Sunday, April 13, 2008

Back to School

It's been an exciting few weeks. Students are beginning to arrive at school to begin the new school year. Our official opening day was Friday, April 4. They're coming quickly enough that I think enough will be here on Monday, April 14 for me to start teaching. The big news is that we finished building a second dorm, so the A-Level is co-ed now. It used to be that just the O-Level was co-ed, the A-Level was boys only. Already it's strange. In just a few interactions with the A-Level girls it's apparent how different they are from the average village girl. I'm no longer used to interacting with young girls who have self-confidence, but these girls have plenty.

There are two dorms, one for each gender, this is where all the A-Level students live. Each dorm has a teacher in charge of it, for the students to go to if there is a problem, but I they mostly manage themselves. The dorms are very community, each has 4 big rooms full of bunk beds, though the showers and toilets are each in their own separate room. (And, in both cases, pretty nice. A lot better than the concrete-framed hole I have for a toilet and the bucket-baths I take in my house.) Some O-Level students live in some not-quite-completed teachers' houses. The school tries to pick needy kids who are well-behaved. Administration would much rather have trustworthy students living in the houses rather than letting them be vulnerable to theft and vandalism. Most teachers also have some O-Level students living with them to help out to different extents with chores, farming, etc. Typically a teacher with a small family (perhaps with only very young children) will have one student live with them, and teacher with a bigger family and older children has no need for this, and an unmarried teacher may have 2 or 3 students living with them. These kids the teachers choose themselves.

The school life is pretty different for the kids from an American school. One of the biggest differences is that the school has no janitors, groundskeepers, etc. This morning (Wed April 9 as I write this), most of the new Form 5 arrivals were "slashing," using a long machete that's bent at about 150 degrees for the last few inches to slash the grass. There are no lawn mowers. Slashing is a whole lot of work, usually it's used as punishment, but these kids were doing it of their own accord because they thought (correctly) that when enough of them got there to start being taught, if the environment wasn't "clean," we (teachers) wouldn't start teaching. Last year, we had a small teachers meeting and agreed to start teaching the following Monday. I showed up ready for my first class to find the other teachers telling the students that they wanted to start teaching, but that the grass was too long. So the students slashed and cleaned, and we started teaching the next day.

The students range in age from about 17 to 22, at A-Level. Most of them, I think, are 18 to 20. I haven't seen or heard of any sorts of hazing.

The area is very safe and peaceful. I don't regularly leave school grounds at night, but when I have I feel perfectly safe. Theft is common, but all the incidents I have heard of nearby are when nobody was home. I've been robbed of my leatherman and my watch, both probably by former Form 6 students. The leatherman was lying out in the room between my office and the physics laboratory, and many students were passing in coming to see me. My watch, I let a student use as a stopwatch for a physics experiment. When the experiment was done he returned the watch and I locked the room and went to have tea. When I got back another teacher had opened the room to make some announcements to all 80 Form 6 students, and of course someone had taken it. Over the Easter holiday, also, it looks like someone tried to break into the outdoor room where I keep my bike, but they didn't get in.

Most people living around here are more cautious than I am. They think I shouldn't go walking at night because I'll be targeted because I'm white. When I go walking at night the only thing of any value I have is a cell phone, and I don't think anything will happen. Women, especially, will try to walk in groups. The attitude I've encountered in several people is that here in Tanzania, there is no rape. If a women is walking at night, alone, in an isolated area, and something happens, that's her fault for not being strong enough and putting herself in a dangerous situation. They acknowledge that in other places that are more violent, where guns are common, maybe then it could be considered rape, but here, no. In the words of another PCV's headmaster, "If you put meat out, you cannot blame the cat for eating it." This attitude isn't held as strongly by younger, urban, educated people, but even their attitudes are probably different from yours and mine.

I also want to tell you about one of the coolest things I've seen in country. I heard about some villager who had built a dam by his house a little way up one of the hills, so last weekend my (awesome) new counterpart went to go check it out. And it's really cool. This is a retired guy. He's village-wealthy, which is to say he used to be a tailor and now has a decently big farm, and that supports him well enough he could retire. He's above average for the village, but that's not saying much. He has about a 5th grade education, and last year he heard about a guy in a neighboring village who was trying to get electricity from water. His house is by a creek, so he thought "I could do that!" and went to see what the other guy was doing. He didn't like the other guy's method but he understood the idea and came back and did it himself. He got a metalworker to make a waterwheel (he said it took about 3 attempts), build a little reservoir right above a decent elevation drop, and ran a pipe down to power the waterwheel. He's using a bicycle wheel as a gear and belts made from discarded truck tires to take the power to a tiny little generator, and then he runs wire for the 400 m to his house. He didn't have enough money for nice wire for half the way, so about half of it is this horrible aluminum wire that I think is used for construction.

But now he's got power in his house, he bought a TV from a teacher who got transferred away from my school, he got a satellite dish, and he's making lots of money (comparatively) by charging people's cell phones and batteries. (Seeing his line for charging, a lot more people than I would have guessed in my area have car batteries that they take to their houses for a little bit of power.) And his only power costs now are maintenance. He's also got very realistic plans for improving it, he wants to get a bigger generator, finish buying good wire, and maybe even expand his reservoir. All-in-all it was a really inspiring trip. I very rarely see people here being innovative, experimental, or taking development into their own hands, and seeing this guy was extremely refreshing.