Kipilefti

This post will make Chris Segal very happy.

So in America, I pretty much hated my cell phone. Sure, it was useful for coordinating things on the fly–in fact, I’m not sure how I would have done without it, we’d have had to plan things in advance or something–but I’ve never been particularly fond of phones and having one with me all the time just made matters worse.

But here in Tanzania, it’s totally different. My cell phone is my link with other PCVs, my family, my friends. Very few days have passed since I got to site that I didn’t send or receive a text message. In fact, it’s much more usual for me to Jiachie (a deal offered by my cell service provider that makes texts cheaper if you send more six of them in a day) and have extended conversations with other PCVs through text. I’ve gotten extremely fast at typing using the T9 text-guessing system built into my phone. When the network went down for almost a day last week, I got almost twitchy, worried about what I might be missing, wanting to text the other PCVs.

Even talking on the phone is no longer a dreaded event. It helps that pretty much the only people who call me are my family members, once a week on Sunday evenings. I look forward to the call all week, and really enjoy talking to them. It’s funny: I think I’ve talked more to them while halfway around the world than I did while I was in college.

It remains to be seen whether this need for a cell phone will stick with me when I return home, but I’m guessing that texting will be a lifelong habit. It’s so useful!

Reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Diet for a Small Planet, I have the strange sensation, probably very unusual for people reading such books, that I am already living by the principles espoused.

The food I eat here is, almost without exception, extremely local (I could walk to the garden where it was farmed) and organic. I buy it straight from the farmer, or from a person who bought it from the farmer in the near past. If I eat meat (a rare occurrence, since I don’t like cooking it) it’s entirely possible that I’ve seen the cow, goat, or chicken it came from wandering around happily, nibbling on grass.

Mostly, I eat legumes (various kinds of beans, chickpeas, lentils) and rice or chapati, and a lot of fresh produce. I buy peas and shell them myself; today I bought some wheat that I’m going to take to a mill to grind into whole wheat flour.

Often I think about what will be difficult to adjust to when I return home after two years: I think that supermarkets will be one of the strangest things I have to come to terms with. Especially viewed in light of Pollan’s descriptions in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, it’s such an unnatural thing, to bring food from thousands of miles away, to keep it all in the same place, independent of the place it’s from or the person who grew it, until a stranger takes it home. Even though I sometimes long for the ease and impersonality of a supermarket, to me it makes more sense to buy food from the farmer, to see her face and say hello and have her pick out the best peaches for you.

Yesterday I tried baking the Times no-knead bread again. It looked beautiful but, like the first time, wasn’t quite baked enough. My impromptu oven just can’t get up to the temperature you need for artisan-style bread. Still, it was good with the last of the chili I made a few days ago.

When I finished dinner I left the bread on the kitchen table and left the window next to it open, like I always do. Then I went to my room to practice the mandolin. When I came back later to shut the window for the night, the bread was gone.

A student must have reached through the bars on the window, grabbed the bread, and taken it. There is no other explanation (unless a teacher did it). People often pass by my back porch on their way to and from the water pump, and if one had gotten up onto the porch they would have been able to see into the kitchen easily.

I was quite angry. Partly because that bread was going to be breakfast, and part of dinner! But mostly because now I have to act more cautiously, can’t even leave the window open if I’m not around. I hate acting suspiciously but if it’s warranted I have no choice. Already I’ve moved my utensils away from the window.

I slept poorly, brooding over my lost bread. I was going to go up to Bulongwa today to give Bret his birthday present and see everyone, but my poor sleep and bad mood, combined with the torrential rain that rained all night and rains still, made me decide against it. Maybe a quiet weekend at home is what I need. But man, I’m hungry for bread!

It’s been a week of Getting Things: I finally received a big package my parents sent to the Peace Corps address before we got site announcements (and now I have to send off a package of my own with gifts for my host family in it); I also got a box of miscellanea that my father sent by bus from Kampala to Dar when he was on a mission trip; I also got a bag that my parents packed last week, which a colleague of my dad’s brought to Dar and a very kind friend brought down for me. And then, when I went to the post office today, I got two packages with Christmas decorations in them! So my house is decorated now, even though it’s not quite the season any more. There are ornaments on a string on the wall of my hallway, and tinsel around the bathroom door because it makes me giggle. I also got a package from my mother of inauguration paraphernalia, which made me cry as I went through it. I wish I could have been there!

