Hungry to Learn

Maybe this is not enough writing for a full post, because I can’t quite put words to it.  But here goes:

Today, I stayed after classes at my school to create a teaching aid about human immunity for my classroom.  As I was winding down my work, a group of five girls peered in the door, laughing and giggling through shy smiles.  From their rapid Kiswahili, I could make out that their “tuition” teacher was not there to teach them.  I invited them into my classroom, and they gathered around me as I finished cutting and sticking pieces of colored paper.  Soon, we were engaged in a full-on lesson.  We created diagrams and flow charts together about conservation of energy and the balance of life.  When I read 6:00 pm (in Tanzanian time, 12:00 jioni!) on my watch, the girls were still earnest with their questions.  After a few moments, I had to all but force them to leave the school grounds.

I arrived home, and remembered that I had promised another student that I would help him tonight.  His name is Augustino, and you may have read about him before on my blog!  Hardly 40 minutes later, he raced into our yard on his bike.  He needed help on the human body systems for his important Form II exam – the government exam on which his continuance in school hinged – and takes every opportunity to get help from me.  Augustino and I made colorful outlines and diagrams until well past 9 pm, when we realized we were both famished.

In the U.S., it is becoming increasingly rare to find students who crave learning.  But students who will stay at school until dusk to spend time with a teacher?  Students who will spend their entire evening poring over their books with a teacher?  These kids are special, and maybe unique to Tanzania.  There is absolutely nothing as fulfilling for a teacher than helping children hungry to learn.

A view of our classroom board just after the girls left!

Eid-al-Fitr and other wonderful things

Watching the news, in any country, is usually a sure-fire way to become disheartened.  In my host family, we watch BBC News: Focus on Africa almost every night.  Above all, it is the most depressing news hour that I’ve seen.  Scenes of disasters in Gaza constantly pepper the screen, and since the rapid Kiswahili that the news anchors speak is difficult for me to understand, I just stare open-mouthed at the panning photographs.  Terrorist attacks in Algeria, Ethiopia, and across the continent are covered every night – and it seems like the terrible happenings in our neighbor, Kenya – are too common to report.  In a world where death is a glorified spectacle, it seems like stories don’t make the news unless lives are lost.  The worst part is, these news stories cover crimes that are committed in the name of God – one brother of faith against another.

My village is called Masuguru, and it’s a small community just outside of the town of Korogwe.  In Masuguru, Christians and Muslims live in harmony.  In fact, even in my house, Christians and Muslims live in harmony.  My family is part of the local Anglican church, but since we are quite well off, we have two girls staying with us from other families.  I call them both “dada,” or sister, and it took me almost two weeks to learn that they were not the biological daughters of my host family.  Both girls are Muslim.  One, Amina, is older, and she went home for the week to celebrate Eid with her family.  The youngest, Rehema, stayed home.  In the morning, I saw her off to the masjid (and came extremely close to skipping my morning training session and experiencing the mosque with her!).  She was bubbly and excited for the feasting and celebrations to come.  I was allowed to leave my training early in honor of Eid, and I raced home to help with the holiday preparations.  I remember waking up around 4:30 am that morning to the sound of chickens screaming bloody murder – and now I knew why.  My Baba had killed a chicken, and it was merrily boiling in a soup on the jiko, a charcoal stove.  I chopped onions and smashed garlic until my hands were raw.  My Christian family ate pulao, the traditional Tanzanian Eid dish, in honor of my Muslim host sister.  After lunch, we visited some of our Muslim neighbors, bringing sweets to the children, and filling our stomachs even more.  Like many days in Korogowe, Eid was marked by sudden downpours that left us stranded in one home for a while!  While trudging through the mud on the way home, we passed the Mamba Club, a facility next door to our compound.  Rehema had told me a few days before how excited she was for the Eid party at the Mamba Club.  Sure enough, when dusk fell,  files of little girls, ornamented in lace and pastel dresses and with intricate hairstyles, rushed to line up at the alligator’s mouth entrance to Mamba Club.

When religious harmony is natural and effortless in a community like Masuguru, it is difficult to comprehend why so many lives are lost in our world because of religious differences.  These religious crusades seem like they belong in a different millennium.  Hopefully, our world will soon realize that we have moved too far as a society to take lives in the name of God, and Masuguru village can be just one example of the new, modern view of harmony.  In my life, as well as Masuguru village, faith is the most important gift.  It takes just a pinch of tolerance to share faith respectfully, and we are praying that the world realizes this soon.

Mimi ni mwalimu

*a post from four days ago that I haven't been able to post because of electricity and network problems. Hamna shida (no worries). Enjoy!

