December 3, 2008
I had a part for thanksgiving and thirteen volunteers showed up, making this one of the first things I’ve organized where more people attended than I was expecting. I had tried to get a turkey, but that ended in failure; a friend on the coast brought red snapper, and I cooked pork instead, along with stuffing and mashed potatoes. Amazingly there were pumpkins in the market that day – pumpkins aren’t in season, I haven’t seen them in months – and so we made pumpkin pie using Humphrey’s oven. Erina also made cucumber rolls. It turned out really well.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
December 3
December 3, 2008
I had a part for thanksgiving and thirteen volunteers showed up, making this one of the first things I’ve organized where more people attended than I was expecting. I had tried to get a turkey, but that ended in failure; a friend on the coast brought red snapper, and I cooked pork instead, along with stuffing and mashed potatoes. Amazingly there were pumpkins in the market that day – pumpkins aren’t in season, I haven’t seen them in months – and so we made pumpkin pie using Humphrey’s oven. Erina also made cucumber rolls. It turned out really well.
I had a part for thanksgiving and thirteen volunteers showed up, making this one of the first things I’ve organized where more people attended than I was expecting. I had tried to get a turkey, but that ended in failure; a friend on the coast brought red snapper, and I cooked pork instead, along with stuffing and mashed potatoes. Amazingly there were pumpkins in the market that day – pumpkins aren’t in season, I haven’t seen them in months – and so we made pumpkin pie using Humphrey’s oven. Erina also made cucumber rolls. It turned out really well.
Monday, December 1, 2008
November 17
The Form VI’s are doing mock examinations now, and I had to supervise for most of the day. This meant studying Japanese for more than seven hours while occasionally looking up to see if anyone needs anything. Unlike most of my friends I don’t have a class full of cheaters; A-level schools are different.
JICA (Japanese International Cooperation Agency) volunteers have a program which gives scholarships to up to 1% of a school, if the students can demonstrate profound need and academic ability. Yesterday Erina was going through the final round of interviews and needed another teacher to help. She believed the headmaster was going to help us but he postponed while the students were waiting outside his office and the duty fell to me. Later he came into the room flanked by three members of the school board and various students. He was showing Ndanda to the District Commissioner, the same man who was here last week to explain the lack of food for the students.
Four students were sitting outside the chemistry laboratory waiting for the interview, and the fifth was inexplicably absent. The first student, Abdallah, was the son of cashew farmers. He failed Mathematics that term but had recently switched from a different class and promised to work hard and make up the grade. I’m his current math teacher and didn’t recognize him. As he was leaving I threw out a last question, “Who is you’re math teacher?” He passed.
The other four students were disheartening; on the one hand I couldn’t help but feeling a great deal of pity, but for all four I felt at least some reluctance to give money. They just didn’t care that much. One, Samson I think, had been a Physics and Chemistry student who had switched to different combinations after some time at school.
“Why did you switch?”
“I like so much Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. But the teachers here are don’t come to class, there are no books and we have a great problem with practicals at this school. These subjects, Physics and Chemistry, are very broad and I don’t have a chance of learning them with the amount of money I have.”
All of these statements are false; we can do practicals and there are plenty of books, if he had bothered to look. But the worst bit,
“You know you are talking to the Form V Physics teacher and the Form V Chemistry teacher. How can you say we don’t attend our classes?” Samson went back to his line about the subjects being too broad, but he couldn’t dig himself out of that hole.
I don’t remember the next two students’ names, but they were both studied English and so their English was atrocious. I could barely carry out a conversations with these two; I wanted to switch to Swahili but English was apparently a prerequisite for the award. Their grades were decent, but this means almost nothing for Arts students; the English syllabus is especially bad. I asked the first one what subjects he was studying in history and was met with only blank stares. “World History? History of Africa?” Nothing. I asked the following one about his classes, supposedly English medium, and also got no answers. I broke the rules and tried Swahili – again, nothing. He told us he admired the head of the opposition party, but when I pressed him on details I couldn’t get any.
The last student arrived an hour and half late, and Erina concluded he couldn’t need the money that badly. We gave three students, the first and the two non-English speakers, scholarships; truly they were all coming from difficult circumstances. However I would have liked to see at least the tiniest commitment to their education. I don’t quite understand how they and their families could sacrifice so much to get to A-level, but they wouldn’t put any work at all once they arrived here.
