There comes a time in every journey abroad when even the most enthusiastic travelers, like myself, become homesick. In my past travels I’ve honestly never really felt homesick. Then again, I’d only ever been away from home at most for 4 months during which time I was dating someone, spending all my time with new friends, enjoying my classes at my University and having the time of my life. As I approach the 5-month mark of my time in Tanzania at the end of next week, I’ve come to realize that homesickness has crept up on me almost out of nowhere. While I’ve enjoyed most of my time here since I arrived in June, lately the cultural differences that I once perceived as charming and intriguing at the beginning of my trip have become quite troubling and burdensome. All of a sudden it seems like I’m struggling to shake the smallest annoyances that I previously held an indifferent attitude toward. The small things I’ve had to adjust to like not having running water, sharing my house with many species of insects, being called “Mzungu” wherever I go, and inhaling huge clouds of dust on a daily basis have all become taxing and sometimes even infuriating.
I suppose I started to really feel flustered and homesick for the first time here when I got malaria nearly a month ago. At that time all I wanted was to be in the ultimate comfort zone I experienced when I was sick at ten years old: sitting on my couch at home in Vermont eating soup and watching movies while my mom tended to my every health need. Not having the luxury of being at home nor with my family while I was sick provoked the homesickness bug to implant itself into my brain. It’s funny that I’m homesick because I’ll admit I was easily the most unlikely person to get homesick out of our WorldTeach group when we first arrived. I was the most excited person at the start of our program to be here and I even used to get annoyed when my fellow volunteers when they started to complain about this or that about the culture. Since I’d been to Tanzania twice before and I have so many great friends in Dar es Salaam, I felt like I was home and I didn’t want anyone to rain on my parade. Yet, when I started feeling some of the same irritations that the other volunteers had voiced, I felt embarrassed to suddenly feel bad about being here. I felt guilty, almost like I was turning my back on a good friend. All the experiences I’d ever had in Tanzania had been positive up until this point and I didn’t want to admit to myself or anyone else that my time in Tanzania could be anything but completely fantastic.
Once I got malaria, however, I got a harsh wake up call that keeping these feelings inside might not be as productive as I had once thought. While I thought I was being strong for trying to stay so positive, I realized I’d begun denying my right to express my true feelings, which are sometimes just plain shitty, just like everyone else’s sometimes are. I began to grasp that sometimes, no matter how much you love where you are and the people you’re with in another country, living abroad is really hard sometimes. Whereas I’d stubbornly kept my negative feelings to myself about my internal adjustments to Tanzanian living before I got sick, I immediately let my emotional floodgates free as soon as I got malaria. As a consequence of keeping these feelings to myself for so long before this point, however, I all of a sudden didn’t have enough bad things to say about Tanzania, my program, and my general life here. Rather than venting a healthy amount, I quickly saw myself falling into a deep depression because I was finally acknowledging all my qualms about being here. Life was not looking so hot.
While I sought solace in my housemate during this time by sharing my feelings with her once she returned from her month-long vacation away from Tanzania, we both realized quite quickly that instead of soothing each other’s negative emotions as we talked about them, we were instead feeding off of each other’s negative energy and making each other feel even worse about being here. Although I definitely felt listened to by my housemate and I utterly adore her for hearing me out, we always felt so hopeless at the end of our venting sessions. By some grace of God, a former friend of mine, whom I hadn’t seen in over a year, is currently traveling across Tanzania and she was able to make a pit stop in Morogoro for two days last week to visit my housemate and I. When she observed how my housemate and I talked about being in Tanzania (and hating it at the moment), she dawned new light on what we were doing by telling us just how destructive our empathizing for each other’s bad experiences had become. She could see that the more we talked about what made us upset, the more upset we got about them and the more we wanted to go home as soon as possible. Hearing her say this was a revolutionary wake up call for me. After she told us this, I almost instantly became open to the idea of accepting my life here the way it is, no matter how rough it is sometimes, because no one wants to be around nor talk to a Negative Nancy all the time. I could see my negative self reflecting back at me through my friend’s eyes, whom had always been accustomed to knowing me for my bubbly, friendly, and optimistic personality. I knew from that point on that I didn’t want to be the negative person I was turning out to be, for my sake and everyone else’s, and that I needed to find my old self again if I expect to survive here for another 7 months.
