Thursday, March 10, 2011

My Tanzanian Life Lately

WRITTEN WEDNESDAY MARCH 3

On Sunday, February 27, I went to another teacher’s house for lunch with her family. Her name is Madam Maryam. She teaches Swahili at Moro Sec with me. She’s an incredibly sweet lady and I really like spending time with her. She has 9 kids – can you believe that!? She has two sets of twins, a group of triplets, and a couple single children as well. She is originally from Zanzibar. Two of her sons live in Zanzibar with her parents and the rest of her kids live in Morogoro with her and her husband. Her husband is also very nice. When I went over her kids were very shy. They all attend English-medium primary schools, hence they already know English quite well. Maryam was trying to encourage them to talk to me and ask me questions in English about where I’m from etc., but the kids were so shy that we barely got to converse. I can understand where they’re coming from though. It’s very unusual to see a White person where they live so I’m sure they’re not used to talking with an Mzungu. Maryam’s youngest kids are twin boys who are only nine months old. While I was over I spent most of my time playing with them in the living room.

I spent a lot of time cooking as well. Maryam and I prepared traditional Zanzibarian food. I made this stuff called Mandazi, which has a mixture of mashed potatoes, onions, green peppers, carrots, and spices inside. You mash everything together into small balls and then dip the balls in a flour/water mixture with another Zanzibarian spice and then fry them in oil. They were really tasty. Maryam also made Chapati (like flour tortillas but made with more oil); a stew with potatoes, beef, veggies and other great spices; and boiled bananas in coconut milk. Everything we ate was homemade. I even had to ground the spices by hand! It was really fun and rewarding to eat a genuinely home-cooked meal. Everything tasted great and by the end of the meal I was totally stuffed. We ate the meal on the floor in the living room, which is how Maryam’s family usually eats. We sat on straw mats that were placed over the carpet so we didn’t get the floor dirty.

After the meal Maryam invited me to go to the Muslim University of Morogoro (MUM) with her. Maryam is a part-time Swahili teacher at MUM and had to go to correct students’ grades before their final exams begun. Maryam is a strict Muslim, as is her entire family. In fact about 90% of the people from Zanzibar are Islamic, just like Maryam. In order to go to the MUM, all women must cover up by wearing hijabs. Maryam let me borrow a hijab. When we first walked out of the house I felt really uncomfortable because I’ve never worn a hijab before. I felt uncomfortable primarily because I felt like an imposter wearing the hijab. I am not Muslim and I felt like it was insulting the Islamic faith by wearing one and pretending to be Muslim. Yet once Maryam and I went through the University gates, I experienced a total shift in mentality. I had gone from feeling like I was completely sticking out in society like a sore thumb to feeling like I completely blended in and was anonymous. The shift in setting was really comforting. I mean, of course people could still see my face and could tell that I’m White – and I was the only White person I saw while I was at the MUM – but at a distance I looked like every other Muslim girl there. It was a really mind-boggling experience. I sat with Maryam at the University for a few hours as she helped her students. Afterwards she and her husband dropped me off in a taxi at the Oasis Hotel where I was supposed to meet up with a girl named Nora.

When I arrived at the Oasis Hotel I instantly felt uncomfortable again because I was still dressed in my hijab. I felt really self-conscious because I go to Oasis almost every day and I have never once worn a hijab there before. I actually met Nora wearing the hijab! She was sitting right by the entrance because her phone hadn’t been working and she figured she could just sit by the door and spot me when I came in. After we met I went upstairs to her room and changed back into my Western clothes and then met her for dinner on the lobby patio. I found out Nora was coming to Morogoro a few months ago when her friend, whom I met once in Dar es Salaam, told me that she was coming to Morogoro to work for 5 months. As soon as I met Nora we instantly clicked. Although she’s only been in Tanzania for five days, she’s very worldly (she’s spent time in South America and India) and we share a lot of the same thoughts and opinions about traveling, living, and working abroad. Nora and I had a really nice meal together and got to know each other quite well. In fact, I invited Nora over on Monday night for a home-cooked meal since she’d been eating out for five days straight.

