Getting Settled in Morogoro

I just spent my first week in my new home of Morogoro and life seems to be going quite fine so far. Since I’m still not teaching yet, I’ve found other ways to preoccupy myself for the rest of my vacation. Surprisingly, I’ve kept rather busy. I’ve walked to town and back every day since I’ve been here to do quick errands, buy groceries and other household items, and to use the Internet. One interesting errand I had to go on this past week was paying our electricity bill at a place called Tanesco. At first I had no idea where the place was in town, but by the time I found it after asking four different people along the way I’d walked over an hour just getting there! Tanesco was utterly packed with people who were crammed up against each other waiting for the only teller who was working then to pay their bills. I walked in with my bill and money in my hand and silently stood behind a group of three old men who were waiting to the side of the longer line. After about twenty minutes of standing idly I asked them if they were waiting and I showed them my bill and they pointed to the end of the other line. Great. I moved to the end of the other line just as two new tellers opened their windows, yet as I found out a little later, they weren’t accepting my kind of bill so I had to wait until getting to the last teller in the line who’d been there since I arrived. After a lot of confusion trying to pay at those first two windows I awkwardly rejoined the line slightly behind where I’d been waiting before. Almost instantly an older man behind me tapped me on the shoulder and pointed for me to go to the end of the line. At this point my patience was running out…I’d already waited more than 45 minutes just to figure out that I could only pay my bill in one spot. I tried to babble out in Swahili that I’d been waiting for almost an hour already and I had been ahead in line before, actually. The man and a few others around him laughed and told me to move and I simply said, “Hapana” (“No”). Sometimes you just have to hold your ground. I wasn’t trying to be some White ass hole who was trying to cut everyone – I was tired of waiting just like everyone else and I actually had been waiting longer than them! Finally the guy behind me let up and I was able to keep my spot in line. After another half an hour of shuffling in a line that didn’t really seem to be moving, I approached the counter with my bill and handed over my money. After swiftly stamping everyone else’s bills, the teller took one look at my bill and said, “Subiri” (“Wait”). Of course…wait! Haha. I stood off to the side with a defeated look on my face while a man behind the counter went to reprint my bill. As I was waiting, I immediately thought, “Yup, I’m definitely in a third world country!” I caught myself longing for the simple electronic bill pay at that moment that you can do with one click of a mouse on your computer back home in the States. No lines, no waiting, no questioning, just fast and simple. Sometimes I miss America. Ayayay. Anyway, the man finally came back with my bill and after stamping it and typing a bunch of info into her computer, the teller finally handed me back my change a new receipt for the bill! I was so happy to leave after being there for an hour and a half that I released a huge sigh as I walked out the door. By the time I left the line had gotten even worse. There was a guard standing at the entrance to Tanesco preventing people from going into the building, which was still massively overcrowded. As I walked back in the direction of town I passed by a long line of people who were waiting outside the door to Tanesco, eager to make their way into the building. At least I’d made it into the door when I got there…but I think I’ll have Becky pay the next bill for us, haha. I’d like to think I have a great deal of patience and understanding when it comes to being here in TZ, in fact I enjoy mostly everything here, even if it is different from America. Yet, I have to say, after all that, I really miss the way I used to pay my bills in America!