Up until I made this revelation last week, I hadn’t been able get over even the slightest ounce of my homesickness. In fact, it somewhat shames me to admit that I even went through a tough time a couple weeks ago when I was seriously considering ending my time with the WorldTeach program early six months and coming home in January. I just felt like I couldn’t take being here for any longer than six months. Fearful that I would say some things I would later regret, I refrained from uploading a blog post during this time and instead specifically reached out to my closest family and friends to pull me through my difficulties. As much as I wanted to go home, I secretly wanted the people I look up to most in this world to pull me out of my negative mentality and tell me to stick it out for the year. They know me well enough to know that I am not a quitter and that I can accomplish anything I set my mind to, as long as I want it enough. Fortunately, these amazing people ultimately believed in me enough to tell me to complete my time here with flying colors. Although it took a lot of convincing on their behalves, I’m now mentally prepared again to stay on board with my program for the entire year until June 2011. In my humble opinion, even the most flexible and open-minded travelers go through trialing times like this when they feel like enough is enough and all they want to do is go home. That’s the very definition of homesickness, really. Reflecting back on my whirlwind of emotions over the past month and a half, I’m honestly grateful to have gone through this grueling thought process because I think it’s helped me cleanse out my system. As I’m actively shifting my attitude, I’m starting to feel like my optimistic self again who knows that I’m here for very important reasons and I can’t leave until I’ve achieved what I set out to do by June of 2011.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Feeling Under the Weather and Excited for the Changing of Seasons
Blog Post October 31, 2010
So it finally happened…I got really sick in Tanzania. Two weeks ago on Wednesday I woke up with a sore throat, stuffy nose, and major headache, which turned into the flu. I was sick for five straight days with the flu. Just when I thought I was getting better by that Sunday I went for a run, but when I got home I felt much worse and slept the whole day. When I got up, I knew something was definitely wrong and that it wasn’t just the flu anymore. It turns out that I had malaria! It’s one thing to be sick when you’re away from home and away from your family, it’s another thing to be sick when you’re alone my housemate was still on her month-long vacation), and it’s a whole new kind of scary to be sick with a disease that you’ve never had before that most people where you’re from have only heard vague horror stories about. On Sunday night I luckily had enough sense to go to my neighbors for help. I called the Head of my English Department, Safina, at Moro Sec who lives right next to me and I also called my neighbor, Mshauri, whose father is the doctor for Kilakala Secondary and mom is a nurse. Safina and Mshauri met me at Mshauri’s house where we spoke with him mom briefly about how I was feeling. We decided that Mshauri would walk me to the nearby dispensary where I could get a malaria test. Unfortuantely, by the time we went it was already closed, so I decided I would go on Monday morning. I called my supervisor at Moro Sec and told her I would miss class that Monday because I thought I had malaria.
On Sunday night I had the worst night’s sleep I can remember ever having. I was too hot, too cold, then sweating (I was having horrible fevers). By Monday morning at 6am I realized I had every symptom of malaria you can get. I went to Mshauri’s and told him I knew I must have malaria. Fortunately I had gotten malaria treatment medication from my friend’s mom in Dar es Salaam a couple weeks earlier (she’s a pharmacist), so I took it right away. By Monday afternoon I was feeling a lot better. I was absolutely exhausted though because I had gotten up constantly the night before so I ended up sleeping all day. I still had to get up every few hours because I was really sick. The whole time I was sick my neighbors took care of me. I am so blessed to know them. They helped calm me down and said everything would be ok and that if I needed anything I just had to call them and let them know and they’d be over to help me. They brought me over a dozen fresh oranges for me to eat to keep my strength up and Mshauri kept me company for a while because he knows I’m alone this month. I felt a lot better after they left. By Tuesday my health started to normalize itself again and by Wednesday I was feeling mostly healthy again. I taught at school again by Thursday.
