Sunday, December 02, 2007

Validation!

A couple of weeks ago we got the results for the Form VI Mock Exam. My kids did quite well, better than most expected especially as this is the first year for my school to graduate an A-Level class. Within the Iringa region, we placed 4 out of 9 schools in Physics and 5 out of 12 schools in math, my 2 subjects. I'm pretty proud.

On a related note, exactly half of my math students passed. As its not one of their focus subjects, the test is pass/fail. I've heard that at some schools no one passes, so that's good (for my kids), but at the same time, I think a 30% was the pass cut off, so that half my kids didn't even get a 30% is a bit of a downer. Different standards! I have to remind myself that they did better than more than half the schools in the region.

My buddy Dr. Josh came down for Thanksgiving, we had a duck and a good time. We cooked a lot of village-extravagant food. (He brought some packaged salmon and crab meat, so I made a sort of pie crust and we sauteed the meat with some veggies and made little indivdual pie things. Sometimes I feel like all my time spent watching Iron Chef was as good preparation for Peace Corps as anyting else.)

My kids have also started taking some good initiative. I've been too busy preparing notes for all my classes to do many "practicals," labs, with them, and I don't even have more than a couple examples of what they're expected to do on their national exam. One kid has taken charge and started coming to me with an experiment to do, so I help him assemble the appartus and then they do it in the afternoons after class (or while their other classes aren't being taught).

The A-Level has officially been open for 5 weeks now, I started teaching when about 2/3 of the kids got back from vacation, 2 weeks after opening. Two weeks ago the geography teacher taught a couple classes, and this week the biology teacher taught a couple classes, but other than that I'm the only one teaching. It's absurd. The chemistry teacher got called away to grade the Form 4 national exams, so she's been gone for a month. Our headmaster is being transferred, so the geography teacher is sort of filling in, which means he'll be busy until the new one shows up, which I believe was supposed to be late October.

Other than that, I'm teaching lots again, I'm looking forward to Christmas, and I've now completed a full year at my site. Feels good.

Cheers,
Gregor

Friday, October 26, 2007

Peeling Back the Callous and Feeling Again

I took a long bike ride the other day, about as far as I've been from my village yet without a bus. I was asked for money somewhere around 10 times, which is a lot especially when you consider that I was on a bike and listening to my iPod, not walking and engaging everyone in conversation.

At one point I was having a bit of bike trouble (several points actually, one of my brake cables kept poppping out) and while I was working on getting it back in a mama came up to me, and she really wanted money. I was hot, tired, and frustrated with my bike at that time. She told me that she had called me as I rode by. Not that I'm uncaring, but even if I had heard her I wouldn't have stopped. 3/4 of the children I pass feel absolutely compelled to shout "Mzungu" -- white person -- when they see me. It doesn't really bother me most of the time, but I definitely don't stop for every person who sees me and recognizes that I'm white.

She began explaining how of course I know that the people here have become very accustomed to drinking ulanzi (the local bamboo-wine) and that the price is so small, but some people still just can't afford it... I interrupted her at this point to say that I don't hand out money, especially not for booze. Then she said that she was just talking in general, and that she herself doesn't drink. No, she wants assistance for her family. Even 10,000 shillings would help (a lot of money, about $8.50-- more on how much money is worth later). I explained that I just was out for a day ride so I really only brought 500/=, (about $0.40) enough for chai and a snack in the village I went to.

But this mama was persistent. I told her where I was coming from, and she got very excited, because her son is a student at my school! Now it doesn't matter that I don't have money on me, I can give it to her son! I tried to explain that her son was at my school, the school where I'm freely giving 2 years of my life to teach--that this is the assistance that I see as really helping, not some money because you got lucky and saw a white person, but teaching! providing education to her and many other children. I tried to explain that she was the 10th person that day to beg money of me, and it's not even 1:00 in the afternoon yet! That there is no way I could give money to even 1% of the people who ask me for it. She didn't get it. She kept asking for money. But what she kept saying, and which did get to me later, is that I have to keep seeing the people.

She really annoyed me. I was in a bad mood for hours afterwards, feeling like there was no point in leaving my village at all when wherever I go people just want money from me. But what the mama was saying was right, sort of. I'd completely lost sight of the people; I was feeling that the poor people were there for the purpose of bothering me. So my goal has been, for the few weeks since then, has been to not blame people for their problems, even if, as Annie put it "everyone has a problem that a little of your money will solve." The only reason me and the poor villagers are in our respective places is the accident of where we were born.

All that said, the cultural attitudes towards begging here are frustrating. There's no shame at all connected with asking for money, accepting money, borrowing money and not paying it back, etc. I can't help but think that if there was a little more "pride" in that area, if people were a little ashamed of needing assistance, or even if there was just a bit more pride shown in doing something by yourself, without help, that would motivate people and speed up development considerably.

Also, check out the next post back for an article by a Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Tanzania in the 60's and came back in the 90's.

Salama,
Gregor

Socialism in Tanzania

This is probably illegal without getting permission first, so please notify me if there are any objections and I'll take it down. I want to share with you an essay by an ex-Peace Corps Volunteer, Leonard Levitt. This is an excerpt from Mbeya Dreaming, which was published in Going Up Country: Travel Essays by Peace Corps Writers, edited by John Coyne and published by Charles Scribners Sons, 1994. I am taking this excerpt from the September 2007 issue of Worldview, the magazine of the National Peace Corps Association. The author was a teacher in Tanzania, near my region, in fact, from 1963 to 1965.

The Party Secretary

"Do you know, Levitt, that one of your students is also here in this village?"
"Who is that?"
"Peter Mwakyusa."
"Peter Mwakyusa!" Peter Mwakyusa, who durin gthe Saturday night debates had fired up the school with his wild burst of African nationalism.
"Yes, he is the party secretary for Icolo. His office is just down there." Mwandunga points down the dirt road we have come on. "I will send word to him that you are here. He will want to see you."
Like Mwandunga, on the surface Peter Mwakyusa has not changed. He is sill short and stocky, and has the same short haircut he had as a schoolboy.
"So, Levitt, you have returned to us," he says paternally, almost patronizingly. He says this matter-of-factly, with no emotion, and though my returning here to his village at this remote corner of the country is the most natural of events.
We shake hands. He takes two or three steps back and literally looks Susan and me up and down, as though appraising two animals. "Are you still teaching, Levitt? I remember your teaching. You were a fine teacher. A fine teacher."
"No, I am a journalist. A writer."
"A writer? Why not a teacher? Why did you stop? Hakuna maua. No more buds, no more flowers."
Taking me by the hand, he begins leading Susan and me about the village. "I am the party secretary here", he explains in English as we walk off the road, past his office, and through fields as villagers appear and stare at us. He explains he is the secretary of one of three local areas, responsible, he says, "for knowing everything of the 25,000 people in my district."
"I am interested in knowing the will of the people," he adds, "so I can determine their needs."
"And what of //your// life, Peter?" I ask. "Are you married? Do you have children? How long have you been here in Icolo?"
He shakes his head. "No, I am the party secretary. Personal matters are not important."
There is a mkutano, a meeting, in progress that Peter says he must attend, and invites Susan and me to accompany him. There, in a clearing some yards away, under tall, leafy trees protecting the people from the afternoon sun, is a long table with wooden benches at which a dozen or so officials are seated. Beyond them are perhaps a hundred villagers seated on the ground, old men in varying states of dress, from Western trousers to cloths slung over their shoulders to turbans wrapped around their heads.
Leaving Susan ehind with our driver, Peter leads me to an open space on one of the benches and we sit down together. Peter points out the official at the center of the table--a tall young man in a white Mao shirt that hangs outside his trousers.
"That is our Area Commissioner," says Peter approvingly. "He is very radical."
"You mean he is against the government?" I say facetiously.
"Oh no, no." Rising from our bench, Peter walks up to the Area Commissioner and whispers in his ear. The Area Commissioner nods his head. Meanwhile, one of the officials at the table has finished speaking. Seated on the ground, the old men have raised their hands and are asking questions. They are speaking both in Swahili and Nyakusa, the local dialect. I cannot understand what they are saying, but they appear to be growing angry, with more of them reaising their hands.
I am struck by this scene, this picture-postcard version of the Mwalim's Ujamaa, the African equivalent, perhaps, of a Vermont town meeting, and I wonder if Susan might take a picture of it. But first, I realize, I mus obtain permission from the Area Commissioner. Taking out my notepand, I scribble in Swahili, describing myself to the Area Commissioner as Peter's former teacher, and ask Peter to and the note to him.
Too late, i realize I have made a mistake, fr in writing the note in Swahili I have implied the Area Commissioner does not know English. By then, Peter has passed on the note. I watch the Area Commissioner pick it up, glance at it, and jot something of his own on it. He places a pin through the note and passes it back to Peter.
Peter hands it to me, unopened. I pull out the pin. Scrawled on the back of my note are three words, in English, all capitalized. They are: "Is Not Allowed."
The meeting continues. The old men continue to raise their hands The questions appear interminable. but finally, it is over. The Area Commissioner stands up and walks straight to his car. Without a glance at anyone he drives off.
Peter does not mention the Area Commissioner's refusal, but begins leading me through the village, past the mud huts and the kraals where the cattle are lying amidst the banana trees.
Like the area commissioner, he does not speak to anyone.
When I ask him whether Susan can take his picture with some of the villagers, he says, "But I am the party secretary! Why should I be taken with them? IT is not dignified. You should know this, Levitt. You know Africans better than anyone."
I have no idea what he is talking about. "Peter," I laugh, "You are the first politicianI have ever met who does not want to have his picture taken with his constituents."
But Peter does not respond to this. Instead, he begins berating me for not understanding him, for not understanding Africans. "What we believe, Levitt, is that if a man is rich and has much land, he exploits the others who have less land than he. Why should one man have so much land and others have none? The land belongs to everybody. Shouldn't they all be equal?"
I wonder where he has picked up such nonsense.
"You see, Levitt," he continues, "We are not like the Chinese. The Chinese have to be taught about socialism. They had it imposed on them. With Africans socialism is natural. We have a word for it. It is called Ujamaa. The word is new, but to us Africans it is natural."
"But what if a man works very had and sells his crops and makes money from them?" I say for the sake of argument."And another man does not work and produces no crops. Why shouldn't the first man take his money and buy the land of the second man and produce more crops and make more money?"
"But that is not the African way, Levitt. You know Africans. You taught us. You know this about us."
Again, I have no idea what he is talking about. He is mad, I find myself thinking. They are all mad. What is it that he thinks I know of them? That equality does not mean equal opportunity but equal ends? That being equal means being the same? That there are no differences between people, in their character, in their intelligence, in their motivations?
Is this what is meant by African Socialism? IS this the logical conclusion of the //Mwalimmu's Ujamaa//? Here in this remote village, is this the final mutation of Fabian Socialism, as interpreted by none other than my former student, Peter Mwakyusa?
And it is so sad. They have worked so hard. They had believed so much, the Mwalimu as much as any of them. For the first time I fiind myself feeling sorry for him. Yes, he had truly wanted to help his countrymen. He had truly wanted to eradicate poverty, ignorance, and disease. Yet it is now all a pretense, a sham. I think of the organizational chart on the wall of the Mbeya Hotel, the walls of our room covered with ants eating away at them, the single can of Raid. I recall the line of decrepit cars and buses creeping up the hillinto town; the ridiculous signs on the walls of the stadium across the road. //Nchi-Maskini Haiwezi Kuendelea Kwa Msingi Wa Fedha//. A poor country will not progress if it depends on aid. //Nchi Maskini Haiwezi Kujitawala Kama Inategemea Misada Toka Nje//. A poor country is unable to rule itself if it relies on foreign aid.
I recall the boarded up Indian-owned stores, the bottles of Neva Shampoo, Junior Aspro, Sloan's Linament, and Galloway Cough Syrup that now pass for medicines. The schools on the roadside with no pupils inside them. The overturned truck that has lain for years. I imagine the corpus of Tanzania, lying inert beside it, with all the transfusions of foreign aid unable to resuscitate it. I suddenly have the premonition that in not too long a time the grass and weeds will grow up and cover everything.
It is growing late in the day now and time for us to depart. Peter escorts Susan and me to our car. But the car has a flat tire. While we and Peter watch, our driver replaces it with a spare tire. Now the driver says we must hurry. If another tire goes, there is no spare. He says he is afraid of the darkness. We must, he warns, return to Mbeya before nightfall.
We say our goodbyes to Peter, who stands expressionless behind us in the road as we pull off.
But at the bridge over the brown river Songwe, two soldiers stop us. They are young, in their teens perhaps, boys really, in green fatigues and high black boots, with rifles slung over their shoulders. They want to see Susan's and my identification. They want to examine Susan's camera.
They search our belongings--the camera case, Susan's pocketbook. They pat under the dashboard. They say they want to see if we are sending messages across the Malawi border. To whom? Why?
They want to know about the package of rice Mrs. Mwanduga has prepared for us. They say they are checking smuggling from over the border. There are shortages of rice around the country, they say. Speculators--Indian businessmen--have driven out to the rice-producing areas. They then return to the cities where they sell the rice on the black market.
Our driver is nervous. he speaks to them so quickly I cannot understand him. The soldiers say they want to send us to Kyela so that we can report to the Area Commissioner. The Area Commissioner is the last person I want to see. Our driver continues talking, gesturing, pleading. In the end they let us go.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Craziness!