On the upside, I have to say it’s really great living in town and having everything I need be only a half an hour’s walk away. One thing that’s really amped up my mood since I moved is running in the area I live in. Although I’ve slightly destroyed my feet in the process because the ground is so harsh, running here versus Dakawa has been really enjoyable. I get to run to the backdrop of the Uluguru Mountains right behind me rather than just running in open savanna. Not only is the view spectacular but, thanks to the mountains, the weather is also cooler here and hence nicer to run in. During the day it gets extremely hot still, but during the mornings it’s sometimes cool enough to even put on a sweater! The summer hot season is fast approaching though so I’m going to try to do all the running I can before it gets unbearably hot. Aside from that, this week was rather relaxed. I settled into my new room, cleaned and decorated the house, and allowed myself to chill out for a while. Becky and I have been getting in a routine where we cook dinner together every night and then watch a movie in the evenings before going to bed. We made the best vegetarian fajitas I’ve ever had in my life – especially thanks to the abundance of fresh ingredients we have available to us right down our road.
This weekend Becky went to Dar es Salaam with some of the other volunteers and I decided to stay in Morogoro for the weekend and continue to get settled. During the day on Friday I went to the used clothes market again by myself this time and mulled around for a while. I found some cheap deals and went home with a couple of new outfits for work. I made myself dinner that evening and watched some episodes of Family Guy, complements of Becky’s awesome DVD collection. Unfortunately right after I’d eaten dinner the power went out! I felt like I was a girl scout who’d all of a sudden been abandoned in a lone cabin without electricity or running water for the weekend, haha. I’ve been getting used to the lack of running water, but combine that with a lack of power late at night and it’s even more of a pain than usual. It was a bit freaky being alone when the power went out, mainly because all the doors in our house slam open and closed all the time because of the wind…and the wind was whipping like crazy outside. Luckily I lit some candles so I could maneuver my way around the house and called it an early night since my computer’s battery ran out. The power didn’t actually come back on until noon on Saturday, but by then I was on my way to town to finally skype with my parents! We haven’t heard each other’s voices since I arrived in TZ all the way back in June! It was wonderful to catch up and be able to tell each other in real time what’s been going on. On Saturday night I was blessed to have power the whole night and I relaxed and watched “Death at a Funeral” and “Wedding Crashers” and went to bed. It’s nice to do things like that like I would do at home – to just watch a movie on the weekend and crash. Doing things like I would do at home here make me feel more at home and at ease, which I am sure is the same for most of us. On Sunday I went into a really cleaning stint and I mustered up the energy to collect 8 full large jugs of water from the working faucet on campus. I went to the market in town to get vegetables for our meals this week and by the time I got home I was so exhausted I could barely move!

It’s funny how even if I only do a few things in a day here I’m so tired at the end of the night that I can barely make it past 10:30pm without falling asleep. One thing you get used to here is African time, in that you should allow yourself at least an hour’s break from any “strenuous” activity that may only take three hours or so. Even when I’m walking to town people will say, “Oh, you’re doing exercise!” even though walking to town just makes the most (and cheapest) sense to me like it would at home. I don’t consider it exercise, but here even walking is considered work for most people. They’re partially right…due to the rugged conditions of the red clay, dusty and rocky roads here it is quite a workout going to and from town by foot. The funny thing is that even when you’re just walking normally people will call out to you “Pole” as in “Sorry for your work.” Especially when you see someone who is carrying or pulling a large load on the street, you’re supposed to tell them “Pole Kazi” (“Sorry for your work”) as a way of recognizing how hard they’re working. It’s quite a different perspective than what a lot of people in the Northeast in America tend to think. When people are doing work there it’s considered really prestigious and productive, like they’re earning a right to live. Yet, here, working is considered more of a pain and like it’s something one has to do to get by. You might not agree, but that’s just my perspective.

Right now I’m on break from teaching. There’s a break from mid-September to mid-October for the high school level I’ve been teaching at. This week my boss is coming to Morogoro to try to set me up with another teaching position for the rest of the year. She wants me to teach at the Morogoro Secondary School, which is just a short walk from where I live. I might be teaching middle school there instead of high school, which will be really different. The Tanzanian education system is set up so that students go through Standard 1-7 learning only in Kiswahili. Standard 1-7 is like Elementary School education in the States. After Standard 7 students have to take an exam to enter into Middle School, which is called O-Level education. O-level lasts from Form 1-4 and is conducted completely in English. Hence Form 1 is pretty much the first year that Tanzanian students really start learning English. I’ll most likely teach a level between Form 1 and Form 4 at the Morogoro Secondary School if all goes well. After completing O-level and taking a Form 4 exam, students are placed into a school for their A-Level education, which is basically like American high school. A-Level is composed of Form 5 and Form 6. Before at Dakawa I was teaching Form 5. It was really tough teaching Form 5 because at the end of Form 6 students have to take another final exam that will determine whether or not they get into university or not. It’s a huge deal breaker if they don’t do well on their exams, so a lot of the time teachers are forced to teach just to the exam so that students are able to do well. Even my students who had just begun their Form 5 education were already stressing about knowing things for the exam at the end of Form 6. It put a lot of pressure on me to not teach them anything that wasn’t on the exam. I managed to strike a good balance, but still it was a hard task. If I teach O-Level, especially Form 1 or Form 2, my job will be much more relaxed and I’ll have more of an opportunity to set the groundwork for English structure and grammar that will help my students in their futures. A lot of my former Form 5 students had picked up a lot of bad habits from their past English teachers who didn’t know proper English. For example, they would say, “We are five in our family” instead of “There are five people in my family.” Once students get up to Form 5 and they’ve been told that what they’ve been saying is right, it’s really hard to undo grammatical mistakes like that. That’s why I’m so excited to teach the younger students in Forms 1 and 2 maybe. I’ll have great room for creativity too, since I won’t be teaching to such an important exam, you know?