Today I met two more Benedictine Novices, Brother Gregory and Brother Philbert. I was playing around on the keyboard and the church and they wanted to hear; they’ve had some brief music lessons and can read a simple score, but they had very little experience with music in minor keys and were impressed with a certain unresolved chord progression.
JICA (Japanese International Cooperation Agency) volunteers have a program which gives scholarships to up to 1% of a school, if the students can demonstrate profound need and academic ability. Yesterday Erina was going through the final round of interviews and needed another teacher to help. She believed the headmaster was going to help us but he postponed while the students were waiting outside his office and the duty fell to me. Later he came into the room flanked by three members of the school board and various students. He was showing Ndanda to the District Commissioner, the same man who was here last week to explain the lack of food for the students.
Four students were sitting outside the chemistry laboratory waiting for the interview, and the fifth was inexplicably absent. The first student, Abdallah, was the son of cashew farmers. He failed Mathematics that term but had recently switched from a different class and promised to work hard and make up the grade. I’m his current math teacher and didn’t recognize him. As he was leaving I threw out a last question, “Who is you’re math teacher?” He passed.
The other four students were disheartening; on the one hand I couldn’t help but feeling a great deal of pity, but for all four I felt at least some reluctance to give money. They just didn’t care that much. One, Samson I think, had been a Physics and Chemistry student who had switched to different combinations after some time at school.
“Why did you switch?”
“I like so much Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. But the teachers here are don’t come to class, there are no books and we have a great problem with practicals at this school. These subjects, Physics and Chemistry, are very broad and I don’t have a chance of learning them with the amount of money I have.”
All of these statements are false; we can do practicals and there are plenty of books, if he had bothered to look. But the worst bit,
“You know you are talking to the Form V Physics teacher and the Form V Chemistry teacher. How can you say we don’t attend our classes?” Samson went back to his line about the subjects being too broad, but he couldn’t dig himself out of that hole.
I don’t remember the next two students’ names, but they were both studied English and so their English was atrocious. I could barely carry out a conversations with these two; I wanted to switch to Swahili but English was apparently a prerequisite for the award. Their grades were decent, but this means almost nothing for Arts students; the English syllabus is especially bad. I asked the first one what subjects he was studying in history and was met with only blank stares. “World History? History of Africa?” Nothing. I asked the following one about his classes, supposedly English medium, and also got no answers. I broke the rules and tried Swahili – again, nothing. He told us he admired the head of the opposition party, but when I pressed him on details I couldn’t get any.
The last student arrived an hour and half late, and Erina concluded he couldn’t need the money that badly. We gave three students, the first and the two non-English speakers, scholarships; truly they were all coming from difficult circumstances. However I would have liked to see at least the tiniest commitment to their education. I don’t quite understand how they and their families could sacrifice so much to get to A-level, but they wouldn’t put any work at all once they arrived here.
Today I met two more Benedictine Novices, Brother Gregory and Brother Philbert. I was playing around on the keyboard and the church and they wanted to hear; they’ve had some brief music lessons and can read a simple score, but they had very little experience with music in minor keys and were impressed with a certain unresolved chord progression.
November 15
I think I’ve already described the swimming pool near Ndanda Abbey as a sort of mzungu trap; when foreigners want to see animals they wait by the watering holes, and it’s the same when the locals want to see foreigners. I spend a lot of time there – I used to be a swimmer – and so I meet a lot of other assorted expats. Last Tuesday there were two American free-lance journalists, along with a Swiss electrician and a Tanzanian driver. The two Americans didn’t have assignments or even goals, and were just wandering around Tanzania looking for stories; one of them had just published an article in an obscure Californian newspaper. They told me they had come to stay in the Salvadorian Mission in Masasi, that they thought they would help set up a radio tower in exchange for their food and board. When they arrived they found the work would not begin for another six months, and I’m not exactly sure what they’re doing now. I couldn’t think of any stories to give them. Day-to-day life is interesting in Ndanda, but nothing really happens down here; no ethnic violence, no civil wars, and nothing else that might have some impact on the rest of the world. I think they’re leaving Tanzania in December sometime.