It's been a while since I posted. Sorry. I've been on vacation for almost a month now. I think I blogged about it before, the vacation was supposed to be September, the dates were set way back in March. Then, in mid-August, my headmaster comes back from one of his endless trips and announces that the Form 6 Mock Exam dates have been announced by the region: a week of exams to start Sept 17. He announces that, because of the mock exams, the A-Level school break will be postponed until after the mock exams. The Form 5 students, showing a remarkable amount of backbone, disagree. They tell him that they've been away from their families for half a year and that their end-of-term exams are already scheduled for the next week, and that they will abide by the original schedule. Also, the cooks tell the headmaster that they don't have enough food to keep the school open for an extra 3 weeks on that short of notice. So the headmaster decides that we will keep the original schedule, and the Form 6 kids can just hang out for the extra 17 days studying by themselves and not being taught. Now, I would have stuck around and taught them myself, except that Annie (my girlfriend) had long before bought plane tickets to come visit me, so I was leaving to pick her up in early September.

The completely ludicrous part is that when I took Annie back to my site the headmaster showed up for one afternoon, and announced (not to me, one of the other teachers told me later) that he was changing the plan again, and that the school would indeed officially close only after the Form 6 mock exam. Basically, he announced halfway through a vacation period, that it wasn't actually vacation, the vacation would be next month. Then he promptly left that evening.

I have no idea how they plan on contacting the 60-some Form 5 students. Perhaps they'll send letters, but the school has also been running out of money, meaning we haven't been buying diesel to power the generator in the evenings, so without electricity and computers, I don't envy the typist the task of typing out all those letters. She types pretty slowly...

In a way my vacation from school was extended, but I've already taken my Peace Corps vacation with Annie and it just means there's none of my normal work for me to do at school. There's plenty of other work to do, but my chances of finishing the syllabus with the Form 6's are shattered. (The real exam is at the end of February. That's a national thing and thankfully the dates are already set.) Also, the university students who were teaching at my school during their holiday all went back to school, leaving me as the only physics teacher. Basi. So they'll probably expect me to pick up some O-Level physics classes, which is fine until the A-Level kids get back, but it's much harder to stop doing something once people are used to you doing it.

On lighter notes, I got some good travel stories. On my way to town from site this poor teenager was getting carsick in front of me. He threw up a little bit, and then the mama sitting next to me started telling him that of course he threw up, he hadn't drunk any kerosene that morning. I wasn't the only one giving her a weird look, but she kept on explaining how if you drink a little kerosene, it makes it impossible to throw up. At the next little village we stopped at this mama got out and found someone to give her a little kerosene, which she brought back cupped in her hands. She gave it to the poor sick kid and insisted that he drink it. He kind of lapped it up out of his hand. Personally, I think I would have heaved again on the spot, but he managed to finish the kerosene and--the worst part of the story--he kept it down for about half an hour, at which point the mama had gotten off. So she didn't see him when he threw up again, much more violently this time, and she probably still thinks kerosene is a miracle at settling stomachs.

A bit further along in the journey I had to wait for a couple hours at the bus stand in Iringa (this was on my way to Dar es Salaam to pick up Annie). I ended up having a fairly interesting conversation with a rasta guy. (There's a few of them here, I see them mostly around bus stands in bigger cities. He was wearing some Bob Marley stuff, had dreadlocks, and offered me weed.) I bought him a cup of chai and we talked mostly about AIDS. He was asking me about things he had heard and at least half-believed: that AIDS was created by white men to reduce the population of Africa, that AIDS was created by condom companies to improve business, and so forth. We talked a bit about why those don't really make any sense at all. I didn't convince him completely, but he did acknowledge that dead people don't buy things. Then we got on to politics a little bit, and he told me that he liked Bush but didn't like Reagan. When I asked him why, he said that Bush didn't bring AIDS. I guess he blames Reagan for that.

Then, I got on the bus (warning, this is another story about carsickness) and this time it was the poor mama next to me getting carsick. I was reading a book though, and she was amazingly quiet about it. I hadn't even realized except we were pulling in to the Al-Jazeera rest stop--the nicest stop on entire road from Njombe to Dar--so I looked up to see her throwing up absolutely silently into a nice little bowl she had made out of her khanga. (Piece of fabric women wear a carry around. They're more useful than even a towel is to a hitchhiker.) Nothing is remarkable there, what makes it a story is that seconds later the bus stopped and we had a 15 minute break, and instead of getting off the bus to wash out her khanga or just find a place to ditch the vomit, she folded it up in her khanga and stuffed it into her suitcase. Then she got off the bus.

That's the craziness, the rest was mostly sane, though Annie might disagree. I picked her up at the airport, we went pretty directly to my site where she got to meet all sorts of neighbors. Then we did a safari in the beautiful Ruaha National Park, where we saw 14 lions, baby elephants, and fighting giraffes, and we spent her last weekend on Zanzibar, which was lovely and relaxed due to Ramadhan, although it was a little difficult finding food during the day. Another day I'll put up safari pictures and better account of our trip.

basi.

Gregor

Monday, August 27, 2007

Stockholm Syndrome

I got a text message the other day from my friend Peter. He asked if I could remember the name of the syndrome where a hostage of kidnap victim begins to sympathize with his or her captors and sort of help them out (Stockholm Syndrome). Peter and I worked on crosswords a lot in training, so I asked if he was tackling another (he's got a book of NY Times Sunday crosswords... they're tough). "No," he said, "I'm just writing a letter to a friend and trying to describe my place in the educational system here."

I know exactly what he means. I showed up today and was about to call the form 5's in for math when I realized that only about 5 of them were there (out of 60). It turns out there was some problem with water, so they were working on that. They showed up for the last bit, I taught for about half an hour, which turned out to be okay. We reviewed the last lesson and did some practice problems. Then I taught my F6 physics and went to the daily staff meeting/announcements. They went on longer than usual, and the teachers decided that after the meeting they'd call all the students to the parade ground and punish those that hadn't shown up to the morning parade on Friday (nearly 200 of them!). We had talked about it Friday and decided that each student would get 3 hits (with a stick about 2 1/2' long). So each of about 15 teachers had a stick so that they could punish all the students in a somewhat timely manner. But they started about 15 minutes after my period was supposed to start and it still took them a while, so my class didn't return in time for me to teach much of anything.

