Always be Prepared!

Written: Sunday, August 1, 2010

Hi my lovely readers!

So funny story first – I was in the internet café in Morogoro city this past weekend on Sunday writing this very same post when all of a sudden the power went out. That has happened so much lately that it’s almost normal now for the power to be out, at least in the Morogoro city center! I only had about 5 minutes of computer time left and I was about to upload all I’d written during my half an hour session to my blog and then woosh – all the computers shut off. It was quite funny actually, but in light of that happening I’ve decided to come to Morogoro city this Tuesday to upload the second version of my blog for your eyes to see for the first time, just to keep you all updated. In order to prepare for any future post-erasing power outages at the internet café, I’ve realized I should probably write my posts for my blog on my own computer and save them to my flash drive so that I can just upload them on the rare occasion that I can get to the internet café. Hence, this is what I’ve chosen to do. It’s important to always be prepared, especially here.

So here’s what I’ve been up to…

Last week was the first week I taught English classes at the Dakawa Secondary School. It was really nice to finally start teaching, especially since I’ve been here for a month and a half now without teaching! I still can’t believe it’s August already – how did the last month and a half of my life blow by so quickly? It still feels like I just arrived in Tanzania only two weeks ago! Nevertheless, it was wonderful to start teaching. I have 35 girls in my Form 5 class (equivalent to Grade 11 in the USA) that I teach three times a week: Tuesdays and Thursdays 7:30-8:50 and Wednesdays 12:10-1:30. Although I never thought I’d be teaching so early in my life – I mean I’ve never even had to go to school before 8:00 before! – I actually like teaching the early classes better than my one afternoon class. It’s nice to get up and start the day off fresh with class and then have the whole rest of the day to do whatever I need to, especially to lesson plan for my future classes. Wednesday is definitely my toughest day of the week because I teach until 1:30, have a late lunch when I get home, then I unfortunately hit my afternoon slump in energy just as I should be lesson planning for my early Thursday morning class before dinner. Last Wednesday I was up until midnight lesson planning because I was so tired I had to take a nap in the afternoon before dinner, leaving all of my lesson planning chores until after dinner. If you’ve never lesson planned before, it actually takes a lot of time when you’re just starting to do it. Although I lesson planned for the class I taught at Skidmore once a week during my last semester, it’s a whole new experience lesson planning for my classes now. I do like the challenge though.

Overall I’m really happy with the way my class is going so far, even though we’ve only met three times so far. I’m even starting to learn most of the girls’ names because at the end of my class with them last Thursday I took a picture of each of them with the nametags I had them make for themselves so I could study their names and faces over the weekend to get to know them better. I’d say I’m roughly half way there with knowing all their names, which isn’t bad consider it’s only been a week! Ever since my first class I’ve made a huge effort to get to know my students as much as possible. I’ve also been very open with them about who I am because I believe the most effective teacher-student relationship is one that is built off of mutual knowledge and respect for who each other is. As a student, the more you know a teacher, the more you might be willing to talk to her or him about what you need help with; adversely the more you know a student as a teacher, the more you’ll know how best to teach your student based on who he or she is. I’m generally very open in general, not just when it comes to being a teacher, and this style seems to be working out well for me so far. The first day I let my students have an open question session with me in which they could ask me any question they wanted to. Some of them were normal, such as “How old are you?” and “What’re your hobbies?” but some of the other ones were quite peculiar and very reflective of how Tanzanians have little shame in asking you very personal questions even if they don’t know you for very long. For example, my students asked me “Do you have a boyfriend?” “Are you married?” “Have you even been in love?” and “What part of your physique do you like the best about yourself?” When I answered the boyfriend question with a “No” the students asked if I would ever consider dating a Tanzanian guy or marrying one. When I told them I’d already dated one literally all the students whooshed out of their chairs and stood up and cheered with big smiles on their faces. It was hysterical and I think I turned bright red, haha. They also asked me if I like Tanzania and I told them all how I am very happy to be here in Tanzania and that one of my future goals is to someday live along the coast of Dar es Salaam perhaps or another coastal part of Tanzania in a beach cabin along the ocean because I love the ocean. When I told them this all the students got up again and cheered! I was happy to have the students in such good spirits during our first class. Their laughs, smiles, and cheers during that first class definitely helped me feel more comfortable as a teacher in the class.