Highlights of Things Gotten include: solid American silverware (which is amazing: forks that don’t bend when you look at them!); a solar-powered reading light from my father, which I’m enjoying–it’s good to not have to get up to turn off the light between finishing reading and going to sleep!; Berger cookies (Bret and Jess will also appreciate them!); lots of Altoids and conditioner; and an Obama action figure and mousepads. I was also really happy to get a postcard from my piano teacher, Mrs. Gutterman (if you’re reading, hi!), who I’d been meaning to write to…

(A quick note on mail timing, since it’s been requested by several people: boxes seem to take much longer than padded envelopes (a month or two vs. two weeks) for reasons unknown to me. Postcards and letters seem to take the same amount of time (two to three weeks), with a few weird exceptions.)

Yesterday was a tired day; I didn’t want to teach, felt a little ill, stayed in bed most of the day and had grilled-cheese-on-maandazi (maandazi are sort of like non-doughnut-shaped doughnuts, just fried dough) for dinner. Today, though, is a beautiful day, sunny and breezy, and a good one. I did all my teaching in the morning; had chai with the other teachers (they’re feeding us chai now! Two maandazi and as much super-sweet tea as you can drink); went to the post office, in which a bird is currently living (it flew in the window and lost a lot of feathers and I guess Posta Mama doesn’t mind? I asked and she went into the back room and brought it out and then it got scared and flew/fell into a corner); got a lift home from a woman I’d met randomly a month or two back (thank goodness, the packages were heavy!); finished reading a trashy teen vampire romance novel; and went to the market, where I got ingredients for chili and, for the first time since getting here, milk! I’m going to drink some straight (after boiling, of course) and make some pudding with the rest…it should be a delicious night! I have provolone, so I’ll grate some of that onto the chili with my new grater. I can’t wait but the beans are taking forever so I have to. While I wait for the beans I’m going to practice on my mandolin. While I was at the Internet over the weekend I downloaded some chord tabs for songs, so now I have an incentive to learn chords. It’s going slowly, but it’s going…

So some background on the Tanzanian educational system, for context’s sake.

To begin with, each year of students is split up into streams, sometimes by skill level but generally randomly (it’s random at my school). Each stream has its own classroom; the teachers enter, teach, and then leave. If there is no teacher teaching at a particular point then the students just sort of hang out in the classroom.

There are seven years of elementary education, taught in Swahili. These are called Standards 1-7. At the end of Standard 7 the students take a national NECTA exam that determines whether they will be allowed to advance to the next level, O-level. I am teaching at an O-level school, which is Forms I-IV. The students are generally between twelve and eighteen. At the end of Form IV the students take another NECTA exam that determines whether they will be able to advance to A-Level, Forms V and VI. At the end of A-level there’s another exam that determines their university prospects. There is also a NECTA exam after Form II, but this year it was decided by the government that the results of that exam will not matter in advancement. Which is to say, even if a student fails all subjects he or she takes a Form II NECTA exam for, he or she may still advance to Form III and, as long as he or she continues to pay school fees for two more years, can become a “Form IV Leaver” when he or she fails the Form IV exams.

So there are several problems facing the Tanzanian educational system. Perhaps the most dire is that the elementary level of education is taught in Swahili, while the upper levels are taught in English. Although English is taught as a subject at the elementary level the Form I students are not able to understand lessons taught in English. At many schools, including mine, at the beginning of the year the Form Is have a sort of crash course in English, but even then English comprehension is a huge issue. This is further complicated by the fact that the NECTA exams are in English for the upper level of education. The exam questions are submitted by teachers around the country, who often have poor English skills themselves, and the questions are frequently incoherent or have multiple correct answers. So even if a student’s English skills are good, the exam that he or she is taking is flawed.

Another major problem is a shortage of teachers. My school has between 650 and 700 students and 10 teachers, one of whom is the headmaster and teaches only a few periods. Another problem is that often teachers do not teach their periods. I have no observations to make about my school in particular. I can observe that teaching is not a good job: not well paid, and the ministry of education places teachers and can move them at any point. Most teachers do not have college educations (Form IV leavers are qualified to teach elementary level after one year at a teacher’s college, and Form VI leavers can teach O-level after a stint at a teacher’s college) and most teachers I talk to are teaching for only a short time while saving up the money to go to university. When I ask them if they plan to teach after they graduate, they look at me as though I might be crazy and say that they’re going to get a job that pays real money. Because the university schedule is not the same as the O-level schedule, there is a high turnover rate of teachers and they often come and go in the middle of a term. It’s all very confusing.

