That Chick from Pitch Perfect

As much as I am a chronic optimist, my emotional buoyancy took a bit of a hit over the past two weeks.  Since late last Fall, close to my arrival at school, I began experiencing a hoarse voice.  Every weekend, it seemed like I would recover just a little bit, yet by the time I began teaching again on Monday, my voice would break, and allow the raspy, hollow sound of the wind to interrupt my teaching.  My family and friends back home wondered who the old woman on the other end of the line was.

This year, I began teaching many, many more periods – 28 periods from Monday – Thursday, plus teaching at the vocational school in the neighboring village on Fridays.  Weekends were filled with acting and dancing with my youth group, and teaching music to students.  No matter where I was, I was always talking.  When I phoned my family and friends back home, they expected the high clear voice that they remembered, and always commented that my “cold” seemed really awful.  I did refer my problem to our Peace Corps doctor, soon after it worsened this year, but we were not able to find a solution.

Living in Tanzania means that each and every person in my life feels it their personal need to give me unsolicited “medical” advice.  Upon hearing my voice, teachers, students, and villagers will tell me that I have eaten too many potatoes, or the climate change is simply too much for my body to cope with.  They tell me I need to eat ginger and honey, or more commonly, “mayai mabichi” (raw eggs – yuck!). 

On a recent trip to Dar es Salaam for a training, I agreed to see an ENT specialist.  After his diagnosis, I was relieved to find a real medical solution, but the treatment is less than ideal.

Later that day, I told my friends what I had – vocal nodes.  More specifically, a node in my right vocal cord.  While it’s not a simple problem, it is less complicated than it sounds – just a small, red growth on my right vocal cord.  I finished explaining this, and one girl broke the silence by saying, “Isn’t that what the chick from Pitch Perfect had?”  Fits of laughter erupted around the small room, as we finally remembered where we had this association from.

Further appointments with a speech therapist and our Peace Corps doctors helped me to realize that it is imperative for me to heal if I want to continue being an effective volunteer.  This means that, beginning yesterday, I need to take complete vocal rest.  In other words, a complete vow of silence.

I am 48 hours in to this nightmare, and it is one of the most frustrating things that I have done in my life.  I carry a pad of paper and pen with me everywhere I go, but leading music during a mass service, and supervising my youth theatre group are nearly impossible to do with paper and pen instead of two powerful lungs.  Yesterday, in town, people treated me either like I had a disability, or the plague.  Most thought I was deaf as well, and used interesting forms of sign language.  Men, rather than harassing me through words, decided to write them down.  One particularly insistent character wrote me a series of written notes in English.  They read things like, “You are so beautifully!  What is your name?”  “Are you married?!”  “Can I please have access to your phone number?”  “Twitter/Email?”  “What is your full name so I can find you on Facebook?”  I piled each note in a growing stack next to the computer I was working on a Peace Corps report on, furrowing my brow further as to appear busier with each successive interruption.  One man who was writing notes to me was actually deaf.  I felt just a little bit bad brushing him away, as well.

I’m not sure quite how I will pass the time during these next two weeks.  If any of you know me, relaxing is not one of my personal strengths.  My days as a Peace Corps Volunteer are completely chock-full with activities.  If our faulty village electricity obliges, I rise early to set up our projector for my morning classes.  My rare breaks are usually spent formulating ideas to help some of our best, and poorest, students to pay their school fees, or cutting out some sort of poster or activity for my classroom.  In the evenings, I might teach extra periods, or help students, before making my weary way back home.  With dusk rapidly approaching, I grab a hoe, and potter around in the garden, with the smattering of students who invariably appear to help me.  A quick dinner has me back in the office, attempting to prepare notes and lesson plans, but often just tutoring students, and finishing my own notes uninterrupted during the late night hours.

Maybe, just maybe, it is a blessing in disguise to have a change of my routine.  This morning, I actually had time to cook breakfast.  Soon after dawn, I sat down with caramelized sweet potatoes, green tea with honey, and a fabulous book.  I visited my garden, wishing my weeds a “safari njema” as I propelled them through the air.  And, I wrote.  If I keep this pace of life up, I will have time.  Time to prepare fundraising campaigns and “success packets” for my students to complete over the holidays.  Time to apply for scholarships for my best students to study abroad.  And, maybe most importantly, time for myself.  Time for writing and yoga.  Time for making that coffee cake – because, just maybe, I’m worth it.  Time to finish those documentaries, and the mile-high stack of books on my bedside table.

