Access Keys:

 
 
St. Patrick’s Primary School Legamaddy

Visit from African priest Fr Wilbert

12th Jun 2024
  1. Today we were extremely fortunate to have had a visit to our school by Father Wilbert (Willie) today. He visited with Alps who are working in partnership with Fr Willie to assist in raising funds for schools in his Parish.

 Father Willie visited our school 5 years ago and was delighted to come back  visit our school again today. 

He is from the Moshi area of Tanzania, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. He is a member of the Chaga tribe and he became a catholic priest who now helps to run a number of different schools at his home parish. One of his schools is called Saint Mary’s and it has almost 600 pupils and they have only recently opened up a High School with their first year group. 


He was telling our pupils that in Tanzania they start school at 7.30am, with many walking distances of 10 miles to get to school each day. They only break for lunch of porridge and finish school at 4.30pm. Each class has an average of 100 pupils with 1 teacher and there are very few writing books or textbooks. 

Our pupils had many questions and Father Willie took the time to answer as many as he could.

Afterwards we spoke about opportunities to partner or link with ourselves and Saint Mary’s in Tanzania. We are hopeful we could get our pupils to write or communicate with pupils in Tanzania and find out a little more about their culture and schooling life. We are delighted to build links with them. Alps have travelled on numerous occasions to work along with Fr Willie in Tanzania and are hoping to visit next summer. 


The school will hold a non uniform day on Friday and we are asking for £1 donation which will go direct to Fr Willie to buy resources for his school.