Lastly, the educational system here rewards ability to memorize over ability to comprehend. Particularly since classes are taught and notes given in an unfamiliar language (at least at my school, where they actually teach in English; at other schools they just teach in Swahili and screw the requirement for English competency) the students tend to write things down and memorize them without completely understanding them. This may allow them to pass the NECTA exams but leads to problems, particularly in science and math classes. It is a major source of frustration to PCVs.

So now my position specifically. I have a computer lab with eleven working computers that run Windows XP. Ten are for student use and one for teacher use. My classes range in size from thirty to ninety students, and periods are eighty minutes long. My primary problem thus far has been getting all the students in a stream into the lab for practical without having the lab turn into a madhouse with fifty students in it. The notes that I have presented so far have been very simple follow-the-checklist procedures but I have already discovered that the students are very good at writing without understanding. I’ve begun making them show me completed notes to be allowed into the lab for practice, but even with the notes in front of them when I say “now, turn off the computer” instead of following the checklist they’ve just written down, they reach out and turn off the monitor, and maybe turn off the wall socket. So I’ve started going around to each computer and walking through the checklist with them. I’m hoping that they’ll learn how to follow simple instructions from my class, if nothing else…

There are tons of differences between the Tanzanian and American educational systems. In Tanzanian schools, the students clean the grounds; corporal punishment is used liberally; classes do not start on time. But that’s all I’m going to write for now.

It was a beautiful sunny day; for once, it didn’t rain. Temperature maybe in the mid-seventies; sunny with beautiful, glowing, varied clouds; gentle breezes that whipped my still-cleanish hair around my face (when it gets greasy I keep it up, but when it’s clean I keep it down to enjoy).

I taught two Form III streams, the oldest students I teach. The classes are relatively small–about thirty students per–and they’re relatively attentive. I realized today that, to encourage students to write down what I write on the board (which is something that’s hard to do!) I can make them show me their completed notes to get into the computer lab, as a sort of ticket. It worked very well with these classes, but it will be trickier when I need to split the class because they can’t all be in the lab at the same time. Maybe the first twenty to take notes will use the computers for the first amount of time. I’ll work it out.

Walking down the main street in town, the wind on my face and the sun on my back looking around at the dramatically lit mountains and sky, I was completely happy.

I woke up this morning in a fog, both literally and figuratively. I woke a few minutes before my phone alarm went off, aware enough to know that I really didn’t want to get out of bed but also to know that I had a class first thing. So after hitting snooze once I got up, stumbled around, had bread and butter for breakfast (my first loaf of NYT bread here: somewhat successful, but I couldn’t get the “oven” hot enough so it’s a little underdone) and dressed.

The view from the windows was soft grey as far as I could see. Everything past my porch had disappeared. By the time I walked over to the school it had cleared somewhat, and later when it cleared from town it was beautiful to watch the clouds sneaking around the neighboring mountains.

When I got to school, both the outer iron door and the inner wooden door to the computer lab were unlocked and open. Which was odd: usually I’m the one to unlock them when I arrive in the morning. And then I got a look inside the lab.

For a good minute I was convinced that I’d somehow found the wrong room, or that I was dreaming. The computers had disappeared; the tables had been pulled out into a rectangle formation. I entered the lab, totallly baffled, and saw that the computers were still there, stacked on a few desks against the wall. Every cable had been disconnected and was in a pile next to one of the desks. I put my things down and went to find someone to ask. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be teaching my morning classes.

I ran into my mkuu (headmaster), who told me that the Minister of Education was staging a surprise visit (he later called it an “ambush”) and they needed a room to hold the meeting. Fine, reasonable enough. The meeting was short, maybe half an hour. The minister said some very reasonable things: that math education is a problem here (it is), that having labs in schools is important (it is), that the students should use condoms when they have sex (very progressive of him, I thought. This point was elided when his remarks were summarized in a staff meeting later). At least, I’m pretty sure he said all those things. My Swahili speech-comprehension skills are not all they could be.

