I started buying Kiswahili newspapers as soon as I got to site, in order to practice, and they always annoy me. A typical newspaper runs three types of stories; an investigation has traced corruption to the highest levels of government but is powerless to do anything about it, or another section of Africa is collapsing (The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the flavor of the month, with Zimbabwe also making regular appearances) or the paper decides to run some ridiculous article on America and the western world. Remember when pictures circulated of Obama wearing the dress of an African Muslim? Tanzanians do, because one newspaper (Mwananchi or Citizen) devoted an entire two-page spread to an issue that was almost completely disregarded in America.
What do we have today? The front page…
The accused of the EPA Want Their Millions: They have agreed to return some fees.
Another Albino is killed in Kigoma: Albinos body parts are used by witchdoctors for sorcery.
The Union is touched again by Zanzibar: Tanzania is made up of two separate countries, the mainland Tanganyika and the Zanzibar peninsula. The union was something of a shotgun marriage, and each side is unhappy with the other one.
The foreign affairs section, happily buried in the middle of the paper, today includes sections on Zimbabwe (demonstrations in Harare), Nigeria (the minister for combating corruption received death threats) and Mogadishu (starvation looms).
I’ve read a lot of books since getting here; the one which looms largest is Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, which begins “All news out of Africa is bad.” Pick up any newspaper and here and it seems as if the four horsemen of the apocalypse are running rampant throughout the continent.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
December 7, 2008 3X
I’ve spent more time with my students lately, for some reason or another. Mwendesha is a Form VI from Mwanza, up in the north near Lake Victoria, who is studies Physics, Chemistry and Biology; he wants to be a doctor. He is one of my best students . Obviously Tanzanians speak English differently than Americans, but his habits of speaking are strange even for an African; his sentences are grammatically correct but longer than they need be and they trail off towards the end. As a result his speech has a lyrical lilt, which, coupled with a mellow smile, is disarming.
I haven’t seen Mwendesha in a
I haven’t seen Mwendesha in a
December 7, 2008
The day that will live in infamy! Coincidentally, my best friend here is Japanese and in just this last week I’ve had five dinners with her and her friends. She has been talking about setting me up with one of her friends but I don’t think anything will come of it. I’ve been trying to learn Japanese as well, but I don’t think anything will come of that either.
Erina Niijima, like me, is 23 and came here after graduating University without really wanting to start a real job. Like me her future career choice bounces around a fair bit, and the last time I asked she was talking vaguely about being a travel writer. We eat together pretty frequently, it is much more fun to eat a nice meal with someone else than to eat alone, and we can eat full meals; maybe she cooks rice and I’ll barbecue pork or something. Several other Peace Corps Volunteers have Japanese counterparts but I don’t know any other pairs who are as close as we are.
Last weekend I went to Mtwara (perhaps more on that later) and came back with some tuna. I love Ndanda but I think I would trade this site for another one on the shore, near the beach; I’d like to get a little wooden dhow and sail back and forth during the evening, when there some wind. The two towns on the ocean near me, Lindi and Mtwara, both have fish markets on the beach. Fishing boats return to shore between 10:00 and 3:00 with a fresh catch. In Mtwara last Sunday they several large yellowfin tuna, a huge devil ray, a few other large fish whose name I’ve forgotten, along with the ubiquitous changu and dagaa. Fishermen were hacking the larger fish into steaks when I arrived. The Lindi fish market didn’t have the large fish but did have octopus, squid and tiger prawns, still wriggling on sandy wooden tables. A bag full of prawns costs about three dollars, as did a lenghth of tuna steak about the size of my forearm.
I put the tuna on ice and brought it back to Ndanda for dinner. One of Erina’s friends, another math teacher named Lisa, was visiting; Lisa lived near the shore in Japan too and knew how to cook seafood, and so we ate tekkamaki and grilled tuna in a mission town in Tanzania when the power was down.
I found Humphrey Mutaasa’s blog: http://humphrey-ndanda.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html
Erina Niijima, like me, is 23 and came here after graduating University without really wanting to start a real job. Like me her future career choice bounces around a fair bit, and the last time I asked she was talking vaguely about being a travel writer. We eat together pretty frequently, it is much more fun to eat a nice meal with someone else than to eat alone, and we can eat full meals; maybe she cooks rice and I’ll barbecue pork or something. Several other Peace Corps Volunteers have Japanese counterparts but I don’t know any other pairs who are as close as we are.