On Monday I had three classes at Morogoro Secondary, I held my club meeting with my students after school, picked up my February stipend and did a bit of shopping in town, then I had Nora over for dinner. Overall it was a really good day and I felt really happy when I went to bed.

On Tuesday morning I discovered that my wallet was missing 50,000 shillings from the money I’d had left over form my stipend that I picked up on Monday – which is a sixth of my entire month’s stipend! :(! I recounted everything I bought on Monday and couldn’t figure out for the life of my why I was missing 50,000 shillings. I traced my actions from Monday and realized that the only people who could’ve had access to my wallet without my knowing were two neighbor boys who came over on Monday night to watch movies in the living room while I cooked dinner in the kitchen. I was really disappointed that they might’ve taken the money, especially since once of them comes over all the time and I’ve never had a problem with him taking anything from me – not even 2,000 shillings! When I walked to school Tuesday morning I felt really uneasy and messaged the boy’s mom asking her if I could talk to her in the evening and ask her a question (namely if her son took my money). She ended up inviting me over for dinner that night.

On Tuesday I taught all four of my classes and went to Oasis to use the Internet for a while after work to help Maryam make an excel chart of her students’ grades from the MUM. I got home just in time for dinner at my neighbor’s house. I went over there feeling worried about what she might say when I asked if her son had taken my money. When I asked her, she was very surprised and immediately called her son in to talk to me about it. He assured his mom and I over and over again that he had not taken the money. This kid is only 6 or 7 years old so he’s pretty young. He’s been nothing but sweet ever since I met him and he always comes to the house to color and watch movies. He’s always been well behaved so it seemed really out of character for him to take something. His mom was really serious with him and even made him cry.

Things got even worse, too. Here in Tanzania, being a thief is one of the worst things people be in society. Most Tanzanians pride themselves on being honest people who would never take things from each other without asking. Hence, if you are caught as a thief here, people punish you severely for it. It is not uncommon for people – especially good people – to turn extremely violent and beat the crap out of a thief. In their opinion, no matter how brutal their beating can be, it’s better that they beat the thief themselves than tell the police and send the thief to jail (according to them a thief would be treated even worse in a jail…). Some people here even condone burning thieves alive for their crimes. In fact, when I was on my way to Kibiti one time to visit one of the WorldTeach volunteers there, I saw a huge crowd of people gathered around a man on the side of the road in a small village we passed through. All of the man’s limbs had been tightly tied up in rope and he was left helpless on the ground. I suspected he was a thief and was going to be seriously punished for his actions – even burned alive. So you see, being a thief here is no light matter.

When I asked the boy if he’d taken the money and he insisted that he hadn’t and didn’t know anything about it his mom proceeded to beat the living daylights out of him, smacking him really hard with her arm to get him to confess something. I could tell even five seconds into the beating that he really was innocent. I felt so terrible. I can’t even describe to you what it’s like to see a little kid get beat when he’s screaming for his dear life. I’ve never heard a child scream like that and frankly I’m disgusted and disappointed with myself that I brought that beating upon him. What’s worse is that the boy and his mom went to go see the other little boy who had also been at the house on Monday and his mom. When we were there I sat passively on the couch while the two boys stood at attention, almost like they were in a military camp, while their mothers talked in nearly incomprehensible fast Swahili at them trying to get their sons to tell them where the money was. Both boys cried their eyes out saying they didn’t know anything. Instead of listening to them, their mothers thought they were lying. They took the two boys into the next room and got a stick from outside and proceeded to beat the two boys’ bottoms with the stick with their shorts down. I’ve never witnessed anything more horrible in my entire life and I swear to God I just wanted to throw up and tell them to stop. The mothers had this look of evil in their eyes as they beat their sons. It didn’t look like they had one ounce of remorse when they were finished. The boys were completely humiliated and in total shock. They’ve been beaten before, for sure, but that doesn’t make getting beat any easier – especially since they know what they’re in for. I cannot stand that beating people here is such a commonplace punishment. It’s just human abuse and human cruelty in my eyes. I think you can surely get someone to confess to something without beating the shit out of him or her. I’m still in shock myself at what I heard. I say heard because when they mothers took the boys to the other room to beat them I couldn’t even stand to watch it. I sat utterly terrified in the other room, paralyzed with fear and hating myself for what was going on. In Tanzanian society, 50,000 shillings is a ton of money and it’s even a fairly standard month’s salary for some Tanzanians. When I think about it, I should just forget about the money and make do with the 200,000 shillings I have remaining for this month. I should be grateful that whoever stole the money didn’t take all of it so I would at least be able to get by for the rest of the month. After all that happened and all the punishments that were doled out, I never even found out what happened to the money and now I frankly don’t care anymore. Finding out what happened to the money isn’t worth someone else getting beat up over, even if that person was guilty.

