Leboy is a Masai child. He lives in a small village in the middle of the Tanzanian bush called Esilalei. Today, he will go to school.
Leboy is six years-old. At least, that's what his friends say. He maintains that he is seven. No one is really sure, here in Esilalei.
This won't be Leboy's first time in a school. He has been attending a makeshift school in Esilalei that has been set up by Art in Tanzania, a local NGO. In the beginning, the school wasn't much: the children of the small village would sit on rocks by the shadow of a baobab tree and receive their swahili and mathematics lessons from Regina and Pascalina. Regina and Pascalina, the two teachers, live an hour's walk away, and they go to work every day through the bush looking out for elephants and hyenas instead of cars and trucks. The children, meanwhile, change out of their traditional Masai clothes, put on their tattered uniforms, and march up the hill to the school.
Later, Art in Tanzania built a hut out of sticks, and that became the school. However, it was too small, and the teachers were hard-pressed to control the 120 children between the ages of 3 and 12 that filled the one classroom.
Out of these 120 children, Leboy stood out. He wasn't the one who knew the most, but that is because he was one of the younger students. He was, however, very bright. He understood concepts much more quickly than his peers. More importantly, he wanted to learn. He would seek out his teachers after class and ask them questions, absorbing as much as he could.
It was precisely this attitude that started this project. Leboy deserved to go to a top school in the region. He had earned it. It would be a good chance for him to fulfill the potential he so obviously had. Which is why today, thanks to all your efforts, Leboy will go to St Thomas School in Arusha.