November 11
I’m living on school housing and my building is split into two homes, each designed to fit a single family. Cleophas Yamiseo arrived at the school a week after I did, and began living in my home during the beginning of the semester. He is married with three kids, Jessica, Angel and Daniel. I don’t know what his wife’s real name is but everybody calls her Mama Yamiseo. Besides Daniel, who is off at school for most of the year, I see this family on an hourly basis.
Cleophas is a history teacher. When we first met he pointed out the anti-American sections of the Tanzanian syllabus as if I would be impressed. But he did let me raid the Departmental library (The Caine Mutiny and The Perfect Storm were the only two novels) and I gave him some homemade wine. Then we watched a pirated version of Shaolin Soccer on his DVD player. I learned over the wine that he had attended a Seminary School, where he had learned Greek, Latin, and a little Hebrew. He is strongly involved with the music program at Ndanda Abbey and owns his own electric keyboard; he directs or accompanies one of the choirs at the masses and he recently recorded a CD of gospel music in Dar es Salaam. At first sight he seems jovial and he has a tendency to rush his sentences to the finish while smiling, as if he was embarrassed of what he’s trying to say. He also wears a light-purple button down shirt against dark purple pants; there is no one in the states quite like him. I learned last weekend that he badly wanted to be a priest, but the man in charge of selecting candidates picked a member of his own tribe. I told Cleophas that in America, nobody wants to join the clergy and they’ll take whoever they can get. “Here, very many people,” he replied, shaking his head.
Cleophas is a history teacher. When we first met he pointed out the anti-American sections of the Tanzanian syllabus as if I would be impressed. But he did let me raid the Departmental library (The Caine Mutiny and The Perfect Storm were the only two novels) and I gave him some homemade wine. Then we watched a pirated version of Shaolin Soccer on his DVD player. I learned over the wine that he had attended a Seminary School, where he had learned Greek, Latin, and a little Hebrew. He is strongly involved with the music program at Ndanda Abbey and owns his own electric keyboard; he directs or accompanies one of the choirs at the masses and he recently recorded a CD of gospel music in Dar es Salaam. At first sight he seems jovial and he has a tendency to rush his sentences to the finish while smiling, as if he was embarrassed of what he’s trying to say. He also wears a light-purple button down shirt against dark purple pants; there is no one in the states quite like him. I learned last weekend that he badly wanted to be a priest, but the man in charge of selecting candidates picked a member of his own tribe. I told Cleophas that in America, nobody wants to join the clergy and they’ll take whoever they can get. “Here, very many people,” he replied, shaking his head.
November 10
A lot of the vendors in the market are so used to mzungu that it’s impossible to get a reasonable price from them. For example, I’m trying to buy a large mortar and pestle to crush coffee beans. Matt got it in Nyambe for 2000 schillings; the guys here started at 15000. In any village bananas cost 20=/, in Ndanda they go for 200=/.
Yesterday I was going to buy groceries when I met Peter along with Andy and Joanna, two VSO lab techs from the Phillipines and Holland, respectively. They were standing outside their car surrounded by a group of Africans, and I my first thought was that Peter had hit one by accident. I got closer and they beckoned me over, my Swahili is better than theirs and apparently there was some breakdown in communication.
Mangoes here are collected in three ways. In secluded areas people wait until the mangoes fall and pick them off the ground, but so far this hasn’t worked for me. In most places kids run around and throw stones at anything that is remotely ripe; they take one bite, realize the fruit is no good and go for another stone. Most people in Ndanda hire somebody to go into the tree and shake down all the fruits at once, then they keep them all in a bucket until they’re ready. One laborer was shaking a mango tree when a baby owl fell out. Like a fishermen who stumbles upon a pearl, he figured that this owl was worth a lot of money to some white person and was trying to sell for fifty thousand schillings, what I make in a week and what he might make in a month.
The others were perplexed. Why would anybody want an owl in the first place, and what could possibly make him worth so much money? Peter thought he would sell it for witchcraft of some sort, and that its various body parts would fetch money that way. The laborer told me it would eat chickens. But I understood badly; it would live near a chicken coop and eat all the rats and nasty animals that disturb chickens. I told him we didn’t have any chickens, but still there was no reduction in price. Obviously none of us were going to buy him, how do you feed a baby owl? But it was adorable, with soft feathers and huge owl eyes. We wanted a picture and Peter gave a cigarette, but it was no deal; 2000=/ cash or nothing. We were all put off by his ridiculous and everybody left. When I was returning from the market one of his friends tried to negotiate a deal with me, but the man holding the owl scoffed at any reasonable price and wouldn’t even look at me. I asked him who else would even be interested in a baby owl and he replied, implausibly, that one of the nuns would pay the quoted price. So the Benedictine Sisters are driving up the prices of Ndanda’s raptors.