I’m so thankful to finally feel better. The truth is, since I recovered from malaria I’ve been energized with a new vivacity for life. I’m gotten into a pretty comfortable rhythm here and I finally feel like I’m at home. I get out of the house more often these days and spend a lot of time sitting outside at a place down the road that has a beautiful outdoor garden where I write letters to people back home, lesson plan, grade papers, and relax. I go for runs in the mornings and evenings along my road, which outlines the base of the mountains behind my house. It’s a really beautiful place to run, even though it’s super dusty all the time. It’s currently the dry season, which means there’s dust, dust, everywhere! It actually rained for the first time in months one night last week and then again in the afternoon a couple days later. I can’t even communicate how happy I was to hear the rain. I went outside to stand in the rain just to celebrate the hint of the changing of the seasons. Although it’s a bit early, the rainy season should begin close to the end of this year. While I know I’ll probably get sick of the rain once the rainy season starts, I’m highly anticipating the start of the downpours.
In terms of teaching news, the past week since I’ve been back at school my classes have been going pretty well. I’m teaching my students how to write paragraphs and beginner-style essays with thesis statements. I was supposed to follow the Form 1 syllabus for writing texts this week, but the syllabus was complete crap, to be honest. It just showed examples of how to write checks, open bank accounts, and use an ATM. For most of the kids in my classes that isn’t even a practical reality, let alone applicable for this time in their lives because they’re still so young. I decided to take the writing texts topic into my own hands and plan the lessons for last week all by myself. I went on the Internet to search for tips on how to teach writing texts. Writing is such an important skill that all of these students will need to know how to do to be successful, so I rather scrap the syllabus’s instructions for “writing texts” and create my own agenda. It ended up working pretty well and it seems like most of the students are starting to understand how to learn how to write. We’ve gone over general paragraphs and introductions so far. I went over an example of each in class and had the students write their own. Most of the students did pretty well, but some of the students just copied the examples I wrote for them right off the board. I’m concerned that these students don’t understand English well enough to have done the assignment correctly. I’m struggling to figure out how I can help them understand English better. When half the class knows what’s going on and can do an assignment successfully while the other half of the class doesn’t have a clue, it’s tough to decide how I should pace the class. Realistically, I only have a month left with these students because by the end of November this year’s school year ends and then all the students move on to Form 2. By January, after my up-coming month-long vacation, I will get a new batch of Form 1 students.
What’s more, I now have an even tougher task on my hands for the next month: I just found out on Thursday last week that I’ll now be teaching four streams (classes) instead of the two I have been. Since I joined Moro Sec in the beginning of October I’ve been teaching Form 1 Streams B and C. Yet, on Thursday after I’d just finished teaching Form 1C and was waiting to teach 1C in the afternoon, a Form 1 Stream A student came to fetch me from the English Office. She said that I was needed in their class. I was a bit confused but followed her to the classroom, come to find out from the Form 1A students that their previous English teacher had disappeared. I taught the class with the materials I had with me about paragraph structure and followed up with the Head of my English Department after class. I asked her about the other English teacher and she told me that apparently she’s decided to go back to University so she’s leaving Moro Sec. I was really disappointed and caught off guard that the faculty at Moro Sec did not tell me about her leaving, since I unexpectedly have to pick up her classes. I’m now going to teach Form 1A and 1D also, each of which also have 45 students! I will now teach 24 40-minute periods a week (each Stream has 6 English periods a week), Monday through Friday. I’ll be twice as busy, but I think I can handle it. In a way it’s good that I’ll be teaching more, especially since what I’m here to do is teach. The more I teach, the more of an impact I’ll have here, and that’s what’s most important to me. I want to positively affect as many students’ lives as possible while I’m here.
On Saturday I went to visit my old school in Dakawa. I got to see the Head Mistress, my old students and neighbors, as well as my two housemates. Overall it was a really nice visit. Although it was brief, I enjoyed seeing everyone after having been away for two months. Being bac at Dakawa made me realize how much I miss there, but also made me grateful for my transition to Morogoro as well. Both places have their own styles of charm that make me happy to be there and I’m glad to have experienced both places since I’ve come to Tanzania.