On Monday last week Becky came home with some really good news. She’s been volunteering to teach at a school down the road that teaches beginning English to students who are about to enter Form 1. She said that a Headmaster from a nearby secondary school came to meet her and invited her to teach at his school, the Yespa Secondary School. Since Becky is already so busy teaching at two different schools, she told him I might be able to take the position as the school’s English teacher instead. On Wednesday Becky and I went to Yespa to check it out and meet with the Headmaster. Getting there was quite a feat! We rode for fifteen minutes from our house on the main paved road in Morogoro to the junction of the dirt road that the school is on. We continued for another fifteen minutes winding around that really curvy dirt road until we finally reached the school. On our way we passed by a ton of men in orange jumpsuits (prisoners, no doubt) and about 7 other Secondary Schools before we got to Yespa. It felt like we were on a quest for some long lost Secondary School way out in the middle of nowhere. For the last 10km to the school there were little signs directing us toward Yespa staked in the ground pointing to which ways we should turn. Once we got out of the taxi it felt like we’d just been on a small version of a ride at a theme park. The crazy trip was more than worth it when we arrived, though. The school is set in a really beautiful area in which you can see most of the Uluguru Mountains and almost all of Morogoro at a distance. It felt like I was looking at a small snow globe of Morogoro from where we were standing at the school. I could get used to that.

As for the school, it’s quite sparse but very well manicured so far. The school just opened for the first time in January of this year. Since it’s is so new it only has 35 students so far who are all in Form 1. There are two streams, or separate classes, of students; one has 15 students and the other has 20. The Headmaster there said that there currently is not an English teacher at the school, so he is in dire need of hiring someone to teach English right away. So far the school only has 7 teachers who teach 12 subjects in total which range from Chemistry, Biology, and Physics, to Geography, History, and Kiswahili. The small size of the student body and faculty would make teaching there really cozy and welcoming. Being as social as I am, I have no doubts that I would be able to adjust to the small environment. I’m pretty excited about being able to teach such small classes after teaching a huge class of nearly 40 at Dakawa! I’m really interested in taking the position and I’m going to talk to my boss about it this week while she’s in Morogoro helping set up my job at the Moro Sec. School.

Under my contract with WorldTeach I have to teach at at least one government school while I’m here, since I get living stipends from the Ministry of Education, which supports government schools. Since Yespa is a private school, I’ll have to teach somewhere else that’s a government school, like Moro Sec, if I end up teaching there. Hopefully by later this week I’ll be able to work out a schedule so that I can teach at both schools. It would be so rewarding teaching at Yespa because the need there for an English teacher is so great. If I work there I’ll really feel like I’m making a big difference in students’ lives here. Before at Dakawa I only had three classes a week because there were over 6 English teachers at the school! The funny thing is that WorldTeach seemed to place us at schools in Tanzania that don’t have such a great need for English teachers, even though there are tons of schools around that could use our help a lot more. It’s really no fault of World Teach’s, but rather more of a decision made by the Minsitry of Education, which ultimately decided where it wanted us to teach at for the first year of our program. I have to say, although I’ll really miss my students at Dakawa, I’ll be happy to teach at other schools in Tanzania that have a greater need for the services I’m able to offer as a native English speaker and teacher. I’m enthusiastic to get things rolling this week so that I can start teaching soon. Hopefully I’ll have an update later this week about what my teaching position will look like for the rest of the year. I’ll keep you posted!