Aside from the getting-to-know-you first day, my actual lesson plans that I began on Wednesday last week went really well. As a young teacher I’m trying to use my age and knowledge of what girls my age like (such as music and pop culture) to teach in a “hip” way, if you will. I’m trying to teach my students English by incorporating their interests as young women into my lesson plans. I know from experience that when a teacher actually pays attention to what you care about when you’re in a certain life stage, the more you look forward to that class, pay attention, and want to do well in that class as a matter of appreciation for your teacher’s efforts. During our first class, for example, several of my students told me that they really like Chris Brown. Under the guidelines of the syllabus the English department here gave me to work from, I needed to teach the students about Word Formation and specifically about morphemes, roots, and stems for the first few lessons. Using the fact that the students like Chris Brown, I came to class last Wednesday with the lyrics to his song “Superhuman” with Keri Hilson written down on different sheets of paper. I split the class into seven groups and I had each group work together to use the vocabulary I taught them about word formation to identify what all the parts of the words in the song are called according to English grammar. I played the song for the class while they worked and they all sang along as they worked. It was really fun to hear them all singing. They tried to get me to sing for them and being shy I declined this time, but if they persist throughout the year I might be willing to sing a song or two with them, or even for them, in the future. Haha. On Thursday I tried to infuse music into my lesson plan again because they loved that on Wednesday. I got the students to practice their listening, writing, and grammar skills in English by splitting them into two teams and having one member of each team race each other to listen to a line of lyrics from Beyonce’s song “If I Were A Boy” and write the lyrics correctly on the board for one point, then race to use the correct word formation vocabulary to identify all the parts of the words in that line of lyrics for another point. I had a new member of each team take a turn up at the board until we made it through the whole song. The competition was fierce! All the other members of each team were yelling at the girl writing from their team about what the lyrics were and how she should label the words. It got a little out of hand at one point when one of the girls who lost her round got upset and threw chalk at the girl at the other time who finished first and got a point for her team, but I jumped on that quickly! I said there will be absolutely no chalk-throwing in the classroom and that if the students can’t be respectful on one another during fun activities like this then I would switch to boring lecture style teaching. The students definitely got the message and calmed down after that. Even though I’m a pretty relaxed teacher and I’m very open and friendly with my students, I believe it’s also important to step in as a real authority figure sometimes to maintain control in the classroom, especially when the students are being disrespectful of each other. I’m going to try my hardest this year to teach my students how to learn in a fun AND respectful environment. Hopefully it’ll work out!

This weekend after finishing teaching for the week I went to the Morogoro city center to stay with some of the fellow WorldTeach volunteers who are teaching at a school right in town. My two housemates and I went to town on a daladala on Friday and we met up with the three volunteers who work in and just outside of town. One of the guys who got on the daladala we took to town gave the conductor who collects everyone’s money some trouble so he ended up kicking the guy off the daladala and they got in a brief fistfight! It was totally riveting. I don’t think I’ve ever actually witnessed a pure fistfight in person before. The conductor won the fight and pushed the dude down a hill and he came up running and banging on the outside of the daladala as we drove on. It was a little scary because we almost opened the sliding window next to my housemate before we took off again, but he was unsuccessful. You never know what’s going to happen on during the daladala ride. Last time we came to Morogoro from our house there was a very sick elder woman from a Maasai tribe who was put in the front seat while two members of the tribe came with her to town. I sure hope they were taking her to the hospital. I’ve wondered since then if she turned out ok, she might’ve had malaria really badly, been infected with HIV or AIDS, or just have been sick because of some complications that come with old age. Whatever the reason, I hope she’s well now or reached a better place.

When we arrived in Morogoro on Friday night safely we all went to dinner at a really nice place called Dragonaire’s where they’re known for having the best pizza in all of Morogoro! It was delicious! On Saturday we mulled around town, bought some items for our house to bring back with us, used the internet, and went to the market to pick up food for dinner. For those unfamiliar with it like us as white American volunteers, the market can be quite overbearing at times. We always have about 12 men run up to us from all directions to hold different produce and other kinds of food in front of our faces asking if we need it or want to buy it. Because we’re all white in a sea of blackness we stand out like sore thumbs, especially at the market since it’s a very non-touristy place usually – most tourists just go to Pira’s, which is the upscale downtown supermarket that has all sorts of often expensive goodies like cheese and a large wine selection. Since it’s assumed we’re foreign because we’re white when we’re at the market a lot of vendors come right to us with their goods or take us by the hands and lead us to the different stations they run so we’ll buy things from them. We try our best not to get ripped off too much and we’ve all gotten better at bargaining since we’ve learned some useful vocabulary like “Punguza bei” (Lower the price) and “Sina pesa hiyo” (I don’t have that kind of money). I’ve personally taken a liking to bargaining, which is helpful because rarely ever do you see something for sale here, even in an enclosed shop with windows and a door, that has pre-marked prices. I’m usually such a pushover so it wouldn’t seem like I’m good at bargaining, but it’s become something like a fun game to me. You have to do it in a sort of chipper and teasing kind of manner – never be short or rude to a vendor when they give you an expensive price. Bargaining is mostly done in good humor and you just go back and forth until you settle on a “fair” price. If a vendor doesn’t budge we usually just start walking away until they settle on what we were willing to offer for the item or we just move on to another vendor who’s seen that we won’t settle for a ridiculous price so he or she is more likely to offer us the same item for less than the first vendor. Usually we get the price down at least a little when we start bargaining, which for an mzungu (white person) is quite exciting and feels like somewhat of an accomplishment. Even though I’m sure we’re still paying more than we really should even when we settle on a price and buy something, as visitors here whom the exchange rate from the US Dollar to the Tanzanian Shilling benefits greatly, it almost seems fair that we contribute more of our money (if we can afford to) to the Tanzanian economy when we bargain. Although I don’t come from a wealthy background and I’m trying my hardest to be as frugal as possible here, I still understand the Tanzanian logic behind overcharging us because we’re white Americans.

