The semester before any national exam, all Tanzanian schools participate in a regional “mock” examination to prepare both students and teachers for the upcoming ordeal. The regional mock is not just another test; teachers from every school in region first meet to write the exam and then meet again to mark it. Our students sat for this examination in early November and now a marking panel has convened at Ndanda to correct them all.
I’ve come to associate inter-school examinations with chaos and an inordinate amount of work for the wazungu science teachers. I first arrived in Ndanda the day before the national chemistry practical; Erina was sick and nobody else was able to prepare stock solutions. My first full day in Ndanda was spent running around a rotting laboratory littered with broken glassware in which everything - chemicals, large bottles, small bottles, running water – was missing or mislabeled. Not coincidentally, many students failed that practical, and the school’s overall results were the worst in its 100 year history. Five months before I arrived, payment for the mock examination had caused student riots. For this current exam, the school failed to tell me about my work until the last possible moment; there was a public holiday and a three day weekend, and I had planned to go visit several other volunteers. I was standing in front of the second master with a leave form when he showed me this letter. “I think you should read this, and then you won’t need this paper.” Despite the public holiday, there was still work the next day, and instead of travelling I typed all the mock examinations in every subject for the entire region.
The grading session today went something like that. Yesterday another friend of Erina’s arrived. He works in one of the Mtwara A-level schools as a BAM (Basic Applied Math, taken by some science students) teacher, but his contract ends next Wednesday. He was sent to help grade BAM and possibly Advanced Mathematics. He informed me that the three of us were responsible for all the BAM, Mathematics and Physics students; no other teachers were coming because there are no other teachers. Repeat: there is not a single other A-level Physics or Math teacher in 300km. The immediate consequence of this is that the three of us have a ton of work, much more than any Tanzanian teacher, and we’re all pretty pissed about it. My headmaster, Mr. Lulukila, came into the grading hall this morning and saw the three of us sitting together. “The international table! Japan, America…” I cut him off and complained about the lack of graders. “Hamna shida, (no problems),” he replied. I tried to tell him it was a fucking big problem but he was already walking away.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
December 10
The semester before any national exam, all Tanzanian schools participate in a regional “mock” examination to prepare both students and teachers for the upcoming ordeal. The regional mock is not just another test; teachers from every school in region first meet to write the exam and then meet again to mark it. Our students sat for this examination in early November and now a marking panel has convened at Ndanda to correct them all.
I’ve come to associate inter-school examinations with chaos and an inordinate amount of work for the wazungu science teachers. I first arrived in Ndanda the day before the national chemistry practical; Erina was sick and nobody else was able to prepare stock solutions. My first full day in Ndanda was spent running around a rotting laboratory littered with broken glassware in which everything - chemicals, large bottles, small bottles, running water – was missing or mislabeled. Not coincidentally, many students failed that practical, and the school’s overall results were the worst in its 100 year history. Five months before I arrived, payment for the mock examination had caused student riots. For this current exam, the school failed to tell me about my work until the last possible moment; there was a public holiday and a three day weekend, and I had planned to go visit several other volunteers. I was standing in front of the second master with a leave form when he showed me this letter. “I think you should read this, and then you won’t need this paper.” Despite the public holiday, there was still work the next day, and instead of travelling I typed all the mock examinations in every subject for the entire region.
The grading session today went something like that. Yesterday another friend of Erina’s arrived. He works in one of the Mtwara A-level schools as a BAM (Basic Applied Math, taken by some science students) teacher, but his contract ends next Wednesday. He was sent to help grade BAM and possibly Advanced Mathematics. He informed me that the three of us were responsible for all the BAM, Mathematics and Physics students; no other teachers were coming because there are no other teachers. Repeat: there is not a single other A-level Physics or Math teacher in 300km. The immediate consequence of this is that the three of us have a ton of work, much more than any Tanzanian teacher, and we’re all pretty pissed about it. My headmaster, Mr. Lulukila, came into the grading hall this morning and saw the three of us sitting together. “The international table! Japan, America…” I cut him off and complained about the lack of graders. “Hamna shida, (no problems),” he replied. I tried to tell him it was a fucking big problem but he was already walking away.
I’ve come to associate inter-school examinations with chaos and an inordinate amount of work for the wazungu science teachers. I first arrived in Ndanda the day before the national chemistry practical; Erina was sick and nobody else was able to prepare stock solutions. My first full day in Ndanda was spent running around a rotting laboratory littered with broken glassware in which everything - chemicals, large bottles, small bottles, running water – was missing or mislabeled. Not coincidentally, many students failed that practical, and the school’s overall results were the worst in its 100 year history. Five months before I arrived, payment for the mock examination had caused student riots. For this current exam, the school failed to tell me about my work until the last possible moment; there was a public holiday and a three day weekend, and I had planned to go visit several other volunteers. I was standing in front of the second master with a leave form when he showed me this letter. “I think you should read this, and then you won’t need this paper.” Despite the public holiday, there was still work the next day, and instead of travelling I typed all the mock examinations in every subject for the entire region.
The grading session today went something like that. Yesterday another friend of Erina’s arrived. He works in one of the Mtwara A-level schools as a BAM (Basic Applied Math, taken by some science students) teacher, but his contract ends next Wednesday. He was sent to help grade BAM and possibly Advanced Mathematics. He informed me that the three of us were responsible for all the BAM, Mathematics and Physics students; no other teachers were coming because there are no other teachers. Repeat: there is not a single other A-level Physics or Math teacher in 300km. The immediate consequence of this is that the three of us have a ton of work, much more than any Tanzanian teacher, and we’re all pretty pissed about it. My headmaster, Mr. Lulukila, came into the grading hall this morning and saw the three of us sitting together. “The international table! Japan, America…” I cut him off and complained about the lack of graders. “Hamna shida, (no problems),” he replied. I tried to tell him it was a fucking big problem but he was already walking away.
December 7
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
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
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.
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.
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