Also, I just remembered that today is Halloween back in America. Happy Halloween everyone! I’m thinking about you and I hope you’re having a lot of fun! Today is also a very important day in Tanzania. It’s the day of the national election for the new president of Tanzania. The current President, Kikwete, is up for re-election for his second five-year term against six other candidates from opposition parties. So far only one opposing candidate, Slaa, has been rumored to have a chance at winning over Kikwete, but it’s still a tough call as to who will win. There hasn’t been much noise or hullabaloo today even with the voting, but then again I haven’t gone very far away from home today to see what’s happening in town. When I went for a run this evening I saw a lot of people crowded around their televisions and radios trying to get the latest news about which candidate was ahead in the polls. It’s far to early to tell who’s going to win, but I’m really looking forward to hearing the result in the next couple of days. In all honesty it will be nice not to have to look at the thousands of posters Kikwete put up of himself for his campaign anymore. I’ve seen them in the most populated and most obscure places of Tanzania over the last two months of his campaign and I have to say I’m ready for a change of scenery. I’m just wondering if, and when, all those posters will come down!
So it finally happened…I got really sick in Tanzania. Two weeks ago on Wednesday I woke up with a sore throat, stuffy nose, and major headache, which turned into the flu. I was sick for five straight days with the flu. Just when I thought I was getting better by that Sunday I went for a run, but when I got home I felt much worse and slept the whole day. When I got up, I knew something was definitely wrong and that it wasn’t just the flu anymore. It turns out that I had malaria! It’s one thing to be sick when you’re away from home and away from your family, it’s another thing to be sick when you’re alone my housemate was still on her month-long vacation), and it’s a whole new kind of scary to be sick with a disease that you’ve never had before that most people where you’re from have only heard vague horror stories about. On Sunday night I luckily had enough sense to go to my neighbors for help. I called the Head of my English Department, Safina, at Moro Sec who lives right next to me and I also called my neighbor, Mshauri, whose father is the doctor for Kilakala Secondary and mom is a nurse. Safina and Mshauri met me at Mshauri’s house where we spoke with him mom briefly about how I was feeling. We decided that Mshauri would walk me to the nearby dispensary where I could get a malaria test. Unfortuantely, by the time we went it was already closed, so I decided I would go on Monday morning. I called my supervisor at Moro Sec and told her I would miss class that Monday because I thought I had malaria.
On Sunday night I had the worst night’s sleep I can remember ever having. I was too hot, too cold, then sweating (I was having horrible fevers). By Monday morning at 6am I realized I had every symptom of malaria you can get. I went to Mshauri’s and told him I knew I must have malaria. Fortunately I had gotten malaria treatment medication from my friend’s mom in Dar es Salaam a couple weeks earlier (she’s a pharmacist), so I took it right away. By Monday afternoon I was feeling a lot better. I was absolutely exhausted though because I had gotten up constantly the night before so I ended up sleeping all day. I still had to get up every few hours because I was really sick. The whole time I was sick my neighbors took care of me. I am so blessed to know them. They helped calm me down and said everything would be ok and that if I needed anything I just had to call them and let them know and they’d be over to help me. They brought me over a dozen fresh oranges for me to eat to keep my strength up and Mshauri kept me company for a while because he knows I’m alone this month. I felt a lot better after they left. By Tuesday my health started to normalize itself again and by Wednesday I was feeling mostly healthy again. I taught at school again by Thursday.
I’m so thankful to finally feel better. The truth is, since I recovered from malaria I’ve been energized with a new vivacity for life. I’m gotten into a pretty comfortable rhythm here and I finally feel like I’m at home. I get out of the house more often these days and spend a lot of time sitting outside at a place down the road that has a beautiful outdoor garden where I write letters to people back home, lesson plan, grade papers, and relax. I go for runs in the mornings and evenings along my road, which outlines the base of the mountains behind my house. It’s a really beautiful place to run, even though it’s super dusty all the time. It’s currently the dry season, which means there’s dust, dust, everywhere! It actually rained for the first time in months one night last week and then again in the afternoon a couple days later. I can’t even communicate how happy I was to hear the rain. I went outside to stand in the rain just to celebrate the hint of the changing of the seasons. Although it’s a bit early, the rainy season should begin close to the end of this year. While I know I’ll probably get sick of the rain once the rainy season starts, I’m highly anticipating the start of the downpours.
