"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.