Some thoughts on corporal punishment: it's reasonably fast and easy. As a teacher, you can mete out fairly standardized punishments quickly and forget about it. It definitely has its advantages. I'm only beginning to think of other punishments that we could have used on nearly 1/4 of the student body that wouldn't have taken lots of teacher-hours. (This method did take almost all of the staff about 30 minutes, between hitting and lecturing.) The problem I have with it is that I don't think it's effective. One of the teachers today confirmed my suspicions and said that this morning attendance was no higher than normal at the morning parade, and that many students who did show up still were skipping their classes later. So while I can understand the desire to just hit a kid sometimes, I don't find corporal punishment good for much more than venting that desire. It gives both the teacher and student a feeling that punishment has been given, but does little to correct the behavior.

Personally, I'm extremely lucky that I don't have big behavior problems in my classes. It comes not from any magical classroom charisma that I have, but from the fact that my kids are older and more mature--mostly in their early 20's. In O-Level schools I've heard plenty of stories of Peace Corps Volunteers using more creative forms of punishment and having the students ask to be beaten--they'd just as soon get it over with as well.

So the long story short is that the half of my classes didn't get near as much time as I thought they would. And the only thing I can think is "Kama kawa:" as usual.

There's a ton of things about the educational system that I don't like, but all I can do is try to teach the kids as best I can. The Stockholm Syndrome analogy works well. I'm trapped in the system, but working as hard as I can for it.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

mostly money

Lots to say. First of all, new pictures are up at flickr.com/gregorgregorgregor, mostly pictures of the In-Service Training (IST) of me with a mohawk. There's also pictures a couple of my recently departed housegirl, and some other miscellaneous things.

The week after IST was the last week before a weeklong midterm break for my kids, which meant (I found out when I got back) that I was to give exams. I think mostly due to my lowered expectations following the last round of exams I gave, the kids did pretty well. Maybe some of it had to do with my phenomenal teaching. Almost all of my Form 6's are reasonably competent with derivatives, which is nice.

I also got cracking on my project work. Talking with the village chairman and the wananchi (literally countrymen--what I think is an unofficial council of old men who have an advisory role in the government). They've identified 4 areas they'd like me to try to help with: the kindergarten which seems to have 1 room, 1 teacher who may or may not get paid, and practically nothing in the way of supplies; the elementary school which is severely overcrowded and understaffed--the understaffing is largely due to not having teachers' houses; an existing group that does provides some assistance to PLWHA (people living with HIV/AIDS), and the village office (buying it).

Quite quickly we decided that the kindergarten was probably the most pressing need, and the village office would be the simplest. I have yet to learn exactly what sort of plans they have for the kindergarten, but they already had a house picked out to be the village office. It does have a very nice location near the village center, and the owner is ready to sell. I had an extremely productive meeting where I talked at great length to try to head off some of the problems that other volunteers have all the time such as underestimated budgets and the village expecting me to do all of the paperwork involved, and also made as sure as I could that they all understood that grantwriting does not get them anything for free, that depending on the project the community contribution is required to be from at least 25% to at least 50%.

One frustration many volunteers have is communities that expect the volunteer to be a kind of Santa Clause, showing up with money and passing it out. I'm doing what I can to dispel that (more later). What I love about my community so far is that they called a special meeting for me which started reasonably on time, lots of people involved in my projects came, we talked about the specific projects and general ideas about how to work together, and they even sang some traditional songs of welcome for me. It was really cool. Then, when my part was finished, they told me and I left while they continued with other matters. The only way I can think to explain just how nice this was is to describe a typical meeting based on what I hear from other volunteers.

A typical Tanzanian government meeting: A village government official tells the volunteer a couple days in advance that there will be a meeting starting at 8:00. The volunteer doublechecks the starting time, maybe twice, and is assured that it will be at 8:00. Knowing that things usually run late, the volunteer shows up around 8:30 or 8:45 on the day of the meeting. The village office is locked and no one is around. After waiting for an hour the volunteer goes to a nearby restaurant to get tea and maybe a mandazi (like a donut without glaze), and while eating sees a couple people headed to the meeting. She finishes eating and then goes back to the office and waits with the others who are they but don't have the key. around 10:00 more people show up, but they wait inside for another half hour waiting for one or two of the most important official to start the meeting. Then the secretary will welcome everyone, inquire about their homes and families, and introduce the village executive officer. He will welcome everyone, inquire about their homes and families, and introduce the village chairman. He will welcome everyone, inquire about their homes and families, and ask the village executive officer to start the meeting. The village executive officer will start the meeting, and then ask the secretary to read the agenda. From this point on, no one will be deprived of the chance to throw in the two cents on any topic. The volunteer will then sit through at least an hour of beraeucratic matters until they arrive on her topic. If the volunteer is unlucky enough that she is at a budget meeting, the various budget items will be read and commented on, and then, because no one has bothered to do it beforehand, the attendees will be asked to calculate the total budget. About 6 people will do so, getting about 6 different answers after a few minutes work, so they will repeat the exercise several times until one answer becomes noticeably prevalent. Finally, the volunteer will get to say her piece, then around 4:00 and very hungry, feign slight sickness and leave, spending the next month feeling bitter. So I'm extremely pleased with how my meeting went.

Unfortunately, after talking to my Peace Corps supervisors, I have been told to nix my participation in the village office project. The reasons are that Peace Corps is supposed to stay apolitical, at least when it comes to domestic host country politics, and helping the village government buy itself an office treads too close to my showing support for the one political party there is. I'm disappointed because it was going to be a relatively cheap project (they had about $200 to contribute and wanted about $200 more--cost of a 4 room house in my village: $400), and I was hoping to get it done quickly as sort of a test case. Oh well.
Edit on this: today the village chairman delivered the budget to my house while I was teaching. He told my housegirl that he would come back at 3:00 to talk about it. I had suggested (before I knew I couldn't do the project) that perhaps they might want to paint it or something, and that perhaps it would be possible to do a little more than just buy the house. Apparently he took it a little far, the proposed budget now includes a lot of very reasonable ideas (glass in the windows, cement coating on the walls, paint, building a pit latrine...), but enough of them to jump the budget up to $3,000. I waited for him for about an hour and he didn't show up, so went back to my office to get some work done. I'll look for him again tomorrow to explain the situation. The good thing is that he did a good detailed job on the budget and included a short letter explaining the need for the office. What concerns me is that he initially told me the price of the house was 400,000 /= (shillings), but on the budget that item was down as 500,000 /=. I wouldn't be surprised if the houseowner heard that I was helping out with the money, so decided that he could raise the price. I wish stuff like that didn't happen, but at the same time, who am I to begrudge some poor guy an extra $80? It's tough.

I've been having issues lately with people asking for money. I feel bad turning them down, sometimes, and other times I get angry and feel like they're trying to use me. After the first meeting with the village government my friend, mzee Protasi, told me that he had a problem and he'd like to talk about it. So, we talked, and his problem is that his house doesn't have cement coating the brick walls and it doesn't have ceiling board. (His roof is corrugated steel, just like all the nicer hosues in the area, but he's missing a masonite layer inside making a flat ceiling. In fact, my house only only has the masonite in the main living room, my bedroom and guest room are without. I kind of like it that way, the masonite in the main part of my house is pretty low. Admittedly, especially in July and August when it's pretty cold here, the ceiling board would probably go a long way in keeping the house warm at night.) I was a bit underwhelmed by his problem. I thought he was going to say his wife or one of his kids was very ill and he needed money to send her to the hospital (about 2,500 /= one way, say $2), which I would have been glad to help with. This, on the other hand, isn't a huge problem. His house is definitely above the median in the neighborhood. Unfortunately, I wasn't thinking very well, I was still riding a high from the good government meeting and was superexcited about helping people, and he has been a really good friend, so I--carefully and tentatively--told him that I thought I could help out a little bit. I think he initially thought that we could write a grant for him to remodel his house like we were talking all morning about writing grants to help an elementary school and people with AIDS. I explained that if I helped him, it would be just me. He got really excited, and I left and immediately started feeling uncomfortably with the situation. He's helped me a lot, and it would be nice to thank him (I have given him a couple small gifts), but I want to be careful about what sort of precedent I'm setting that will effect me as well as any other Peace Corps Volunteer or just white person to be in this area.

I went to town that weekend and decided that really, I can't give him money for his house. I'm sure some of you reading this will understand perfectly, and other will not. If I give him money, I would begin to have doubts about the reasons for our friendship--doubts I was already beginning to have just because he asked. I also would be doing an incredible disservice to future white people in the area. I don't want people trying to be friends with foreigners just because they want a nice house.

Ok, basi. Enough about this.

I've had a housgirl for a month now. It's amazing. All-in-all, I'm getting more work done, I have more free time, my house is cleaner, and I'm eating more. She's also a really nice girl and I've enjoyed joking with her and teaching her how to cook some American things. (Her favorite: banana pancakes.) The bad news (for me) is that she's studying to be a secretary in Mbeya, so the past month was her vacation and today she's heading back to school. I'm very sad to see her go. I've been asking her about future plans and she told me that she has two older sisters who graduated secondary school, but they both got married immediately and have kids and have the typical TZ life of a mama at home with her kids. Anumie, my housegirl, said this isn't the life she wants, and she's got some ambitious dreams of working as a secretary, then retaking here O-level exams and doing well enough to get to A-level, and eventually going to university and becoming a teachers. I think it's fantastic.

The other little good news is that I've already found a replacement, so Sophia will start work on Monday. I hope she's as fun as Anumie was.

To counter that, I've got a sad story that made me laugh about gender development. I was in the staff room the other day and saw an English final exam for one of the O-Level kids, so I read through it. I was impressed, all the reading comprehension passages were about pertinent things like soil erosion and life skills. Then there was an essay about a book they had read. The student summarized the book, it was about a woman named Hawa who became a bus driver. Of course, this is typically men's work, but she wanted to make money for her family too. Her husband took flak, people were telling him he should stop her, but he said it was her life, and she was making good money. One day, someone came on the bus with a pistol and wanted to rob it. Hawa saved the day by signaling to some of the passengers and then braking hard, knocking the robber down and thwarting his plans. The student then wrote that "My favorite character was the people on the bus because they worked together to stop the robber. My least favorite character was Hawa because she became a bus driver, which is a man's work, when she should have been at home with her children. Her family needs her at home." Sigh.