In terms of teaching news, the past week since I’ve been back at school my classes have been going pretty well. I’m teaching my students how to write paragraphs and beginner-style essays with thesis statements. I was supposed to follow the Form 1 syllabus for writing texts this week, but the syllabus was complete crap, to be honest. It just showed examples of how to write checks, open bank accounts, and use an ATM. For most of the kids in my classes that isn’t even a practical reality, let alone applicable for this time in their lives because they’re still so young. I decided to take the writing texts topic into my own hands and plan the lessons for last week all by myself. I went on the Internet to search for tips on how to teach writing texts. Writing is such an important skill that all of these students will need to know how to do to be successful, so I rather scrap the syllabus’s instructions for “writing texts” and create my own agenda. It ended up working pretty well and it seems like most of the students are starting to understand how to learn how to write. We’ve gone over general paragraphs and introductions so far. I went over an example of each in class and had the students write their own. Most of the students did pretty well, but some of the students just copied the examples I wrote for them right off the board. I’m concerned that these students don’t understand English well enough to have done the assignment correctly. I’m struggling to figure out how I can help them understand English better. When half the class knows what’s going on and can do an assignment successfully while the other half of the class doesn’t have a clue, it’s tough to decide how I should pace the class. Realistically, I only have a month left with these students because by the end of November this year’s school year ends and then all the students move on to Form 2. By January, after my up-coming month-long vacation, I will get a new batch of Form 1 students.
What’s more, I now have an even tougher task on my hands for the next month: I just found out on Thursday last week that I’ll now be teaching four streams (classes) instead of the two I have been. Since I joined Moro Sec in the beginning of October I’ve been teaching Form 1 Streams B and C. Yet, on Thursday after I’d just finished teaching Form 1C and was waiting to teach 1C in the afternoon, a Form 1 Stream A student came to fetch me from the English Office. She said that I was needed in their class. I was a bit confused but followed her to the classroom, come to find out from the Form 1A students that their previous English teacher had disappeared. I taught the class with the materials I had with me about paragraph structure and followed up with the Head of my English Department after class. I asked her about the other English teacher and she told me that apparently she’s decided to go back to University so she’s leaving Moro Sec. I was really disappointed and caught off guard that the faculty at Moro Sec did not tell me about her leaving, since I unexpectedly have to pick up her classes. I’m now going to teach Form 1A and 1D also, each of which also have 45 students! I will now teach 24 40-minute periods a week (each Stream has 6 English periods a week), Monday through Friday. I’ll be twice as busy, but I think I can handle it. In a way it’s good that I’ll be teaching more, especially since what I’m here to do is teach. The more I teach, the more of an impact I’ll have here, and that’s what’s most important to me. I want to positively affect as many students’ lives as possible while I’m here.
On Saturday I went to visit my old school in Dakawa. I got to see the Head Mistress, my old students and neighbors, as well as my two housemates. Overall it was a really nice visit. Although it was brief, I enjoyed seeing everyone after having been away for two months. Being bac at Dakawa made me realize how much I miss there, but also made me grateful for my transition to Morogoro as well. Both places have their own styles of charm that make me happy to be there and I’m glad to have experienced both places since I’ve come to Tanzania.
Also, I just remembered that today is Halloween back in America. Happy Halloween everyone! I’m thinking about you and I hope you’re having a lot of fun! Today is also a very important day in Tanzania. It’s the day of the national election for the new president of Tanzania. The current President, Kikwete, is up for re-election for his second five-year term against six other candidates from opposition parties. So far only one opposing candidate, Slaa, has been rumored to have a chance at winning over Kikwete, but it’s still a tough call as to who will win. There hasn’t been much noise or hullabaloo today even with the voting, but then again I haven’t gone very far away from home today to see what’s happening in town. When I went for a run this evening I saw a lot of people crowded around their televisions and radios trying to get the latest news about which candidate was ahead in the polls. It’s far to early to tell who’s going to win, but I’m really looking forward to hearing the result in the next couple of days. In all honesty it will be nice not to have to look at the thousands of posters Kikwete put up of himself for his campaign anymore. I’ve seen them in the most populated and most obscure places of Tanzania over the last two months of his campaign and I have to say I’m ready for a change of scenery. I’m just wondering if, and when, all those posters will come down!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