Today was officially my first day in the classroom, and I guess beginning today, Mimi ni mwalimu – I am a teacher.  I was supposed to teach my first lesson two days ago: a first-period Biology class to Form I students.  Form I students are new to secondary school and instruction in English.  Learning Biology material is often challenging for students who learn in their native language – and it is hard to imagine how these students can train their thoughts to learn in a language so foreign to them.  Thus, Form I students are among the most challenging to teach, especially for American teachers.

So, I rose before sunrise to travel the 5 kilometers of rocky terrain that separates my home from Chief Kimwere Secondary School.  I arrived at school in good time, to witness students sweeping and organizing the classrooms.  No other teachers arrived for about 30 minutes, and students diligently cleaned each and every classroom in the school.  Alas, when I thought classes would start, a bell rang to instruct students to assemble, and they were all sent to the school farm to harvest corn for their ugali.  So, my first lesson got pushed back to today.  Such is life in Tanzanian schools, and there was nothing to say except hakuna matata – no worries.

Last week, I had the opportunity to work with a few students in my host family, and this gave me an idea of how to develop my teaching skills.  My host brother, Jackson, who attends a secondary school in a town about three hours away, was able to come home for the Eid holidays.  Upon hearing that I am a Biology teacher, he told me that he wanted to learn from me. My host family speaks only Kiswahili, but Jackson can speak a fair amount of English because he is learning uncommonly well in school.  Still, his understanding is far below what I would have expected of a student who learns math, biology, physics, chemistry, geography, and civics in English each week.  I began to engage him a lesson that I had prepared for a practice “microteaching” lesson for my colleagues during Peace Corps Training.  I worked with him through an interactive activity, likening parts of the cell to parts and people of the Tanzanian household.  We learned each item slowly, and I was thrilled to see that he was able to correctly complete my activity.  It was late at night by the time we finished, but Jackson agreed to teach the same lesson back to me the following night.

The next night, he seemed unsure of how to proceed.  I asked him a few starting questions, and he quoted answers for me directly from his textbook.  Closing his book, I told him that I wanted to hear answers from his brain, not from the book.  He looked at me incredulously, but surprised me with an excellent understanding of all the concepts we had talked about.  When he forgot a certain part of the cell, he would refer back to the drawings on the activity cards that I had made – and was able to teach me the entire lecture correctly.  I was so proud of him, and felt fulfilled in my first teaching experience in Tanzania.

Each night that he was home, he brought an exceptionally bright friend along, and they were eager to get my help in science concepts that they didn’t understand.  Many things are difficult to explain to students across a large language and culture barrier.  At one point, I had tried to explain the concept of diffusion of oxygen across an alveolar membrane (a structure in the lung) to no avail.  Desperate, I grabbed whatever objects I could find – two glasses, bits of paper, and hair ties from my wrist.  It’s amazing to see students who are used to learning from a dusty chalkboard understand something when they see science come alive.  Teaching these boys helped me to formulate a few strategies to help Tanzanian students learn.  Augustino even returned to my house after Jackson had gone back to school.  One night, he helped me prepare teaching aids for my lesson the next day – astoundingly accurate and detailed drawings of cars, buses, and airplanes.

I had observed one class at Chief Kimwere before, and was skeptical about my abilities to teach Tanzanian students.  The teacher who I am working with seems to be more motivated to inspire her students than her colleagues are – but at my school, this isn’t saying much.  Although she teaches by rote, as is the custom in Tanzania, she is fairly engaging in her lectures.  Yet, I have noticed that she doesn’t follow through with each student, and she may not realize that many of her students are left behind.  After observing one lecture, she abruptly left the room, leaving the students to answer a question on the board regarding material that she had not quite covered.  Out of curiosity, I stayed in the room to help them.  I walked around to each student, following along with the text in each student’s notebook as I instructed him or her to read an answer out loud.  It was clear that, out of 29 students in the classroom, only one understood the content and the language enough to write a reasonable answer to her question.  This classroom, I learned later, is the “Stream C” class of Form I.  These students are described by their own teachers as “dull” and “slow learners.” So, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy – they tend to be dull, slow learners with teachers who do not fully believe in their potential.

There are several facets of the Tanzanian education system that frustrate me, and this is one of them.  I planned to address this in the first lecture of my internship.  Today, I taught a lecture about the Cell Theory and the components of cells in “Stream A” – the class of higher achievers who understand more English than their peers.  I spoke slowly and clearly, prompting students to apply their previous knowledge to explain this topic.  At first, students were reluctant to contribute – probably resulting from not being accustomed to expressing their opinions, as well as not understanding my diction completely.  However, within 30 minutes into the lecture, my classroom was lively.  Students felt freer to answer questions, and would repeat my words loudly and confidently when I asked them to.  They listened attentively.  When I faced them, I saw students sharing pens and desks, as is common in Tanzanian schools.  A heavy downpour started about halfway through our lesson, and many students shifted to move out of the reach of the open-air windows that lined the classroom.  I struggled to make my voice heard over the pounding rain and howling winds.  I picked their brains throughout the lesson as we carefully drew and labeled diagrams.

