Ashley Napier chose to cycle back from Oxford with his friend Johannes Buerger after those pesky Finals in which he happened to pick up a first class honours degree, finishing among the top six Engineering Science graduates in the University. This may be because he loves older technology, but it is also because he and Johannes managed to raise more than £300 to help Tanzanian students pay for their secondary school education.
He has travelled twice to Rungwe, in rural Tanzania, once with a party from Copeland, once on his own, taking with him a computer he had built himself and a passion to share. He quickly made friends with a brilliant young student who grasped concepts quickly and proceeded to teach them to others in his class. Like most Tanzanian students, Anosisye had to work as a poorly paid farm labourer to help his family pay the annual school fees of about £200. Returning to Egremont, Ashley led fundraising efforts to pay fees for Anosisye and others like him so that they could focus their energy on their learning and teaching. His grandfather, Bob, has made his shop the hub of the activity in which many Egremont families are passionately involved.

Copeland children struggle to understand how Tanzanian students have to learn. When they get to school they gather in large classes with nothing but the voice of their teacher to help them understand. No television or any visual aids. They will be lucky to see a book. And as all secondary school students are taught in English, students are learning in what will be their third language (tribal – KiSwahili – English). All these factors add up to make it very hard work to get a proper education which we take for granted and in some cases abuse in this country.
But how can an English child who takes computers, radio and television for granted as an essential part of learning imagine what it is to go to a school where you cannot even switch a light on when it is dark?

The difference electricity makes is huge, Ashley Napier explains. Not only does it allow proper lighting for students to work but it is also much safer. For example in a crowded dorm room there may be three or four lamps burning, he said with a shudder at the obvious and appalling danger.

And of course without electricity you cannot use computers. In a developing Tanzania basic computer skills are a must for jobs in the city and even in some of the more rural areas. The students realise the potential power of computer technology and share skills and ideas freely.
Three of the four schools the Link works with are already connected to the national grid in Tanzania. The fourth, Kisondela, is not. It will cost a mere £2,400 to connect that school to the grid, and the power lines will run through villages where farming families could also get connected. In the name of the people of Egremont, Egremont Today grasps the privilege of putting up that money and changing the lives of hundreds of students and their families.

"Where would you rather live, in England or Tanzanai?" our Rungwe visitors were asked by a primary school child. There was a considered pause before they decided. They would rather live in Tanzania, but they would like to take English schools back home with them.

Inset, Ashley with the Rungwe leaders, Safinia and Polly, at the Ceilidh in Cleator Moor.