I ran into Andy and Joanna again at dinner and we talked about how we ended up in backwoods Tanzania. “In America,” I told them, “you can’t bargain for owls.”
Yesterday I was going to buy groceries when I met Peter along with Andy and Joanna, two VSO lab techs from the Phillipines and Holland, respectively. They were standing outside their car surrounded by a group of Africans, and I my first thought was that Peter had hit one by accident. I got closer and they beckoned me over, my Swahili is better than theirs and apparently there was some breakdown in communication.
Mangoes here are collected in three ways. In secluded areas people wait until the mangoes fall and pick them off the ground, but so far this hasn’t worked for me. In most places kids run around and throw stones at anything that is remotely ripe; they take one bite, realize the fruit is no good and go for another stone. Most people in Ndanda hire somebody to go into the tree and shake down all the fruits at once, then they keep them all in a bucket until they’re ready. One laborer was shaking a mango tree when a baby owl fell out. Like a fishermen who stumbles upon a pearl, he figured that this owl was worth a lot of money to some white person and was trying to sell for fifty thousand schillings, what I make in a week and what he might make in a month.
The others were perplexed. Why would anybody want an owl in the first place, and what could possibly make him worth so much money? Peter thought he would sell it for witchcraft of some sort, and that its various body parts would fetch money that way. The laborer told me it would eat chickens. But I understood badly; it would live near a chicken coop and eat all the rats and nasty animals that disturb chickens. I told him we didn’t have any chickens, but still there was no reduction in price. Obviously none of us were going to buy him, how do you feed a baby owl? But it was adorable, with soft feathers and huge owl eyes. We wanted a picture and Peter gave a cigarette, but it was no deal; 2000=/ cash or nothing. We were all put off by his ridiculous and everybody left. When I was returning from the market one of his friends tried to negotiate a deal with me, but the man holding the owl scoffed at any reasonable price and wouldn’t even look at me. I asked him who else would even be interested in a baby owl and he replied, implausibly, that one of the nuns would pay the quoted price. So the Benedictine Sisters are driving up the prices of Ndanda’s raptors.
I ran into Andy and Joanna again at dinner and we talked about how we ended up in backwoods Tanzania. “In America,” I told them, “you can’t bargain for owls.”
November 8
Last week two other Peace Corps Volunteers, Matt and Jerusha, came to Ndanda to some of their kids swim lessons. Somehow new experiences like swimming and what not are tied up into HIV/AIDS education, but to me the links are pretty tenuous; anyway few of the children had been submerged in water before. I had told Matt to make them put their faces in buckets before they came, hoping to weed some of the less serious ones out, but they all easily passed that test.
Matt and Jerusha are both a bit older than me. Matt lives about 24 km away from Ndanda and is certainly the volunteer who I see the most often; the weekend before swimming lessons I visited him in his village, and returned home on his bicycle while giving his Tanzanian friend a lifti. There is no electricity in his village, but he bought a solar panel in Dar es Salaam and now has enough to power an ipod speaker and to give a small bit of light at night. He also charges his student’s cell phones and puts the proceeds into this health club.
The trip to Jerusha’s house involves a three-hour bus ride followed by another hour over paved roads; I haven’t seen her since my first week in the South. She had taken a different bus to Matt’s village, then the two of them led their nine children down the plateau to Ndanda; I met them at the swimming pool at about ten o’clock.
I run up to this pool almost every day. The monks dug it out to provide hydroelectric power for the Abbey and now guard it incessantly, keeping it clean and bilharzias-free. Google Ndanda Abbey, Tanzania and you can see a picture of it during the rainy season, when it is muddy and disgusting; I’ll also post some more pictures soon. It’s about 70m long and 25m wide, and people can stand only at the very edges; it is a lifeguard’s nightmare because of the deep bottom, steep edges and cloudy water. When I arrived a German friend, Adrian, had arrived along with a Tanzanian named Seafood (no joke) who he had met in Mtwara. Seafood had apparently met Jerusha at some bar there as well.