After the terrible fiasco on Tuesday night, I immediately went to bed when I got home because I just wanted to get all of the gut-wrenching sounds and sights out of my head. I woke up Wednesday morning feeling sick with the start of a cold. My throat was all itchy and scratchy and it was hard to talk. I decided instead of forcing myself to go to work that I would tell my supervisor that I wouldn’t be able to come into work on Wednesday. I took the day to relax at home and set my mind straight again. Maryam came over to visit me and I helped her start to apply for a job as a full time Swahili teacher at the MUM. We have arranged an agreement where I will help her improve her English (she’s nearly fluent) and she will help me improve my Swahili. She especially wants to learn how to write a research proposal and report. We came up with a schedule together of when we’ll meet to exchange ideas about our languages. A friend of hers, Swabra, who is also interested in learning English came over to pick her up. We arranged that she’ll also come three days a week to learn English. In addition, I have already been teaching another woman a couple days a week…so now I have three people to tutor in English! All of a sudden my life has gotten crazy busy. I’ll see how I can handle all the extra work. If it gets to be too much, I’ll just cut down my sessions.

WRITTEN WEDNESDAY, MARCH 10

I’m happy to report that by that Friday I felt well enough to return back to school. When I was at school that day another teacher told me that I would have to come into school on Saturday to invigilate three Form 3 exams during the morning session. It’s not like I had plans for the weekend, but still I was sort of bummed to have to come into work on a Saturday. On Saturday I arrived at work at 7:00 sharp (a teacher even made a comment about how weird it was that I was so punctual…what can I say…I’m American! Haha). I invigilated the three exams from 7:30 to 1:30. For each of the exams I had to hand out the tests and answer sheets, watch the students to make sure they were quiet and didn’t cheat, and also staple all of the students’ papers together when they were finished. Since there is a shortage of staplers at the school, it was sort of humorous trying to find a stapler for the end of the periods. Teachers would pop into each others’ classrooms trying to hunt down a stapler they could use. It seemed like a game of whack-a-mole with everyone chasing after staplers that kept disappearing. In addition, at one point during my second exam it started down-pouring like crazy outside. In between my second and third exams I had to return to the office to drop of the completed exams and pick up the new ones for my final session. I got totally soaked even from running in the rain for only 20 ft! Although I was rather cold and wet for the rest of the time at school, I actually found the rain really refreshing and calming. When I finished my last session I dropped off the papers at the office and to my surprised delight I received a payment of 5,000 shillings for helping invigilate. It’s not much, but 5,000 shillings can actually get me a ton of fresh fruits and vegetables from the local market, where mostly everything is between 100 and 200 shillings a piece.

After finishing up at school I went home to relax for a bit until I had a tutoring session at 4:00. My student, Veronica, came with her son, Junior (I seriously thought that was a name people only heard in movies these days! Haha), and I taught her for about two hours. While I was teaching her, her son, who can’t be more than 4 years old, insisted on begging for our attention the entire time. He kept banging on dining room table where we were seated with whatever he could grab in reach. He even started playing with a pair of light up bunny ears that my housemate had gotten for Halloween last year. He was using them to play with the kitten and also tried repeatedly to put them on him mom’s head, which he could barely reach even when she was sitting. It was sort of a crazy session. For as rambunctious as her son is, Veronica is insanely calm and a wonderful student. She did really well with the lessons, despite her son’s attempts to veer her attention towards him, and I’m looking forward to continuing to teach her. I just need to find a safe way to entertain her son while we’re trying to learn!

