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From here to Africa Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Platon Mantheakis, center, is delivering 300 pounds of supplies to schoolchildren in Tanzania on Feb. 14 in a project sponsored by the Jacksonville-Applegate Rotary Club. He�s also delivering letters from these Jacksonville Elementary School students and Ruch students who have been exchanging letters with their peers in Masailand. Jacksonville man leaves next week on another trip to help Tanzanian students By Melissa Martin JACKSONVILLE � Platon Mantheakis was on a safari in Tanzania when he discovered 143 children attending school beneath a grove of thorn trees. Mantheakis returned home to Jacksonville, recruited help and eventually saw a two-room concrete school built for the Masai children. The manager of the Jacksonville Inn plans a third trek to Masailand on Feb. 14, this time to deliver desks and chairs so the children no longer have to sit on the dirt floor while they learn. "One of the students I met was studying math with an ink pen so that every computation he performed had to be correct, no mistakes," Mantheakis said. "He may become a mathematician, but with no way to advance, how can he benefit his community?" The thought of working math problems in ink is part of the reason the Jacksonville resident collected school supplies � including hundreds of No. 2 pencils � vitamins and other donations for the Masai children. Mantheakis will deliver nearly 300 pounds of supplies when he returns to the African nation, along with Medford retirees Ace and Margaret Carter and Southern Oregon University student Jared Mason-Gere. The trip is sponsored by the Jacksonville-Applegate Rotary Club. The team will fly into Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, where Mantheakis grew up. His family has grown coffee and run safaris for more than a century. From the nation�s capital, the team will drive to Arusha, where they will pick up 40 desks from a factory. They will haul the furniture in a British Army truck owned by Michel Mantheakis, Platon�s brother and owner of Miombo Safaris. But at this point in the journey, they will leave behind pavement. "It will be like driving from here to Portland on the equivalent of logging roads," he said. Except for nights at the Mantheakis home, the Sheraton Hotel in the capital city, Kilimanjaro Baptist Mission and Tarangire Lodge near Tarangire National Park, the team will sleep under the stars. "We�re going to an area that�s not normally visited by safaris," said Carter, who will be the photographer for the group. "It�s virgin bush, with no tourism and no traffic." Mantheakis has nurtured this five-year relationship with the remote Masai school, partly to honor his grandfather. "My grandfather came to Tanzania from Greece in 1857 with nothing," Mantheakis said. "His first meal and hospitality was provided by the people of Africa. He always told us, �Remember your African brothers and sisters,� so we�ve always practiced that." Besides a school building and supplies, Mantheakis is responsible for creating partnerships between Ruch and Jacksonville elementary schools and the Londerges School in Masailand. They�ve exchanged letters, pictures and music videos. "If I could meet the students, I would say, �Jumbo,� which means hello," said Larkin Reed, a second-grader in Debbi Sharp�s class at Jacksonville Elementary School. Mantheakis will deliver letters written by Jacksonville students. "The children can act as our ambassadors," he said. "Because of this experience, when they grow up, they will make the world a better place." Reach reporter Melissa Martin at 776-4497, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.