How to be an African Mama

Electricity has not been easy to come across this week--almost every time I've tried to charge my phone, check my email... no success. So here is what I've occupied myself with this week. 

We got a new shipment of books on Friday that finally arrived from the states--my library helpers loved unpacking the boxes, putting them on the shelves, and... the surprise bag of crayons in the box! They loved coloring pictures and now I have a beautiful assortment of pictures taped to my wall--all addressed to "Madam Jass," "Madam Jasse," and other variations of my name.

I've been making friends with some students at the University of Arusha who are doing their teaching practicums at Meru Peak. We've talked about how our cultures are different and I have completed 2 lessons of "How to be an African Mama." So far I've learned how to cook ugali and fried bananas. Ugali is the food that is the staple of their diet here--it is like a stiff cornmeal/porridge that is the consistency of grits. They eat it with their hands and roll it into balls and eat it with beans. The kids at the school eat ugali and beans every day for lunch and dinner, and they eat porridge for breakfast (which is basically runny ugali.) This means that they eat the same meal every day--except on the special occasion when they have rice instead of ugali. These are always really exciting days, and (rice is "wali" in Swahili) I love watching the cute little kids running around the schoolyard, waving their bowls in the air, dancing and yelling, "Wali! Wali!"

One of my new friends is getting married on July 11th, and I'm going to her wedding! I've been learning about African marriage ceremonies, and they are really interesting--there are three main celebrations. The first is a "send-off" party where friends and family gather to celebrate, there are speeches, a religious blessing, warm exchanges between the two families, and of course, lots of good food. I went to this party, it was nicely decorated with beautiful cakes and balloons everywhere-- it lasted for about 6 hours, and I would explain more of what happened except for the fact that I only understood 1 or 2 words in every sentence. I'm really excited for the next one-- it is called a kitchen party, and it is for only women. It is supposed to be an intimate party (in the kitchen, obviously) and it is where mothers, aunts, friends, and grandmothers gather and give the bride all their secrets on how to be a good and faithful wife! And then, of course, comes the wedding--Esther is so excited and is a busy bride getting ready for her big day.

Yesterday I had lots of business to do in town, and made my way to Arusha early in the morning. You have to plan for a town excursion to take all day, because sometimes the buses come... and sometimes you just have to walk. Yesterday I walked for more than an hour before a dala-dala (a bus) came and picked me up, and then I spent another hour on the bus--there are no stops; whenever they see anyone on the side of the road they pull over and the person hops on until the bus is too crowded to jam any more people onto it. I picked up some supplies for the school and got some good food--I'm finally learning my way around the city and yesterday had lots of time to explore. Last night I came back to the school and sat with all the students to listen (on a portable radio) to Tanzania sadly get defeated by Cameroon in football (I no longer call it soccer.) We commiserated over WALI! and beans and my students took turns showing me how THEY would have saved/blocked/scored a goal and the score might be different. 

"Hakuna Matata"

Okay, so I’ve been here for a little longer than three weeks and have spent enough time with the students and teachers to solidify my main goals for the remainder of my time here.

1. Have a working library that is accessible to the students with regular hours (easier said than done, Africa time, ha ha!)

Our library had its grand opening a couple days ago, and every day we have had two older students staffing the library and helping the others learn how to check out books, I’m so proud of my helpers—Lucky, Elia, Christina, and Zipura—they are all so smart and have been spending their shifts in the library reading, playing math games I brought, and studying. They are so trustworthy and it makes me so happy to see how much they’ve learned in such a short amount of time—they know how to alphabetize, they know which books belong in which category, how to find the author on the cover of a book, and how to shelve them. This may not sound too difficult, but imagine if this were your first encounter with books that you were actually permitted to touch—there is so much to learn!

 

2. Work with the teachers to improve organization in the school-wide administration

This is actually where I think I should spend the majority of my time—there is so much that can be done (I’m sure it cannot be accomplished in the short time I will be here) but hopefully I can help them with a foundation. We are working on making comprehensive lists of all the students in each class, the teachers and what subjects they teach, and just today have moved on to the daunting task of a master timetable—maybe this will eliminate the problem of kids hanging out windows yelling at me when I walk to my classroom, “Teacher! Teach us! Come to our classroom!” There seems to be either two extremes: too many teachers (I have walked into an occupied classroom at my designated time more than once) or not enough teachers—the first might provoke teachers to leave if they feel like they are not needed, but then I have students from three grades begging me to come to all of their classrooms. Progress could definitely be made on the timetable. I have been surrounding myself with schedules, lists, and the Tanzanian National Curriculum pamphlets to try and make a timetable where the students will actually have a teacher available and the correct number of classes per subject per week.

This is a long, arduous process—for those of you that know me well, you should know that I would love the nit-picky details of making a HUGE master schedule, because I love schedules and lists and all of that business. Once I get all of my necessary information, yes, I will be content. However, it is the act of getting that seems to be problematic—I was working with two teachers the other day and was in one’s office. I stepped out no more than twenty minutes later, and the other teacher was gone. I asked someone where he went, and she responded, “Oh, he had to kill a snake.” Huh? He did not show up for about another 5 hours, apologized, and asked if we could continue the following day.