I'm also uploading some photos. Some are of the crazy hair contest we had at our In-Service Training, and then (if my connection keeps its speed) there will be some from my vacation in March and some from school recently, including some of my kids playing the violin.

As always, let me know if you're curious about anything I haven't mentioned.
cheers!
Gregor

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Death

Death is different in Tanzania. There's more of it.

I've been wanting to write a blog entry to try to sort out my thoughts on this, but it's never the thing I want to do when I get on the Internet. However, today I got terrible news from home about the death of a family friend just done with his freshman year of high school, and these thoughts are suddenly more pressing.

In America, including this latest tragedy, I can count on two hands the number of people I know who have passed away, and that's with several fingers to spare. I think I've been to 2 funerals in America. On the other hand, I've been in Tanzania for about 9 months, and I've been to 2 funerals here.

Part of the difference is the way communities deal with death. In America bereavement is mostly an affair for family and close friends, and often a church community. Here, it is a community-wide event. As soon as the news comes, an msiba is held, which is like an all-night vigil with the bereaved. Everyone from the community comes to spend time with the family. At the last msiba I went to at school there were probably over 300 people in and around the family's house, with bonfires in front and in back. The girl students were mostly packed inside the house singing hymns, while the boys were gathered around the fire in front occasionally joining in the singing. The faculty and other community members were in the backyard. The deceased was the sister of a teacher who had lived at the school for a few months. She died in Dodoma (far far away), but I guess our teacher was the closest family member, because the body was sent directly to our school, arriving a little after midnight. (Bear in mind that the only electricity in the area is at our school, so staying up past 10:00 when the power is turned off is extremely rare.) I left shortly thereafter as I was getting company the next day and needed to sleep, but I think most people stayed several more hours and even the whole night. I think that most of the people there had never met the deceased and many of them barely new her sister, our teacher. Even the next day the house probably never had fewer than 50 people there. I had to do some shopping and my mzee thankfully told me to walk the long way home because walking by the house with my tomatoes and cooking oil, everyone would assume I had brought them to help the family out.

One of the last books I read before coming here was The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, which is a nonfiction work about an author whose husband unexpectedly died while their only daughter is dangerously ill. The book is about dealing with the grief, and while I can't understand what it's like to lose someone that close to me and I don't think I'd find the Tanzanian style of grieving comforting, the book has me convinced that there can be American cultural deficiencies in dealing with grief. Or maybe there's just no good way to do something so difficult.

The biggest difference about death I notice about death in America and death in Tanzania is in its conspicuousness. Here, where the whole community comes out, deaths are hard to miss. But with poor nutrition, limited access to healthcare, and AIDS, deaths seem more frequent here, especially of younger people. One of my teacherfriends is a bit of an amateur photographer. When I looked through some of his photo albums there was hardly a single picture of more than a handful of people for which he didn't tell me that one or two of them had passed away. Mostly these were pictures from his college and early teaching days, at most 10 years ago.

One volunteer told me an anecdote about a village meeting she attended where the villagers started complaining to each other "Don't you hate msibas?" "Oh yeah, such a pain, somebody you don't know dies and you have to drop everything to spend all night at the msiba," and so forth. Finally they concluded "Well, it's our culture, can't do anything about it."

On a completely unrelated topic, this past week has been my In-Service Training, so I've been reunited with all the remaining people from my training class. It's been great seeing everybody, but I've come to realize how big of a shock I'll be in for when I go back to America. Having people talking to me all the time (especially about real things that often require thought to reply) is kind of stressful. It's going to be a big change to go home.

As a celebration of IST, some of us had an informal crazy-hair contest. I've got a mohawk,(I'll try to get some pictures to you guys sometime soonish), and some other notables were the checkerboard, bullseye, Tanzanian shilling sign ( /= ), braids, and triple mohawk. Although most of the cuts were truly hideous, mine didn't turn out to bad in the end and a lot of people are urging me to keep it. The jury is still out on that one.

Here in Iringa there is an NGO that produces lots of really neat crafts and also sells fresh ice cream and chocolate cake--all the labor being done by handicapped Tanzanians. One of the deaf people there was fascinated by my hair, and I explained to a couple of the non-deaf people that it was a tribal haircut in America, worn both by Wamohawk and Wapunk. They translated that into sign language for the deaf people, and while they still wanted to touch it, that was a perfectly acceptable explanation to them. Mostly, wandering around town with our crazy hair, we've been struck by the lack of reaction. As Dr. Josh with his horrible tri-hawk said, I'd be getting a much bigger reaction even in a trendy hip area of Tampa.

Saturday, May 26, 2007

Volunteer Styles

First, I have to correct a mistake. The Village Chairman in my all-Christian area who I thought was a Muslim is actually not. His dad is from a mostly Muslim area of Tanzania, and they both wear the traditional Muslim hats most of the time, but it turns out their Christian and there really are hardly any Muslims this far from the coast.

Volunteer Styles
Everyone has his or her own style of volunteering and of adapting to life in another country.

There are some volunteers that seem to depend on things from America, especially some environmentals (not meaning to stereotype too much) have a fair amount of free time that, by their reports, they devote much of to cooking elaborate meals. I'm sure I get an exaggerated account of their grandest successes and hear more about exceptions than the rule, but I have also heard from other volunteers of the more plain style that they have been shocked to see how luxuriously some of the other volunteers are living. Other reports tell me that some spend most of their time decking out their houses with exotic gardens and landscaping. Some of this is encouraged, to lead by example of good/sustainable/intensive gardening practices, but I've heard that some take the example bit rather far and do little else. There are also volunteers that I lump into this category (especially the 'mentals in this case) that don't have such elaborate lifestyles in their villages, but go into the towns almost every week and live it up there. As one example of this category, my distant neighbor Connor has a house that reminds me of college life when I visit. His housemama cooks for us while we sit on the couch watching movies on his laptop. He also spends a ton of money on American food in town and gets sent a bunch of stuff too. It's great when I visit, and I want to say that I'm trying not to be judgmental or hypocritical, but it's a little tough. Mostly, this is just how I see it. All that said, many of these volunteers still do lots of good work and help their communities a great deal.

The opposite extreme is the isolationists. I joined Peace Corps expecting a certain degree of lonesomeness, and some people deliberately isolate themselves, often requesting and getting the most rural sites. Two of my "neighbors" are like this in different ways. They both spend more time in the village than average without going in to town (but they are also dating, so they visit each other more than most volunteers). However they differ in that Jacob doesn't try to isolate himself as much, but leads a lifestyle very similar to that of his other teachers, eating rice and beans almost every day, and spending lots of time in his garden. Jeska, on the other hand, I believe it's more creative food (I've gotten a couple stories of her scaring her neighbors with some more creative dishes like sauteed apples with honey), but she goes months without getting to town, and although she recently got cell phone service at her site, she just turns it on to check her messages once every 3 days or so (that bit is by Jacob's account, so it might be a little exaggerated).

I sort of think of myself if a happy medium. I think I'm leaning more towards the village life side, I rarely cook elaborate meals for myself, though when I have company who will appreciate it, it's no holds barred. Recently, I've gotten some lovely packages with food in them, and the ramens have been nice for making a quick meal, but the fancier things (stove top stuffing, muffin mix...) are just kind of piling up, and I'll probably save them for when I have guests.
I definitely don't take steps to isolate myself. As I said, I came expecting a degree of loneliness, but quickly found friends in my village and also found that about 3 weeks of time in the village is enough for me to get frustrated with the slow pace at which things happen and make me want some time in town with friends--mostly Americans to complain to. And to stock up on peanut butter. Whereas most of the meals I prepare are of the rice and beans variety with some vegetables, for breakfast and sometimes lunch a peanut butter and banana sandwich is the thing I can make quickly without waiting for charcoal to be ready, though recently we got a couple new teachers and the school has started providing meals for a few teachers, and often I'll eat with them. Being on the busy schedule makes that very convenient, I think my average day in the office, including lunch, is around 9 hours. That just wouldn't be possible if I took an hour plus to cook a decent lunch. I've now found a mama in the village who makes good bread, and her daughter is a student so it gets delivered to my house, which is awesome. She has yet to do it, but says when the wheat harvest comes in she'll make whole wheat bread.

I definitely have come a long way from the days in training when I looked down on the volunteer I visited a little for all his empty peanut butter tubs, and I explained to my host sister when she commented on how many socks I have that I don't like putting on dirty socks. A long long way.

I also can't can't really imagine what the Peace Corps experience here would have been like even recently without cell phones and Internet access in the cities. The speed at which these amenities have arrived gives me a very positive outlook on development and progress here--an outlook that's often hard to maintain back in the village where it's needed most. Maybe more on that next time--which ought to be quite soon as I've got a little training in about a week. Until then, take care.

Saturday, May 05, 2007

And.... no. And movies

5 May 2007

Nope. No househelp. She never showed up. Apparently, as I learned from the headmaster this past Monday, a week after she was supposed to start work, he found out about some "bad behavior," apparently she hadn't told him that she has a husband she ran away from in Njombe, and a son too. I'm not sure whether the son is with her or him. He saw this as good reason not to hire her (she was to work part time for me and part time for the school) and told her not to show up.

Now, I do agree that she probably should have told him about these things when he interviewed her--I know he asked her quite a bit about her time in Njombe and all she said was that she took some secretarial classes--but my instinctive prejudices tell me that she probably had a very good reason to run away from her husband, and that now she probably needs help, such as employment. Unfortunately, now that the headmaster has nixed her, it would be bad form for me to go look for her to just work for me without first consulting with him. I'll try to do that, but he's only been in town for a handful of days in the last month. Sooner or later I will get househelp.