Saturday night Nora and I attempted to go out to dinner at a local Tanzanian restaurant called The New Classic (which is actually a humble hotel) that serves traditional Tanzanian food. At such local places, you usually have the choice of getting ugali, ndizi (bananas), wali (rice), or chips (french fries with nyama (meat – usually beef, which is ng’ombe), mboga mboga (vegetables), samaki (fish), or kuku (chicken). No matter what you order for your main dish, you’re almost always served a side dish of maharage (beans cooked in a yummy coconut sauce) and a scrumptious red sauce that you can pour over your meal. The funny thing is that even though all of those things are on the menu at these local eateries, that doesn’t guarantee that all of those options will be available all of the time. In fact, by the time Nora and I reached the restaurant at 8:00pm, most of the food was finished. When we arrived at the restaurant it was very crowded with local Tanzanians. As is common custom in Tanzania, our waitress sat us at a table that already had someone eating at it. Maximizing places to sit for customers ensures that restaurants will earn the most money they can. Nora and I sat down with an older man who was eating ndizi samaki (bananas and fish). When we both saw his meal we got the craving for the same meal, but when we ordered the waitress just said, “Meisha” and “Hamna” – meaning that the ndizi and the samaki was “finished,” or that they were out of them. Disappointed, Nora and I settled for rice (the only starch option) with the sides of maharage, sauce, and a little bit of spinach. As we ate our meager meals we sipped on fresh mango juice (delicious!). It was pretty funny because the way Nora and I were seated was such that Nora was facing one of the walls of the restaurant, which had a large mirror covering it, and I was sitting to her left side, also facing a mirror from the adjacent wall farther off. Although we maintained a great conversation throughout the meal, Nora couldn’t help but laughing at how awkward and hilarious it was to watch herself eating across from her as she tried to talk to me. I thought it was funny, too. While the restaurant had cleverly tried to make the small space seem larger with the mirrors, they had quite a weird effect on its customs, or at least on us. We finished out meal and grabbed a taxi home, reveling about funny quirks in Tanzania and how Nora felt she was getting along here so far, after her first week in Morogoro.

On Sunday I took it easy the whole day until I had another tutoring session at 4:00pm. This time I met with Swabra. Like Maryam, Swabra is a very strict Muslim and wears the full hijab whenever she is out in public so that only her eyes appear among a plethora of black robes. Even when she came inside the house, she only lifted her face veil so that I could just see her face. She also came with one of her kids named “Shakir,” whom she calls “Shakira” (which I totally love because it makes me think of the awesome pop star!). Unlike Junior, her boy (who is only 2 going on 3) was incredibly quiet throughout the whole session. He even ended up taking a nap right on the table where I was teaching Swabra at one point, haha. I’m sure the image of Swabra and I, with her kid face down on the table, would’ve looked pretty funny to other people if they’d been there. Swabra did really well her first day and I’m looking forward to tutoring her more in the future. I actually find it extremely empowering teaching her since many Islamic women do not usually get the opportunity to become educated as much as men. I’m more than happy to empower her with a basic knowledge of English!

This past week I’ve been teaching as usual at school. I’ve put a lot of focus on doing really interacting, engaging, and critical thinking exercises with my students. Too often they just sit in the classroom passively and listen to their teachers lecture. I want to show them that learning in school can be through many different means. I’ve had them complete several brain teasing activities this week. For one exercise I gave them a definition of different words that all had their first and last letters missing and they had to use the definitions to help them figure out what the full words were. I also taught them about anagrams and had them try to complete ten of those. For my last lesson of the week, I tried to incorporate a drawing activity into my lesson plan, since creative drawing skills are heinously underutilized in schools here. I drew a picture on the blackboard that only half of the students in each class were allowed to see. They had to copy the picture I drew and then describe it to their partners in English using a wide range of vocabulary. The goal was that the students would be able to describe their pictures so well that their partners would be able to draw similar (or exact) replicas. The activity went fairly well and I think the students really enjoyed the opportunity to use their English vocabulary in a creative way. As I continue to plan my lessons for the rest of my time with WorldTeach, I hope to incorporate more critical thinking exercises that encourage students to use a wide range of thinking, writing, drawing, reading, speaking, and listening skills.

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