mission requested by the Tanzanian Government to assess the mineral wealth of Tanzania and its economic potential.  We stayed for one month in Dodoma and I was able to revisit the school.  The teachers, still mostly New Zealanders, were very welcoming and showed me the early records where my name as a pupil and my father's name as manager featured.  In the classrooms the pupils were amazed to meet an original student!  The school was officially called the International School at that moment but it was popularly known as the Stockley School.  Gordon Stockley was a geologist who had been at the Geological Survey in Dodoma since the 1920s.  He stayed on after Independence and had a road named after him.  What had been the Golf Course Road where the European School was built became the Stockley Road, and so people started to associate the road with their memories of a chap from the Geological Survey and (mistakenly) the school was nicknamed the Stockley School.  They got the wrong man!  Anyway, it is wonderful to see that the school my father founded and where I spent my early years still flourishes and is to all appearances a prestige school in Tanzania!