At the end of the lecture, I handed out cards I had created with a role for each student.  Each student was to pretend to be a certain part of the cell, so we could demonstrate that each and every part of the cell is essential to life.  Amid giggles and shy glances, it took much longer than I had anticipated for them to agree to act out their roles.  The final challenge was getting my timid girls to link arms with the boys, who outnumbered them three to one, to form the “plasma membrane” of our human cell.  The students seemed to understand that each student in their classroom (including Bakari, the smallest student in the front row, with thick glasses, and a large cyst in the back of his head) was necessary to create a functioning cell.  The students left me with many kind words, and I cannot wait to be in front of the blackboard again next week.  Today, it is true – Mimi ni mwalimu.

When in doubt, Shikamoo

Friday, August 1, 2014

Tarehe Ijumaa, moja mwezi wa nane, mwaka elfu mbili kumi na nne

      My host mama finally allows me to pour my bath water by myself, so that means it is probably time for another post!  Today is the first day of August, and we’ve been in-country for over three weeks now.  My class spent our first week together like 61 kids in summer camp.  We stayed at the Kurasini Center – a Christian conference facility in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania.  We had little time to spend away from tedious trainings during this first week, but eagerly awaited our visit to the city outside of the walls of our compound.  For me, the half-day spent visiting the markets of Dar brought about the realization that I really was in Africa – in Tanzania, Africa – and here to stay for long time.  That day, I bought kitenges – wonderful printed fabrics – and drank from a tender coconut.  Dar has an exotic hustle and bustle and a dynamic different from any city I have been to.  Being in Peace Corps Training is hardly different from being in preschool again (we even had to “potty train” again with the porcelain Tanzanian style toilets!).  But, about four days in, I realized that the real reasoning behind Dar week was for Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) to meet, greet, and learn from one another. I’ll post more about some remarkable lessons I learned from one of my peers during training.

      After “Dar” week, it’s safe to say that each and every volunteer was ready to move on.  We rose early one morning (OK, actually, we rose early every morning) and boarded a bus to Korogwe, a town in the Tanga region north of Dar.  Shortly after our arrival, each volunteer was whisked off in safari-style jeeps and shuttled to host families’ homes in the villages surrounding Korogwe.  My village is called Masuguru, and it is but a 10 minute walk from the town center.  Every PCT knows that the first night in a homestay family will inevitably be awkward – and mine was no different.  Within 5 minutes of my arrival, and before my bags had been stowed away, guests began arriving, filling the couches and even floors of our sitting room.  Soon, we were engaged in a prayer service.  I understood four or five words from the entire service – and felt pretty proud of it!  After the guests had filed out, I got to meet the rest of my host family – my baba and mama, Benson and Agnes, and my host sisters, Estella, Amina, and Rehema.  (Well, they all aren’t exactly my sisters, but I’ll get to this in a later post, too!).  My problem was, the family was very attached to their cat – to which I’m allergic.  I figured there had been some sort of mistake with Peace Corps’ placement policy, but the five or six Swahili phrases I had memorized at this point were not much help in me explaining my allergy.  I spent an uncomfortable few days as we worked for a solution for the cat, as I eased into life with my host family.

      During the first two weeks of homestay, I learned about the culture of a Tanzanian town just as a child would.  My family is Anglican, and Sunday services are a marathon four-hour affair.  However, I really feel the presence of God in the joyous song, swinging hips, and clapping hands – and four hours passes by soon enough.  My language mastery is nowhere near the point where I could understand the theological jargon in Kiswahili, so the customs can be hard to understand.  For example, this past Sunday, I noticed a shiny red motorcycle inside the church during mass.  At the end of the service, it was wheeled out ceremoniously so the pastor could bless it once again.  As with most things that seem strange to me in this country, I shrugged and hoped that one day soon I might understand.

      As I make slow progress with my Kiswahili, I realize that there are so many more important pieces to assimilating in this culture.  I can greet people I meet in about 20 different ways, and this is the paramount skill to gain respect in Tanzanian communities.  There are different greetings for the old and the young – so when in doubt, I’ve realized it’s safer just to offer a respectful, “Shikamoo,”  which loosely translates to “I hold your feet.”

      I’m learning how to make food on a coal-fire jiko, and challenging my tailor, or fundi, with ever-more challenging designs for my clothes.  I know enough to get good prices on fruit and cloth at the local market, and have survived getting lost in the neighboring village through driving rain.  The smell of the red dirt is becoming comforting to me, and I’m learning how to bike around the titanic fractures that decorate our village roads.  Our town is perpetually blanketed in a dramatic sea of clouds, and the mountains that stretch across the horizon are a feast to look at no matter which way I’m walking.  Life here is simple and gracious, and is described best by the words, “Karibu Tanzania!”