I brought a VHS copy of Pirates of the Caribbean to my school because I found out we do have a VCR. I watched it last Friday with the teachers, and then this past Monday (the day before the May 1st holiday) I watched it with the students--about 600 of them staring at a normal size TV in the auditorium/dining hall.

The reactions to the movie were a lot of fun. I will continue to bring movies, but my next choice will be a shorter movie. Even a movie as fun as Pirates got boring for those who couldn't understand it well (everyone but me). After the viewing with the teachers the head of the physics department (whom I have previously referred to as Evil Physics Teacher, but I think I'll downgrade now to Annoying Physics Teacher) asked me "Is it true? Is it true that skeletons can talk?" I assured him that it was not true and asked him how he liked the movie. "It was absolutely terrifying."

Most of the other teachers seemed to enjoy it more than be terrified, and the kids enjoyed it. Explaining the plot also gave my Kiswahili some interesting vocabulary such as gold, curse, and skeleton.

Speaking of movies, the wishlist is updated and (as I cringe to think about what the ex-PCVs reading this are thinking) I've added some movies that would be fun to have in Njombe, either VHS or DVD is good, but don't anyone spend much on these. They're just whims.

Religious Diversity and Property Values

22 April 2007

On Friday when I went to the village to pick up some honey (the good stuff is back, it's about $1.15 per liter. It's like crack. I'm completely hooked) my main man Mzee Protasi told me that they had just come from a town meeting type thing where they had where they had selected a new village chairman. The new guy is named David, and he used to be the village chairman of the 500 people who live to the southwest of the tiny village (in this country representative democracy, and corruption with it, has gone pretty far). Now he's the VC for the whole village--I'm not really sure how big this exact village is. He told me that next week there is a meeting of the four VC's in the (small) area, and the meeting is in the medium-sized village that's a 25 minute walk from my house, so it doesn't involve the big village 45 minutes away, or presumably, the little villages that are closer to the big village.

What I find exceptional about his election is that he is one of the only Moslems in the area. Religion in Tanzania tends to be Moslem close to the coast and Christian inland. At my school we have one Moslem teacher (who's from a different region), and one Moslem staff member, the school carpenter, who is the dad of David the Village Chairman. Coming from a country that's been democratic for over 200 years and has had 1 president who wasn't a protestant and 0 non-Christians, I think it's pretty cool that this largely Christian population has chosen a Moslem to represent them.

This smoothly transitions into property values because David came to talk to me about his problem: there's no Village Office. After the elementary school visit, it's probably good that we had this discussion, it gave me a chance to explain that when I said I was here to help and wanted to help the community, I didn't mean I was here to throw money at it. I was thinking of teaching English in the elementary school, but I'm so busy now that seems a long way off. I told him about my upcoming training in June which will teach me a bit about grant-writing, and told him that maybe when I learn how to do it, we can write a grant together. Especially if he's willing to do some HIV/AIDS work. And that grants typically pay for 1/4 - 1/2 of something. (I'm not so sure about that, but I don't want him thinking that this is going to be an easy answer to problems.) He seemed to understand quite well, and said he'd wait and actually seemed enthusiastic about helping with AIDS issues.

He has a house picked out to be the village office, and it's for sale. The price is 400,000 Sh, about $325. So that's what a house costs in Tanzania. However, I doubt anyone reading this blog would really like to live in this house. I haven't seen it, but my guess is my house at the school is quite a lot nicer. This is probably mud/straw/bamboo construction. But it's got a good location, relatively, and is probably decent sized. At least big enough for a small family.

As for nice houses, Mr. Fox told me that he's building a very nice house for a Canadian doctor who's going to start living here for half the year. This house is, I believe, 3 bedroom, the master has a nice balcony and there are fireplaces in the dining room and upstairs in the kitchen. The construction costs will total about $9,000, supplies and labor.

My schedule is being very hectic. Sometimes it's nice, and sometimes it's just stressful. I'll have more organized thoughts perhaps next week after my househelp starts. The only thing that's enabling me to do this is the immense quantities of notes Mithril, the old volunteer, left me. The only lessons I have to prepare from scratch are my F6 physics. But it's still a lot of work. Going over old notes, adapting them a bit, and then often having to learn the F6 physics myself and really synthesize it so I can explain it effectively. There's a lot in this physics syllabus that I've never really studied: optics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer. It is kind of fun getting to learn it now.


1 May 2007
So I'm half done with my 3rd week of crazy schedule, but I still haven't had a full week of it. For week one, the Form VI classes didn't start until Tuesday. Last week, week 2, when I showed up in the class room on Thursday there were about 5 students there. "Where are the other students?" I asked. In the dormitory. "Why are they in the dormitory?" Because it's a holiday. "Oh. What holiday?" Union Day, celebrating the unification of Tanganyika and Zanzibar. "Okay. Happy Union Day, see you tomorrow." This week we had yet another holiday, today, May 1. It's the first of May. Of course. I think it's supposed to be something like Labor Day, and some of the teachers were supposed to go to the district capital to do some teacher's union stuff, but apparently when they got to the bus stop the bus had already left so they were stuck here.

The Union Day holiday was actually really good. I was falling behind in my lesson planning and I managed to be more diligent about advance planning than usual so I finished lesson plans for at least another week. I just wish someone had told me about the holiday beforehand.

Today's holiday I did know about in advance, so I slept in just a little bit, took my time making breakfast since I knew there wouldn't be chai at school, and got a lot of work done in my office and taught a little bit. It is very strange to have a consecutive Thursday and Tuesday as holidays, but work as normal on the Friday and Monday in between.

Breakfast was uji, which is porridge made from cornflour and finger millet flour. I actually bought a nice uji mix in town that has ground nuts in it too, and I had powdered milk and some honey, it's pretty tasty. The students get uji for breakfast at 10:10, after being hungry in class for a couple hours. Their uji is not tasty like mine. I'm pretty sure it's just corn flour and water, which is just like the ugali they get for lunch and dinner too, except that it's runnier and doesn't come with beans in the mornings.

Start of the New Term

13 April 2007

So it's the end of the week. Last week I thought I would get to start teaching this week. I was wrong. Monday for sure, though. This week has been really disorganized; it's really made me appreciate how much the headmaster does. Last week A-level was supposed to start, which meant that by Friday around 30 or 40 of the 150 students had arrived. For O-level it was Easter break, so more than half the teachers were gone on Monday and by the end of the week it was down to 2 others. I went into town on Friday, along with the 2nd master who goes to Njombe for vacations to visit his family. He hadn't been unable to leave earlier because the headmaster had been traveling.

I stayed in Njombe for Easter, coming back Monday night. Tuesday, still students were arriving, but my headmaster had to travel for family reasons and the 2nd master, as well as quite a few O-level teachers, still hadn't returned. The school sort of seemed directionless. Neither returned until Thursday (both had said they'd be back by Tuesday). Anway, without really knowing how many students were present or what sort of time table we were working with, I didn't know whether or not to start teaching. I decided to use the other teacher's as an indication. Thursday morning the geography teacher asked me if I was starting to teach today. I said no, but that if he was I'd start tomorrow. He said he was and that we'd just use last year's timetable for the form 5's, which were here in enough numbers to start teaching. A look at the timetable indicated that he had no periods. (I think he taught anyway, which is great. We need to get these classes underway.) That afternoon I hashed out a new timetable with the chemistry teacher, which confirms my fears, I'm up to 28 periods of math and physics, 30 if you count the music I'll be continuing with, and, and they're still gonna want computer classes. That might just get a "too bad." The good news is that my schedule doesn't have periods on Fridays, which will mean I won't have to feel bad about missing classes on those weekends I want to use the post office, and for the majority of weeks when I'm here will give me some freedom to do some preparations or work on extra projects. The fourth A-level teacher, my counterpart whose advice I trusted when he said we'd probably be able to start teaching as early as Wednesday a week ago, I haven't seen in 2 weeks.

16 April 2007

Started teaching FV today. It's nice to be teaching again after so long a break, but tomorrow I'm starting the FVI's also, and that brings me up to 28 periods a week. A normal load is around 12. By some scheduling oddities, my classes are all on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, except for 2 on Wednesday. Thursdays, as often as I can manage will be labs, and on the days the schedule will be roughly halved. Still, it's a lot of work. A whole lot. My counterpart (who it turns out was at a workshop on teaching biology for the past 2 weeks) was complaining about his 20 periods. I don't know what I'll think about this set-up in a week, much less a month, but right now my mind is alternating between thinking "Why am I doing this, I didn't come to Africa to overwork myself," and indignantly retorting "This is exactly why I came to Africa!"

I went to the monthly big market this afternoon. It was the first time I've both known about it and been in town for it. Gotta say I was underwhelmed. I suppose to the villagers here it's a big deal, but I'm jaded by going into town all the time and it was like big bus stand, but with no buses, just the merchants. I bought some "high quality" rice for a decent price and got a earthenware pot I think I'll use as a breadbox. The pot, which I got with a little pot that fits over it as a lid, was amazingly cheap. I paid 1000/=, which is also what a paid for a kilo of the nice rice, which is the same price as 2 sodas and a packet of biscuits, or about 25 pears when they're in season, or 1 beer, or, in America, whatever you can buy for 80 cents.

17 April 2007

Just some quick reflections about teaching so far--I love it when I'm teaching, it's just the frantic preparation periods in between that are rough. I gave the new form 5 students tests in physics and math to see what they actually learned in their O-level. I also asked them what they want to be when they grow up, and almost everyone said doctor. A few wanted to be teachers, some pharmacists, a banker, a lawyer, and I got a few interesting responses: a responsible citizen, an adult, an environmental manager, and my favorite, "a facilitator like Mr. Gregor."