 

 

I included this story because I think it is highly amusing and representative of the mindset over here (they really do say “hakuna matata,” no worries.) The biggest challenge by far has been for me to try to take a chill pill and slow the pace of my life down. I should have recognized this the first day when I completed my tasks for the day in twenty minutes, but I was so excited for “What’s next!?!?” that I didn’t understand until recently that I move like the Tasmaninan Devil compared to the people I’m working with. This is not entirely a bad thing, true, not as much gets done as we are used to in the Western world, but I have lots of time to think of logistics of my plans and ideas and therefore can propose carefully explained and laid-out plans with specific instructions for my colleagues, which thus far have proved to be successful in the Library Student Leader Program.

 

I continue giving evening lessons for any students that want to come by, and sometimes I have as many at 15 students in my tiny room!! They are all so excited to be there and it is oftentimes the highlight of my day. We played charades the other night to learn personality characteristics, (Ex. generous, greedy, quiet, talkative, funny, lazy, hardworking) and they loved it. They were all cracking each other up and have the cutest little “teeheehee” giggles. It is so adorable.

 

Thank you all so much for your letters and sweet words; it has been so nice to hear from the outside world and I will have so many stories for you when I come back! Lots of you have been asking, and my Swahili is okay—I can hold my own for about 4 or 5 exchanges, and then I falter. But I am definitely a pro at the greetings and bargaining. You’ll hear from me again soon, but for now, Habari za jioni! (Have a good evening!)

Jessie

P.S. The boys had such a good time posing for the pictures with the books--once I took my camera out, I was mobbed with, "Take a picture of me and the books!" And the cute little kids on the step are the headmaster's grandkids who are too young to go to school now, so they just run around and terrorize everyone. They love to sit on my front step and laugh at me, come into my room running when I've just swept the floors, and touch my hair. 

Habari za mchana! (Good afternoon!)

I have been teaching classes for a couple days now, and it has been really interesting. I have had a couple of days to work the problems out of my schedule and learn how a Tanzanian classroom works—first of all, I adjusted the schedule they gave me, where I was supposed to be teaching seven classes, but the school day only contains six class periods. I am now teaching Standard 7 English and Math, Standard 6 English and Math, and Standard 4 English. In Tanzania, Standard 7 is the highest grade in Primary School before the student advances to Secondary School, where there are 7 more grades he or she must complete before graduating.

I really love the two older classes—there are eight students in Standard 6, and six in Standard 7 so I know all their names already and can give them plenty of individualized attention. My Standard 4 class is a little rowdier and definitely a challenge because they don’t speak as much English as the older kids, but there are some really hard workers in the class. For example, on my first day before I had adjusted my schedule, I was in a Kindergarten classroom (completely over my head) where I was supposed to teach English. The actual teaching wasn’t the hard part… they knew their English ABCs better than I had expected them to, but what are you supposed to do when “Sit down” or “Raise your hand” or any other classroom commands sound like gibberish to them? My two favorites (I’m not picking favorites, but…) from the Standard 4 class came into the kindergarten classroom begging me to come to their room and teach. Evance and Johnson, two of the cutest ten-year-olds you’ve ever seen, practically dragged me to their classroom as I tried to find a teacher more equipped to teach the young ones than myself. They were so excited to learn Math and English and came to my room after class to get extra help.

Evance and Johnson aren’t extremely out of the ordinary here—there are so many bright and motivated students that are begging to learn. While it bothers me that some thirteen-year-olds don’t know their times tables or what equivalent fractions are, it is obvious that their desire to learn has never been hampered by their inconsistent schooling or even their teacher-less classroom. There are two very special boys that I have been giving extra lessons to since my first day here: Lucky and Elia.

They came knocking on my door the first night I was here, wanting extra math lessons. Every day they have returned, attempting every problem I give them and always asking for more. When I had unpacked the books and started organizing the library, they were SO excited to look at all of the brightly colored books and almost started fighting over the stories. I showed them how to check books out from the library and every day since, they have checked out a different storybook, read it, and brought a list of words to me that were in the book that they don’t know. They are so smart and so cute—Lucky checked out Peter Pan from the library the other day and as soon as he opened the book, he started giggling uncontrollably at the pictures of Captain Hook and the crocodile.

As a test for my Standard 4 to see where they were in their English abilities, I asked them to write a letter to a friend in the United States telling them about Tanzania. They got so excited at the prospect of sending a letter to friends in the United States, that I thought it was unfair to not share them--so here are my two best letters.

"Dear friends,

My name is Dott Damien. I am ten age. I live in Usa River. I want to see you when you come to Tanzania. How are you boys and girls? I like to write and to read. 

For sincerely, thank you very much,

Dott"

"Dear friends,

My name is Evance. My life is good. I would like to be a doctor. How is your life? I live in Arusha. My father name is call Senya. My brother name is call John. I am in class four. I want to see you face to face.

Sincerely, 

Evance"

Enjoy and thank you for all of your encouragement and support! I really appreciate it, and I know the kids do too!