Last weekend I went to Mtwara (perhaps more on that later) and came back with some tuna. I love Ndanda but I think I would trade this site for another one on the shore, near the beach; I’d like to get a little wooden dhow and sail back and forth during the evening, when there some wind. The two towns on the ocean near me, Lindi and Mtwara, both have fish markets on the beach. Fishing boats return to shore between 10:00 and 3:00 with a fresh catch. In Mtwara last Sunday they several large yellowfin tuna, a huge devil ray, a few other large fish whose name I’ve forgotten, along with the ubiquitous changu and dagaa. Fishermen were hacking the larger fish into steaks when I arrived. The Lindi fish market didn’t have the large fish but did have octopus, squid and tiger prawns, still wriggling on sandy wooden tables. A bag full of prawns costs about three dollars, as did a lenghth of tuna steak about the size of my forearm.
I put the tuna on ice and brought it back to Ndanda for dinner. One of Erina’s friends, another math teacher named Lisa, was visiting; Lisa lived near the shore in Japan too and knew how to cook seafood, and so we ate tekkamaki and grilled tuna in a mission town in Tanzania when the power was down.
I found Humphrey Mutaasa’s blog: http://humphrey-ndanda.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html
December 3, 2008
I had a party 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.
Humphrey Mutaashta is a VSO accountant from Uganda. He’s
Humphrey Mutaashta is a VSO accountant from Uganda. He’s
October 30, 2009
My computer crashed last week and I lost several entries. I’ll try to rewrite a couple of them now.
I suppose I should give some overview of the schools here. Education in Tanzania is based on the British system. Students study in primary school for seven years, in secondary school for four years, and then in a sort of post-secondary school for two years. Most university degrees take only three years afterwards. In Kenya and Tanzania everybody associated with the education system is preoccupied with the numbe of years in each level; if people asked me what education was like in America, I would say “eight-four-four” meaning eight years primary, four years secondary, and four years in University; students and teachers would immediately understand. I could say many other things, of course, but spitting back three numbers is a good way to change the topic. The first level of secondary schooling is called O-level; the second is advanced, or A-level. At the end of each tier of schooling, students take an exam to determine if they will continue to advance; no grades are awarded during the course of the year and this exam is the only record of the student’s achievement.
I’ve seen a lot of differing statistics on the percentages of eligiblechildren enrolled in school, but most likely some 70% of the population now will enter primary school and some 2-3% eventually finish A-level. Maybe one half of one percent of the population continues on into the university. Children cannot begin schooling before they are seven, and given the delays after each level of exams most people here are lucky to finish secondary school by the time they are 21; several of my students are older than me. The first president, Julius Nyerere, was obsessed with education and adopted the titel “Mwalimu” or teacher. I have a series of speeches, in English and Swahili, about his goals to create an egalitarian, socialist society through the education system. He failed, and now the school system is in tatters.
Primary school is taught in Swahili. Secondary schools are supposedly taught in English, although among most teachers fluency is very poor and even A-level English (!) classes use a mix of Swahili and English. Advanced students take only three core subjects, along with a weekly seminar “General Studies” and religion courses twice a week. Scienc estudents who don’t study mathematics as a core subject also take a course called Basic Applied Mathematics. Physics, Chemistry, and Biology classes are comparable to AP courses in America, except the material is somewhat broader than an AP or introductory University course. Mathematics students learn pre-calculus with some little smattering of derivatives and integrals midway through their second year. The syllabi are terrible.
I suppose I should give some overview of the schools here. Education in Tanzania is based on the British system. Students study in primary school for seven years, in secondary school for four years, and then in a sort of post-secondary school for two years. Most university degrees take only three years afterwards. In Kenya and Tanzania everybody associated with the education system is preoccupied with the numbe of years in each level; if people asked me what education was like in America, I would say “eight-four-four” meaning eight years primary, four years secondary, and four years in University; students and teachers would immediately understand. I could say many other things, of course, but spitting back three numbers is a good way to change the topic. The first level of secondary schooling is called O-level; the second is advanced, or A-level. At the end of each tier of schooling, students take an exam to determine if they will continue to advance; no grades are awarded during the course of the year and this exam is the only record of the student’s achievement.
I’ve seen a lot of differing statistics on the percentages of eligiblechildren enrolled in school, but most likely some 70% of the population now will enter primary school and some 2-3% eventually finish A-level. Maybe one half of one percent of the population continues on into the university. Children cannot begin schooling before they are seven, and given the delays after each level of exams most people here are lucky to finish secondary school by the time they are 21; several of my students are older than me. The first president, Julius Nyerere, was obsessed with education and adopted the titel “Mwalimu” or teacher. I have a series of speeches, in English and Swahili, about his goals to create an egalitarian, socialist society through the education system. He failed, and now the school system is in tatters.