Also, progress has been made on the househelp front. There's a prospective who's going to ask her mom and get back to me. After teaching and working straight until 4:00 today (starting at 7:30), then going to pick up a little food in the village and washing clothes while my beans cooked, while wishing that I had time to sweep my courtyard while the wind was a bit low, I can't wait to get some househelp. Phew.

Also, some little things are letting me know that I'm adjusting to life here. For the first month or two something little like being hungry could really get me in a bad/sullen mood, so I worked hard at keeping myself fed regularly. Recently I've slipped a bit on that with no worse consequences than hunger, so apparently I'm becoming stable. But I still miss home. I've been thinking a bit (or a bit too much) about what I want to eat my first few days in America. I'm not going to commit to anything here as I've still got a lot of time I may change my mind in, but I'm pretty sure a fat juicy steak and some salad with a balsamic vinaigrette are high on the list. And Ranch dressing. And bacon.

Sunday, April 08, 2007

From final exams to Easter week

28.2.07
My kids had their final exams last week. I was worried at first, but now that I've graded them I'm OK with how my exams went (my first time writing tests!). Which is to say I think they were reasonably fair, you may not guess that if you were to look at the scores.

Grading was this week and was a pain. I think next time I may include more multiple choice and also make them a bit shorter just for the grading work. I curved them a bit, I think they both ended up with around 120 possible points, though I treated the final scores as if they were percents. A few (very few) kids did quite well, but the averages, especially on math which these kids treat as a necessary evil (they all focus on Chemistry/Biology/Physics or Chemistry/Biology/Geography, so math is required but not seen as very important) were pretty bad. A few kids didn't even take the math test, and a couple didn't even get 8 points, which is especially sad because I told them that I would test them on the Unit Circle, all they had to do was memorize it, I gave them the question almost verbatim 3 days before the test, and that alone was worth 8 points. Most everybody got most of those points.

I also got some diagrams of pendulums for my mass-on-a-spring physics problem, and several other mistakes that suggest that language difficulties are still very much there. Since the national exams are in English, I'll have to see what I can do to work on understanding question skills.

One little gem from a math test though
x = cos(y)
x/cos = cos(y) / cos
x cos^(-1) = y
cos^(-1)(x) = y

Several misunderstandings result in a true statement, but it's still nothing like implicit differentiation so no credit.

1.3.07
Grading has made me more frustrated with the computer situation here. After all the grading was done, the three other A-level teachers and I sat down together to compute averages and rank the students. It took about a day and a half to copy our scores onto report cards, 1 copy for the kids and 1 copy for the school records (thank god for carbon paper), and then to calculate the average score for each kid, and then rank them. Worst was writing by hand the 5 announcements on each report card regarding the school fees for next term.

I would have thought that, having experience doing stuff like this sans computer, the other teachers would be pretty good and doing it. I would have been wrong. I tried to keep things sorted for most of the procedure, which I was told didn't matter at all. When I realized that we would have to rank the kids ("What's this "nafasi" thing still left blank?") I put myself at the end of the average grade line and sorted the papers as we went into rank order, which saved a ton of time, except that I had to explain 3 times to the chemistry teacher what I had done to stop her, after they were sorted, from trying to organize them. Also, whether from perseverance and not putting down papers to talk every 5 minutes in the case of the chemistry teacher, speed of finding names on an unorganized class list in the case of the geography teacher, or I don't know what in the case of the biology teacher, I was definitely the fastest worker. Noticeably.

And this is at a school where we have a working computer lab. But I'm very aware that, although it would be much faster for me to do the work on a computer, it would probably slow down the other teachers even more initially, and it just seems impractical when there's only 3 hours of electricity everyday, and it's in the evening when we mostly want to relax some.

2.3.07
The last of the kids left today. Even yesterday, I think about half of them had gone home, if not more. I cleaned up my office a bit and started taping together the textbooks that are falling apart.

4.4.07
Yesterday was a day of presents! In the course of the day I was given 10 eggs, a sack of potatoes, chicken soup (pretty expensive for just a snack during tea time), a soda, a bag of green tomatoes, and another rooster! And that was just Tuesday, I can't wait for my birthday.

I feel pretty bad accepting the stuff, but there really is no other choice. I tried to turn down the rooster--by far the biggest gift--but with no luck. So why all the presents? Over a month ago I was working on my Peace Corps community entry writing assignment, so I was talking to one of my friends in the village and we started talking to the village chairman about some of the problems in the community. I explained that part of the assignment was to identify problems in the community that I could possibly help out with. In retrospect I think they might have taken that the wrong way and now assume that I've got a fair bit of money to throw at projects. Anyway, they invited me to come visit the elementary school to see its problems, but I was grading exams and then on vacation and just got around to doing it yesterday.

The school does have problems. They have 1 classroom for each class, which means that most classrooms have 70 to 80 kids in them, but a couple of the bigger classes have over 100. Only 2 of the classrooms are completed all the way, with, say, glass in the windows and enough desks. The principal (who used to teach at my school) kept pointing out the absence of ceiling board, which doesn't seem like such a big issue (only the dining area of my house has celing board, and they have some really nice plastic roof pieces mixed in with the corrugated metal that works as a skylight). But the numbers of kids in the classes was astounding. Now I'll try to explain to the village government that the help I can start soon is to maybe help teach the kids some English, but as far as finishing their buildings maybe I can write a grant to get some money, but it's gonna take a lot of work on their part too and also take a fair bit of time.

Anyway, apparently the school keeps chickens and they gave me 10 eggs and a bag of potatoes as a thank you present for the visit. Eggs aren't supercheap, so I was really surprised to get 10. Later that day, I went to the village chairman's house/office, and he gave me the chicken, which I tried in vain to turn down.

The most interesting part of the day was walking and talking with the two guys from the village. Mzee Protasi is probably my best friend, and we've talked a lot, but I haven't talked much with David, the village chairman. It turns out he really likes to keep animals; he's got a cow, a few pigs, chickens, and a few milking goats, which are rare in this region. He was asking a lot of questions about America, and it was hard for him to get that very few people in America are farmers. Here, everyone farms on the side: it's the main job for most of the villagers, but even those with shops have farms, same with the teachers at the school. Even my homestay mama in Morogoro--which is the 4th biggest city in the country--had a good-sized patch of land and a couple cows. Walking with David, we'd pass a patch of potatoes and he'd ask if we grow those in America. I'd tell just say yes, but then he'd ask if we keep pigs in America, and I'd explain that very few people keep pigs, but that those people keep lots of pigs. Then he'd ask if we keep chickens, same answer. Cows? Same thing. Corn? Sunflowers? Beans? Yes, all these things are in America, but most people aren't raising/tending/farming them for money. I thought he had the idea, but at the end of the day, but then he asked about one more thing: bananas. So I finally got to use a different answer. No, we don't have banana trees in America.

Packing List

Packing List (editted 31 August 2007)

When I was still just a little volunteer-to-be, I was looking desperately for packing advice, and I still wish I had found so more than I did. So here is mine:

Packing for Peace Corps Tanzania
Things I Brought that I Didn't Need:
Sheets. They provide them. Though some people bring a set of nice big high-threadcount sheets and really like them. Fitted sheets are also nice to have and need to be brought. My bed at site is 5' x 6', though there's no guarantee you'll have one of those. But you can always buy one. Some (taller) people will get a custom bed made that's bigger.
White shirts (or white anything else) - they just get dirty
Many shirts - it's fun and easy to get some cool shirts made. I would recommend bringing 3 or 4 shirts to teach in (for teachers). T-Shirts are also pretty available, and you can find some funny ones. I'd bring 3. Any collared shirt is fine. Polo shirt, great. Has funky designs on it? Fine.
I brought a nice frying pan. The one I brought was too big for just me, so I hardly use it, and decent ones are available here. The little non-stick one I got here I use all the time. The one I brought I think I'll only ever use when I have company.
American Stamps. Some book said to bring these, I brought a bunch and haven't used any yet. People don't go to America that frequently.

I had written "Traveler's Checks are a waste. To change them you must go to certain banks and present ID, the receipt, and the check." I take it back. I had my traveler's checks stolen, and assuming the refund comes through, I'm going to be very happy that they were Traveler's Checks, not cash. You get the best exchange rates with $100 denominations. Easier, perhaps, is just bringing a Visa debit card. The two major Tanzanian banks accept Visa. Mastercard can be found only in the really big cities.

Unofficial Peace Corps Uniform: For us Education guys I would say the uniform is zip-off shorts/pants and a lightweight collared shirt. Girls, although they exaggerate how formal TZ culture requires you to be, you will want long skirts in the village. Below the knee always. And almost everybody brings Chacos.

Great things To Have
IPod with solar charger (Solio). If you have electricity, you don't need it. If you don't, it's amazing. Especially if you bring a cord so it can charge your phone. Speaking of which:
Cell Phone: if your phone has a SIM card, bring it! Try to unlock it (if necessary) before leaving America so you can switch SIM cards. It's very nice if you don't need to buy a phone when you get here.
Solar Flashlight - we got them as Thanksgiving gifts from the ambassador. It is amazing. Some people prefer headlamps, but I like the big guy. I have hooks all over my house so I can hang it up like a normal light. A company called Bogo sells a nice model and gives one to a needy family for each one you buy.
Musical Instruments are tons of fun for you, other volunteers, and your friends in the village.

Shoes: running shoes, boots, nice-ish shoes (maybe 2 pair), comfy sandals (like Chacos). Cheap flip-flops are very available. You can also get Chaco's for wholesale prices, just e-mail them and they'll send you a form. You give them a copy of your placement letter and they give you a good price. Thanks Chacos!

Laptop: I've never heard a volunteer say they regret bringing a laptop. It's handy. I keep grades on it, write tests on it, write e-mails on it that I bring to town on my iPod, I've written a grant on it, and now I'm working on writing a math book on it. And sometimes a game of free cell is nice too. That said, you don't need a new, nice laptop. Pretty much any old thing will do, and if it's one you really don't care about, you can give it to someone when you leave, and they will love you forever.