We went back to the house and made a great dinner on Saturday night with rice, beans, and curried vegetables. We went out to one of the two night clubs in town called Kingston and enjoyed a brief night of live music and dancing and then retired early. On Sunday we went into town to eat lunch and get some groceries to take back with us to our house in Dakawa. We especially needed bottled water. We don’t drink the water from the tap at our house because it tastes really bad and it’s also not recommended since it might have bacteria or parasites in it that we wouldn’t want getting into our system, so we buy large jugs of water whenever we go to town to use for drinking water. We still use our tap water for cooking after boiling it and we use it to bathe and to brush our teeth – we figure that little bit shouldn’t hurt us, or at least we really reallllllly hope that it won’t! We got our bottled water and groceries from our favorite grocery store called Pira’s and then went to the internet café just before we left to go back home. As I shared with you in the beginning of this post, the power went out so I lost the post I’d already written, hence why I’ve chosen to rewrite it and upload it today. And hey – this time it worked!

It’s important to always be prepared here in any way you can be. As a Westerner used to using toilet paper and having soap and running water in bathrooms, I’ve learned to keep a roll of toilet paper, my own soap, and hand sanitizer as a back up with me wherever I go because most public bathrooms here don’t usually have toilet paper, soap, or sometimes even running water. I also always keep my camera with me all the time incase something happens where I’d want to take a picture of it. Recently I’ve been taking a lot of pictures of our house, the Dakawa school, and the environment we’re nestled in. It’s a total savanna out here – literally as soon as you go even five minutes drive outside of Morogoro city on your way to Dakawa you’re surrounded by nothing but savanna and the only people you seldom pass by on the one-hour-long drive are little pockets of Maasai people who live in villages that are speckled all around the rural areas of Tanzania. Eve though it sounds dull, it’s actually really beautiful out here.

I’ve been on a few runs around the paths that go between my High School, the neighboring villages that most of the teachers live in (there’s a Village 1 and a Village 2), the Teacher’s College and the Primary Schools. Last time I went for a run with my housemate we went just before sunset and since it’s so flat out here we got to see the sky change glorious shades of red, orange, pink and yellow. We were running in between really beautiful varieties of African flowers, one of which looks like a dark purple rose hanging upside down off of a bent stem. We also ran by a huge field of tomatoes where people were picking hoards of them. There are piles and piles of tomatoes underneath the trees and in wooden boxes all over the trails we run on. It’s generally quiet even though we run by a number of people who walk on the paths. Whenever we pass by them they usually look at us and smile and say something about how we are and we always respond that we’re good. Toward the end of our half hour run a man leaning outside of a daladala that was going down the main road we were running on yelled out “Umechoka” to me as he passed by, which means “You’re tired” and yes, I was! Although we’re not right near the coast so it’s not as hot out here as it gets in Dar es Salaam, it’s still really humid sometimes and the heat can really get to you, especially when you’re on a long run and we’d been running for nearly half an hour by the time that daladala passed! My housemate and I went on another run around 9am another day and even though we thought it would be cool enough it got really hot really fast all of a sudden! After running around dusk I think I’ll stick to that cooler schedule. Yet, no matter what time of day you run at here it’s always super dusty and dry – or at least for now until October when a short one-month rainy season will start. The main dirt road to Dakawa off the main paved road from Morogoro is chocked full of uneven jagged rocks that are really hard to run on so we’ve been running on all the little paths around, but come the short rainy season and then the long one from March to May we might have to face it and run on that road since our smaller running paths might be washed out in the flooding rain. Until then, though, I’m just going to enjoy running through my little piece of savanna heaven and try to keep my head up while I’m here.