Primary school is taught in Swahili. Secondary schools are supposedly taught in English, although among most teachers fluency is very poor and even A-level English (!) classes use a mix of Swahili and English. Advanced students take only three core subjects, along with a weekly seminar “General Studies” and religion courses twice a week. Scienc estudents who don’t study mathematics as a core subject also take a course called Basic Applied Mathematics. Physics, Chemistry, and Biology classes are comparable to AP courses in America, except the material is somewhat broader than an AP or introductory University course. Mathematics students learn pre-calculus with some little smattering of derivatives and integrals midway through their second year. The syllabi are terrible.
October 25, 2008
Matthew Nagatani is another volunteer who lives about 20-25 km from my house, up on the Makonde Plateau. This plateau is dry and consequently poor; almost all the buildings I saw were made from dried mud or cow dung, with thatched roofs. Water was going for 800 schillings a bucket when I visited, more than what most people make in a day (1250 tzs = 1 dollar), and the rain which came Saturday was a godsend. Matt’s village, Nyambe, passes for a big town in the region; but almost no food is available besides rice, tomatoes, beans and onions; life here teaches all of us to appreciate things like vegetables. No other white people live close to him and so he is something of a celebrity. People remembered me as the crazy person who walked all the way from Ndanda.
October 23, 2008
I’m trying to get one of my students into an American university. Festus Ndalama is by far my best student, usually scoring 10-15 points higher than the next one on my chemistry exams; I understand his physics and mathematics results are also the best on his class. During the breaks he remains at school and studies, during weekends he studies, and the result is that he has managed to teach himself undergraduate science without any real qualified teachers or adequate textbooks. Our school had class meetings where the students air their greivances to their fellows and to the class teachers; most other students complained about the bad food, the lack of lab materials and the unqualified teachers; Festus stood up and castigated his fellows for not working hard enough. At O-level he studied at a seminary school, which are viewed as among the best in Tanzania; at this school his teachers forced him to speak only English, so he has no problems understanding me or his exams (which are written in English).
A few weeks after I first arrived I lent him a copy of Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe. He finished it and could explain some of its concepts to me. After the first Chemistry exam I gave him an English dictionary and some books to study for the SAT’s. Last Wednesday we sat down to register at collegeboard.com.
Collegeboard.com asks all students to complete a profile of themselves, and of course the answers are directed at Americans. Festus had never used a computer before and so I had to fill out all the survey for him. Someof them seemed so ridiculous I didn’t even ask him questions and just checked “no”. Festus lives in Dar es Salaam; neither of his parents had studied past secondary school. He doesn’t have a cell phone and does not return home for holidays, and so I believe he is one of the poorer students here. He has no email address and I used mine; I’ve gotten three messages from collegeboard since then. I think the seventy dollar SAT application fee may put the test out of his price range, and I told him I’d front the money and he could pay me back if he made it to the States.
The experience was both moving and surreal. I tried to picture Festus Ndalama, now dressed in an ironed maroon uniform, walking around a frosty New England campus carrying a laptop. What would he think of a school cafeteria? A library? I do not know what the future holds for Festus, if he will make it to America. If our lab technician screws up the practical again Festus may very well not even make it to the University of Dar es Salaam. For now his focus is on the practice examination which begins next week, and the national examination starting in February.
A few weeks after I first arrived I lent him a copy of Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe. He finished it and could explain some of its concepts to me. After the first Chemistry exam I gave him an English dictionary and some books to study for the SAT’s. Last Wednesday we sat down to register at collegeboard.com.
Collegeboard.com asks all students to complete a profile of themselves, and of course the answers are directed at Americans. Festus had never used a computer before and so I had to fill out all the survey for him. Someof them seemed so ridiculous I didn’t even ask him questions and just checked “no”. Festus lives in Dar es Salaam; neither of his parents had studied past secondary school. He doesn’t have a cell phone and does not return home for holidays, and so I believe he is one of the poorer students here. He has no email address and I used mine; I’ve gotten three messages from collegeboard since then. I think the seventy dollar SAT application fee may put the test out of his price range, and I told him I’d front the money and he could pay me back if he made it to the States.
The experience was both moving and surreal. I tried to picture Festus Ndalama, now dressed in an ironed maroon uniform, walking around a frosty New England campus carrying a laptop. What would he think of a school cafeteria? A library? I do not know what the future holds for Festus, if he will make it to America. If our lab technician screws up the practical again Festus may very well not even make it to the University of Dar es Salaam. For now his focus is on the practice examination which begins next week, and the national examination starting in February.
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