Other things I'm glad I have:
Spices
Nice kitchen knife
Sweater - it actually gets cold here
Waterbottle
Frisbee
Leatherman
A few zip - lock bags. great for traveling with toilet paper in the rainy season.
Spatula
Measuring Cups
Pepper Mill. Pepper seems like a luxury now
Books
Messenger bag

Of course different people will want different things. I do a lot of cooking so I have a lot of cooking stuff on this list. Many people don't.

The best packing advice I found was to divide your stuff into 3 piles, 1 you think you need, 1 you think you want, and 1 of things that would be nice. Take half the stuff you think you need, and 2 or 3 things from the luxury items you think would be nice.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Superstition

I just got back from my vacation to the Tanga region, in the northeast part of Tanzania. On the coast, the Tanga region couldn't be more different from my area down in the Southern Highlands. It's stiflingly hot and humid, the Muslim population is huge, and, well, that's most of it really. Tanga was a lovely town, and it was great being in a place where cold showers felt good anytime of day or night. The whole area seemed relatively laid-back, which was perfect for a vacation, and swimming in the Indian Ocean was a lot of fun. I also managed to get up to Lushoto, a town up in the nearby mountains, where the weather was cool like at my site, but still more humid creating a jungle environment with lots of monkeys.

The Tanga area is supposed to be more superstitious than most. Out in the villages it's common for kids to hear stories about white demons or people who drink the blood of children, so one volunteer, Neal, has fun with the slightly older children by saying "Ehee, watoto watamu," (Ah, delicious children). He's pretty good at making them laugh with it, but a couple times he says he's tried it on kids just a little too young to find it funny, which causes them to run away screaming.

More superstitious evidence is that another volunteer, Krista, had 2 kids possessed by demons at here school in the week prior to our visit. The kids start thrashing around, and maybe babbling (perhaps it's just a seizure? perhaps they're just bored?). When possessed, a kid is brought into the staff room and put on the floor while the teachers argue over who should pray over her (both of Krista's cases were girls). They say that they need someone of great faith and pure of heart to pray over them to cast out the demon, so if a teacher prays and the demon remains, then clearly the teacher's faith is not strong enough. The second possession was spasming violently and hitting her head against the concrete floor, so the teachers brought in a couple students to hold her down.

Krista says that the first possession was successfully exercised by a Church official who was luckily visiting the school, and the second sort of went away by itself during the half hour while the teachers were arguing.

Friday, March 16, 2007

Anecdotes

These are some little stories from Peace Corps Tanzania volunteers that may or may not be entirely true, but I've found interesting of funny and would like to save.

Masai
There are tribes all over Tanzania. Lots and lots of different tribes. They all (I think) have their own tribal languages, customs, etc. For example, in the area between Njombe and Ludewa, the tribe is Upangwa (then, in Kiswahili, one person is an Mpangwa, the people are the Wapangwa, and the language is Kipangwa). In Njombe, you find some Wapangwa, but mostly Wabenna. Travelling towards Iringa you get Wahehe and then Wakinga. Now Kibenna and Kihehe are quite similar, many words are shared but pronounced a bit differently, and most of the tribal languages are Bantu languages so the grammar is quite similar to Kiswahili. There are a few exceptions, Kimasai and Kirek, for example, are not Bantu languages.

Lots of tribes. Some are bigger than others, some are more powerful or generally more wealthy than others. In African countries, problems are often caused when there are only 2 or 3 tribes, like the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi, or (not exactly tribes, but) the current situation in Iraq. In Tanzania for many many years, the different tribes have lived pretty well in harmony, and many attribute the success to the great diversity that is present. I don't think any single tribe makes up even 10% of the population.

It is also not very easy to know someone's tribe by their appearance, with the exception of the Masai. The Masai are definitely one of the larger tribes and have historically, been primarily warriors and cattle ranchers, whereas most every other tribe were historically subsistence farmers. Even today, many Masai have a diet that consists almost solely of beef, milk, and cow's blood, whereas most of the rest of the country eats spinach, rice, beans, and ugali (cornflour and water). Cattle are very valuable, and the Masai are generally quite wealthy, but it is only recently (and still more an exception than a rule) that they send their children to secondary school and university.

The Masai also perform many body modifications, such as ear-stretching, decorative burning and scarring, and removal of the two front teeth. They also have traditional robes that they wear and often are carrying a spear or a sort of truncheon. So they stand out a bit.

I recently did a bit of traveling with a volunteer, Peter, from the Arusha region, near the Serengetti, where there are lots of Masai, and got a couple good Masai stories. On his way to Tanga, where we met, Peter was sitting next to a Masai on the bus. The Masai was dressed in traditional robes, didn't have his front teeth, had circular scars on his cheeks and forehead, and had his spear. Pretty clearly Masai. I think he was rather young, and Peter struck up a conversation with him. After a little small talk, Peter told him that he was trying to pick up a bit of Kimasai, to which the Masai guy responded with great enthusiasm "Oh really? I'm a Masai!" (in Kiswahili, of course). Peter didn't quite know how to respond, and just paused and said, "Well, yeah." He's decided if it ever happens again to come back with, "Yes, and I'm white!"

The Masai also had some tough bargaining techniques that I doubt I'll ever try. Buses are a very common place to buy things, and in every little town you stop in, people are trying to sell you things through the windows. Peter tells me that in one town the Masai guy took some interest in a pack of 4 bars of soap. He took the pack from the seller and asked how much it was. The seller said 1,000 sh (about $0.80), which the Masai said was too much. He opened the pack and took two bars of soap, gave back the rest, and asked how much for two. Predictably, the seller said 500 sh. Again, the Masai guy said it was too much, and he gave the seller 300 sh. Then they had an argument, where the seller kept asking for his 200 additional shillings, and the Masai guy insisting that it was too much. Eventually, the bus drove off leaving the seller behind, still yelling.

At another stop, the Masai guy bought something for 700 sh, took it, but didn't want to give the seller his 2000 sh bill until the seller could produce the change. He said something like "the bus is leaving soon, and if I just give you the money, you won't get the change in time." Similarly to the last story, it ended with the bus driving off and the seller not getting paid.

When the bus got close to the Masai guy's stop, he gathered his things and went up to the bus driver and told him his stop was coming up. The driver didn't know quite where the guy met, as they were in the middle of nowhere. They had a brief exchange where the driver was asking "By that tree?" "No, a little further," "How about at the top of that hill?" "No, there, by that rock!" and the Masai guy got off the bus at a very specific spot in the middle of nowhere, and stood there as the bus drove off, apparently waiting for someone to come help carry his bags.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

1.2.2007

Oof, what a week. I've had some really good days, and then this morning I nearly threw up I was so stressed out.

I think what's been putting me in a good mood is the gardening I've been doing. Last week I planted green peppers, cilantro, and carrots, and this week I added a lot of tomatoes. It's also really nice finally having the whole school in session. The little tiny village really close to the school is much more bustling, I can do almost all my food shopping there now.

On the downside I had to yell at my kids. After doing the lab 3 weeks ago, I had 5 or 6 lab reports turned in to me, 4 of them completed. So, I devoted a period to how to do a lab report, how graphs should look, etc. I also gave a writing assignment when the lab was first assigned that was basically 1 paragraph of reflections on the lab. I told them that we would redo the lab this week, but that I wanted to collect the writing assignment (which only 1 person had included at the end of his lab report) on Wednesday, and that only those students who turned it in would be allowed to participate in the lab on Thursday. I was really thought that would get me those assignments. I re-wrote the assignment on the board and left it up for a couple days. But by the end of the day on Wednesday I had 7 papers, pretty bad for 28 students. What was stressing me out so much today was what to do. So I took them outside and yelled at them. I think there were more problems they weren't telling me about. Turning in work is very unusual here, and I think one of the obstacles/excuses was that many kids didn't have a separate notebook for labs or any extra paper. Now, of course no one came out and told me this, but this time I let them all do the lab, with a strict warning that for real, anyone who does not do a lab report will be not be allowed to do the next lab. And I gave them all a couple sheets of paper (which I'm fantastically lucky that the school provides--I know of volunteers who buy a ream of paper every other week give their kids quizzes). So we'll see how it goes.

I also got really mad today at a teacher, who happens to be the physics department head (though I don't think that means a whole lot as I'm the only A-Level physics teacher) and occupies the office that I go through to get to my office. He pulled me out of class today, midsentence, and took me into my office where he proceeded to explain that the kids are dishonest and will take any opportunity to rob me. He's become very agitated because I've put the 2 chess boards in my office and I let kids come in and play. Several times he's told me that they're "very clever" and will distract me and trick me so that they can steal my things and the textbooks that I have to check out to students. He tells me I shouldn't allow more than 2 kids in my office at a time. I asked him how, then, am I supposed to check books out to kids when his rule requires that 3 students must sign to check out 1 book? He ignores the question and repeats himself (these are past conversations). Today, since he pulled me out of class while teaching I thought he'd have something worthwhile to stay, but unfortunately it was just the same. After listening for a minute I interrupted to ask what his point was. This prompted him to start over--this is all in Kiswahili, and often with this teacher, when I try to ask leading questions he assumes I'm just not understanding what he's saying. I assure him that I understand, and, unfortunately I think the sarcasm was totally lost on him when I said "Maybe you didn't see, but I'm teaching now. So, right now, what do you want?" I don't think the rudeness translated, which is maybe for the best, but he realized I wanted to go back to my class so he finished off with his normal conclusion, about the only thing he's ever said to me in English: "We Africans, you cannot trust us."

I'm angry again just thinking about it. I think I've had 3 conversations on other topics with this guy, and probably 5 conversations about how "Africans" (meaning the students) are doing nothing but looking for ways to take advantage of me. They'll steal lab equipment (Why? I ask) oh, the standard weights and measures are very valuable, you can sell them for lots of money--I'm a bit skeptical. They'll steal the textbooks--I say karibu (welcome, go ahead)--the good books have been checked out and what's left are old books falling apart that I have 10 to 20 copies of each. And if the students want to steal them and read them instead of letting them fall apart on my shelf, I don't see a problem.