Then he left and I found myself facing the seemingly-overwhelming job of reassembling my lab pretty much from scratch. Some students helped me move the tables, UPSes, and monitors back, and then I hooked up all the computers and re-wired the network. It only took a couple hours but now I’m tired and still pissed off that they took apart my lab without telling me. I went home for lunch and then the rain began, so I’m not going back today. My project for next week is to clone all the computers, but first I have to spend some quality time with the Internet (hopefully that will be possible in Bulongwa).

Sitting on the goat-skin stool in my kitchen, watching the flame from the kerosene I just poured on the coal in the jiko. The stale scent of my body (smell, odor, aroma, says my crossword-brain). The hesitant knocking of the rain on the roof. The screech of a crow’s talons as it comes in to land. I stand and flip the light switch, idly wondering if the power has returned, and am pleasantly surprised when the kitchen grows brighter.

I taught my first class today. It wasn’t good and it wasn’t bad. I think it will be okay. Afterwards I went home (not much to do in a computer lab, without electricity), sat in bed, and read a book. Now that the power’s back I could walk over to Mama Jully’s and watch the inauguration, but my plan for the evening had not included that: dinner is on the stove, my book is almost finished, and now that the power’s back I have the music that I’ve been sorely missing all day. If I go watch it I’ll just wind up trying not to cry in front of her television, thinking about home, looking at the familiar buildings and the winter weather and wondering if my parents are in the crowd. Better to stay here and not think about it.

It’s been more than two weeks since school opened. “Maybe you’ll teach tomorrow,” the teachers tell me. They’re all relaxed about it, they’ve all taught before, they’re Tanzanian and they’re used to being perpetually behind schedule. I’m learning to be patient but I don’t like this ambiguity, this idea that I might start to teach today or a week from today. I sit in my computer lab, sometimes working and sometimes perfecting my spider solitaire skills, and wish I could start teaching so I could stop thinking so much.

The past couple school days I’ve let the students into the lab for free time for a couple hours. It makes me happy but also gives me a headache, not so much because they’re loud (they’re pretty quiet, considering that it’s usually around thirty kids huddled around ten computers) but because I try to keep an eye on them without seeming like I’m watching. I want to be able to help when they have a problem without having them think I’m monitoring them.

I came home for lunch today. I’m not going back to the lab, I’ll just make myself crazier. I’ll work on lesson notes, go over the tests the last PCV gave, hope I teach tomorrow.

I do have a schedule now, though! Two eighty-minute periods on Monday, three on Tuesday, two on Wednesday, two on Thursday, and one on Friday. I think Tuesday will be the worst, both because I’m teaching the most and because I teach straight from 7.50 to 10.30. I need to figure out when I want to have the lab open for students

Pia, nafikiri kuhusu familia yangu na marafiki zangu mno.

Bret biked up from Bulongwa for the weekend, departing Friday after school and arriving before dark. It was, as he said, like a vacation, even for me. Having him stay was enjoyable and completely, surprisingly comfortable, as though he were a family member I’d known all my life.

He brought a ton of apples in a bucket on the back of his bike, so Saturday we made apple crisp, and today after he left (in the morning, to dodge the rain) I made applesauce with the rest.

On Saturday we went for a hike, up one of the mountains around Makete. Asifiwe (lit., Praise Him), the little brother of a teacher I’m storing things for who’s been hanging around my house, came with us and served as our guide. We made it to the top of the mountain, climbing through a completely burned-out area where locals had razed the forest to make charcoal. On the hike, we saw the various stages of forest recovery from an event like that, which was interesting but also depressing. The natural resources of this country will be gone soon.

On our return trip it started to rain, so we ducked into the house of a friend of Asifiwe’s and sat in the living room for an hour until the rain passed. Bret almost fell asleep, tired from the bike ride the day before and the hike. I was pretty tired myself.  The highlight of the visit was meeting the guinea pigs that the family raises to eat. There was a baby that was really cute! When we got back to my house we made guacamole and chapati and ate leftover hummus from the previous day (when we’d made guacamole, chapati, and hummus).

And tomorrow, maybe, I start teaching. I sort of wish I could just hang out with PCVs and forget about teaching! It’ll be better once I’ve started, I hope. Next weekend I’m going to walk up to Bulongwa and spend the weekend there, weather and energy permitting. Tanzanians make the hike in two hours; we’ll see how long it takes me…