Swim lessons went like all swim lessons do, except I had to try to explain everything in Kiswahili. Matt and Jerusha did what I told them to. Seafood interrupted if my Kiswahili was breaking down, or if he thought he knew better than me. Adrian took pictures. Afterwards everyone walked back to my house, and we crashed while the kids wandered around Ndanda. The three “adults” spent about three hours cooking chili and rice while their students cleaned themselves.
Many of them had never used a real bathroom before, so I can’t be too angry; nevertheless, when they were finished washing, dirt covered the bathroom and the toilet was broken. Someone had opened up my contact case and dumped the contents on the floor. Worst of all they had used all of my shampoo and most of my deodorant. Everyone else was watching a movie, and I came out of the bathroom and threw the shampoo bottle against the wall, “Noone can use the bathroom! If you have to help yourself, go outside! Noone can use the bathroom!” Matt suggested smelling the kids to see who used up the shampoo, but then we realized they were all guilty; each child smelled like shampoo and fear. Jerusha told them they wouldn’t be welcome anywhere else if they acted this way. Matt turned off the movie – the power was off anyway – and everyone went to sleep.
The next day everyone left early. Matt remained and offered me some of his shampoo, but then remembered that the kids who stayed at his house smelled really nice too. Neither of us had ever been on the other side of that sort of situation before.
Seafood, no child, took all of Adrian’s shampoo also.
Matt and Jerusha are both a bit older than me. Matt lives about 24 km away from Ndanda and is certainly the volunteer who I see the most often; the weekend before swimming lessons I visited him in his village, and returned home on his bicycle while giving his Tanzanian friend a lifti. There is no electricity in his village, but he bought a solar panel in Dar es Salaam and now has enough to power an ipod speaker and to give a small bit of light at night. He also charges his student’s cell phones and puts the proceeds into this health club.
The trip to Jerusha’s house involves a three-hour bus ride followed by another hour over paved roads; I haven’t seen her since my first week in the South. She had taken a different bus to Matt’s village, then the two of them led their nine children down the plateau to Ndanda; I met them at the swimming pool at about ten o’clock.
I run up to this pool almost every day. The monks dug it out to provide hydroelectric power for the Abbey and now guard it incessantly, keeping it clean and bilharzias-free. Google Ndanda Abbey, Tanzania and you can see a picture of it during the rainy season, when it is muddy and disgusting; I’ll also post some more pictures soon. It’s about 70m long and 25m wide, and people can stand only at the very edges; it is a lifeguard’s nightmare because of the deep bottom, steep edges and cloudy water. When I arrived a German friend, Adrian, had arrived along with a Tanzanian named Seafood (no joke) who he had met in Mtwara. Seafood had apparently met Jerusha at some bar there as well.
Swim lessons went like all swim lessons do, except I had to try to explain everything in Kiswahili. Matt and Jerusha did what I told them to. Seafood interrupted if my Kiswahili was breaking down, or if he thought he knew better than me. Adrian took pictures. Afterwards everyone walked back to my house, and we crashed while the kids wandered around Ndanda. The three “adults” spent about three hours cooking chili and rice while their students cleaned themselves.
Many of them had never used a real bathroom before, so I can’t be too angry; nevertheless, when they were finished washing, dirt covered the bathroom and the toilet was broken. Someone had opened up my contact case and dumped the contents on the floor. Worst of all they had used all of my shampoo and most of my deodorant. Everyone else was watching a movie, and I came out of the bathroom and threw the shampoo bottle against the wall, “Noone can use the bathroom! If you have to help yourself, go outside! Noone can use the bathroom!” Matt suggested smelling the kids to see who used up the shampoo, but then we realized they were all guilty; each child smelled like shampoo and fear. Jerusha told them they wouldn’t be welcome anywhere else if they acted this way. Matt turned off the movie – the power was off anyway – and everyone went to sleep.
The next day everyone left early. Matt remained and offered me some of his shampoo, but then remembered that the kids who stayed at his house smelled really nice too. Neither of us had ever been on the other side of that sort of situation before.
Seafood, no child, took all of Adrian’s shampoo also.
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