Since I'm angry, one more story about this teacher. I had a visit yesterday from Jacob, my sitemate, a volunteer at another school about 10 km away. He just dropped by for a little while, but he told me that once when he was visiting Mithril, the old volunteer at my school, they were in her office (nextdoor to the Evil Physics Teacher) when a kid came in and asked EPT a question. They heard the question, and Jacob said it was a good one, really tough. Mithril commented later that she didn't know if she could even answer it. EPT tells the student that he's embarrassed to be asked this question, it is so easy, and that the student should be ashamed. He tells the student that he should go ask any of the other students, beacuse the question is so simple anyone will be able to explain the answer. The kid leaves, and Mithril asks him why he said those things, and he says something like, "Well, I didn't know the answer..." Sigh.

I suppose I should say here that, though I haven't observed any full classes, walking by and sticking my head in, many of the teachers seem to be effective, and even EPT seems to be mostly effective in the classroom.

So, I've got kids playing chess almost everyday, which I think is great. Yesterday I announced that if anyone beats me in chess (I've only played 2 or 3 games against the kids) I'll take him into "town" (the village) to eat pork, which would be a huge treat. And we'll see Monday how many lab reports I get.

6.2.2007
Today's excitement was a staff meeting. I got to school a little early so I could make an announcement at the morning parade that I'm starting music classes this Thursday. I'm a bit worried about how many people will come, I invited between 500 and 600 students and teachers, and a whole lot of them seem interested... More news on that after Thursday.

After the announcement, I taught my math classes. Then I got a surprise visit from my sitemate, a volunteer about 10 km away, who was hoping to borrow some teaching materials from our Physics and Biology departments. The biology department head apparently left to go into town today, but we got some of the physics stuff. Around 10:10, we have a short staff meeting (matangazo) everyday, usually about 10 minute long. Today, when I got there the secondmaster announced that the "Kigao" would be at 11, and that was all. I asked what that was, and was told it was a meeting. The different name should have warned me, but this was a major to-do. My after-chai class normally starts around 10:45 (on good days, sometimes not until 11:00), so I decided to just start class after the Kigao. Little did I know that the Kigao would surprisingly start almost ontime, and then drag on until 5:50 pm. That was one long meeting. I was very hungry by the end. Luckily I had my bag along and I did some lesson planning and got a couple letters written. As many of the teachers were variously writing text messages, sleeping, and passing notes, I didn't feel so bad ignoring most everything which I could only understand half of anyway.

9.2.2007
Ah! Secondary Project: Music Education is off to a great start. I would estimate I had well over 100 kids clapping rhythms last night. (Over 100 is just an estimate, but there were a bunch more than in math class, where I regularly have around 80.) No teachers came, but several asked me about it the next day, and two of them said they really wanted to come and gave me very legitimate reasons why they couldn't, and one actually did come, but I think he was a bit late and many students were early (which almost never happens), and I think he didn't want to be the only teacher.

Early next week I may try to do an additional period for the teachers so they can catch up, and then have them join in with the students. My first class was just rhythm, and it was a lot of fun. I was pretty nervous before starting--I'm not sure exactly why--but everything went well. After abou 90 minutes of teaching I told them that was all for class, but welcomed them to stay to listen to me play my violin a little. Almost everyone stayed for a few short pieces and they were full of questions. No one had seen a violin before, and almost no one had even heard of the Kiswahili word for it (fidla).

And then today I got my bike. Finally. A Peace Corps vehicle is going around delivering bikes, apparently being delayed a lot due to road conditions. Today was my lucky day though and I got a brand new nice Trek bike, which took me a bit longer to put together than I'd like to admit. Tomorrow I was going to walk the 10km to visit my sitemate, but now I can ride!

I've also added some math periods so that I can hopefully finish covering differentiation before the end of the term. This brings me up to 22 unique 40-minute periods each week (including music), which is quite a bit of work. (They are all paired, and it is rare for a set of two to start less than 10 minutes late, and the one's after the mid-morning tea break, which is really breakfast for my kids, usually starts more like 20 minutes late, or more if the daily staff meeting runs long.)

Right now we're covering thermometry in Physics. This is a good example of one of my reasons for disliking the national syllabi. I'm starting the heat unit, and I've spent 6 periods on the basics because, although my kids have been taught some of it before several times, it's always been partial (and likely poorly taught and poorly understood). So after going over how the temperature scales are defined--which is good to know--I spent yesterday and today talking about the pros/cons and misc. characteristics of various kinds of thermometers and diagramming the thermometers and how they work. I found it a little interesting to read about, but teaching it is boring, and I can tell the kids think so and can probably tell I think so. Guess I need to work on my game face. Part of the problem is that next year is when they will learn about electricity and magnetism (who knows what little tidbits they've had now and again for 4 years), but they need to know now for the national exams how a thermocouple or a platinum resistor in a wheatstone bridge can be used as thermometers. Oh well.

14.2.2007
It's been a busy week. My extra math periods are catching my class up a bit, but they're keeping me plenty busy too. Tomorrow We're gonna do a nice little physics lab with springs in series and parallel. I got all the apparatus together yesterday and today, tomorrow morning is to be spent writing the assignment. Second music class is tomorrow evening, and then I'll be in to Njombe for the weekend.

One of the A-level teachers got sick and has been in the hostpital since Monday. She was the one in charge of the exam schedule, apparently, so the other 2 decided to take the initiative and schedule exams next week, so they will start Feb 21. The kids have 5 exams to take, so of course exams need to start a full week and a half before the school closes. Actually, they just want to make sure they can all be graded by the time the kids leave, but I was counting on them starting the week school closed, not next week. So, I don't get to finish the topics I started, but there's still next year.

And the teacher shortage, oh my gosh. This afternoon we had a going-away party for another teacher (the second this month). Not good for a school that was short-staffed to start with. Also, last Friday one of the young teachers got fired, along with my friend the cook, because apparently they got drunk and showed up at the dorm. The cook's wife, who is the 3rd Master has been sick for weeks at the hospital, and now I won't be surprised if she doesn't come back. I haven't seen Donald, the cook, since he got fired. His kids say he's traveling, so I assume he's gone to see his wife. I kind of feel like people are jumping ship. In my weaker moments, when I'm thinking a lot about home, it helps to realize that there is really nothing this community seems to need more than teachers. It looks that way from in the school at least, and it's good to know I'm making as much of a difference as I possibly can.

Fashion!
People wear the strangest things here. The strangest Western clothes, that is. Today I saw a Form 3 kid wearing a t-shirt that read "MVP, Most Valuable Parent." One of my favorite teachers, Mwl Mwindosa, who teaches geography and general studies to the A-level kids, is incredibly good-natured and seems to always be smiling. Sometimes he wears a black cowboy hat, which looks great on him. He's a little big, and I can imagine him on a ranch somewhere riding the fences. On other days, sometimes he wears an immaculately laundered and ironed labcoat like a sportcoat. That just makes me laugh.

Having my bike is wonderful. I visited my sitemate, Jacob, last weekend, and it was really nice to be able to do. I told him that the last time I came back from Njombe when my bus passed his school, this guy came running down the hill wearing a (very nice, compact) life jacked. He's pretty sure that this is the guy he calls "Bwana Fashion" (mr. fashion) because he wears all sorts of strange getups, and once Jacob saw him wearing some bright orange jumpsuit, and Jacob asked him why he was wearing it, and he said "It's fashion". Very unusual for Tanzania, but I like it.

18.2.2007
Despite (or maybe because of?) all the work I had a really satisfying week. Maybe it's that a lot of the work actually got done. My second music class went great. Attendance isn't what it was the first week, but I knew it wouldn't be. A couple new people came, but I'm down to around 25 kids, which is a much less exciting but more manageable number than the hundredsome that showed up week 1. It was another rhythm class, with more syncopation practice and dotted rhythms added in. Next week I promised we'd start singing, so it's gonna be the old do re mi's. I'm so glad I started teaching those classes, they're much more exciting than my other classes because it's constantly involving the whole class, and the progress is immediately apparent.

Also, my lab went off well on Thursday. I found enough springs and weights to have the kids do an experiment about springs in series. It's nice to watch them work on the labs, they're very eager there. I just hope that I keep getting increasing numbers of lab reports. I ended up with 21 from the second try of the first lab, and I kicked all the kids who didn't turn one in out of the room for lab 3. A couple didn't leave, and promised me that they'd do the lab report this time, and I'm pretty sure a few more snuck in to do the lab. If they turn in the work, that's just fine with me... we'll see tomorrow.

The results came back for the Form IV National Exams, which determine whether kids get to go on to A-Level or not. I believe (trying to remember from training) that for boys, you need a Division 1 to get a scholarship to go to a government A-level school, and for girls Division 1, 2 and 3 get scholarships. I'm sure they still have to pay a fair amount, but my guess is if you get, for example, Division 2 and you're a boy, you can go to A-Level pretty much only if you're parents are rich. My school's results (where I doubt anybody's parents really qualify as rich... maybe a couple) were 1 student with division 1, 2 with division 2, around 20 with division 3, around 40 with division 4, and 3 or 4 failures. The Division 4's are probably pretty happy, my guess is most of them knew they weren't A-level bound and they get to graduate, which puts them among the elite for the area out in the middle of nowhere, but honestly the results are pretty abysmal. Only 1 division 1 is a blow to the school. All my A-level kids come from different schools and different areas--I think pretty much all A-level schools are boarding schools.

basi, enough of that. I learned a new phrase this weekend that I think I'm gonna overuse, but it will be so useful. Acha aibu, stop the shame. Apparently it works extremely well to make students speak up and maybe look at you while they talk, which can be a big problem, especially for the younger girls.

Now it's about time to get on a bus back to my site to go write some final exams1

take care everyone,
Gregor