Tanzania schools- Makuyuni primary school Monduli District

Young girls at Makuyuni primary school in the Monduli district of Tanzania. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

A hungry girl presses against her classroom's smashed window to look outside. Surely maths is over and it is time for lunch, she seems to say. As if her thoughts had been read, an older pupil darts into the courtyard to sound the bell, a steel cylinder that hangs from a tree. Hundreds of pupils sprint out of classrooms to stand in line for their makande. The mix of beans and maize will be the only meal of the day for most of the children here at Makuyuni village primary school in northern Tanzania.

It is for Zainab Athumani. The 16-year-old started primary school five years late at the age of 11, because her mother, an occasional cleaner, could not afford the 81p-a-year lunch fee or the uniform.

Since Zainab started classes, she has taught her mother to write her name and repeated to her what teachers have told the class about how to protect against HIV. But school is tough. "It can be difficult to concentrate when you are hungry," she says.

 by  http://www.guardian.co.uk/