Expect more of my presence here, on this blog.  I have plenty of stories to share, jotted down in memo pads, and in the margins of my notes, and I’ll have the time to share them.  And, your prayers and well wishes would definitely be appreciated as I struggle with the agony of silence over the next two weeks. In the words of our favorite Acapella-crooning redhead, "I have nodes. I am living with nodes. But I am a survivor, but I have to pull back because I am limited. Because I have nodes." 

A Rare Moment of Quiet

     The sun is bright and gentle at the same time, in a way that words cannot accurately describe.  Rain is falling softly, sparkling throughout our village skyline in the cheery, warm laughter of the sun.  Whispering at first, then slowly drowning out the rustle of students’ papers and the scratching of their pens.  Raindrops, like full, heavy goblets, fall upon the water-logged Earth and bounce away like my sister on her Pogo stick all those years ago.  I still wish I’d learned how to ride a Pogo stick.

     Students, just 19 – 20 years old, their brows furrowed in concentration well past their years, are seated in rather crooked rows in front of me.  Hundreds of questions race through their heads.  What kind of country is “imperialist in nature,” again?  Which African countries had to liberate themselves through armed struggle?  What, in the name of the tumultuous rain falling outside our window, is “armed struggle,” anyway?!   The thoughts echoing through their minds are almost audible as these Advanced Level students complete their exam.  I scan the classroom I am invigilating, watching for wandering eyes and whispering mouths, but my attention is diverted elsewhere.

     It’s a rare moment of quiet – our playing field is empty, except for the water-flecked blades of grass, finally drinking their fill after months of frying under the equatorial sun.  The sound of tree branches hitting flesh, and sometimes breaking flesh, has subsided for the time being.  The village children have already left school, taking their songs and strong lungs with them.

     In this rare moment of quiet, the frustrations of the day vanish.  The only things I have are a fresh stack of our grayish-yellow exam papers, my red teacher’s pen, fading after hours of making angry marks all over students’ essays, and a three-foot-tall stack of student exercise books I have shoved to the side of my small blue desk, neglecting work to put this rare moment of quiet onto paper.

     The morning events seem far away – the experiences that stretched my voice and my patience alike.  Now, however, I can remember the events like a distant dream.  I remember the dismal feeling of entering my first class at 7:28 am (two minutes to spare!), only to find empty seats.  I waited for a passing-by student to tell me the reason-of-the day –

the reason why my students were cutting spinach and grasses instead of filling my classroom. Granted, it has been a while since I exercised this speech, but I pulled the same old and tired words out of my pocket.  I explained to teachers, academic masters, whichever higher power would listen, the clear link between punishment work during class periods and student failure.  I preached about how it was time, today, to stop punishing the teacher, the school, and all of Tanzania by sending our students to the fields instead of classrooms.

     All the small successes, the challenges of the day fade away for a rare moment of quiet, before the chatter of students, the pit-pat of running feet, and the harsh slap of the stick return in a flood.  My fleeting moment of peace passes, just like it came, and the blessings of my daily life rush back in, without stopping to knock and allow my moment of serenity to pass politely. 

Peace Corps Week (is EVERY week)

“Peace Corps Week” was the first week of March, when I wrote this post.  I realized, in the course of jotting my activities down, that Peace Corps Week is every week.  The experiences of this week are similar to my experiences every week, and define my service.  I don’t always have the time, energy, or mental clarity to write them down. But, here are highlights of the abundant joys and appalling challenges I faced in one typical week of service:

Sunday, March 1: Kilimanjaro Marathon Day!

Many of my friends and fellow volunteers came from across the country to run, whether 42 K, 21 K, or 5 K (like myself).  Peace Corps Volunteers show determination in so many parts of life apart from their service!

Some of the PCVs and myself on race day

Monday, March 2: Strugglebus

Stayed in town for an extra night to try to unconfiscate my confiscated American ATM card from a local bank.  I had used it in attempt to receive a gift to our school from my parents.  Turned out the card got returned to America.  Hurried back from town to my village school, thinking only #HakunaMatata

Tuesday, March 3: Hope

Had a meeting with one of our top Form 4 girls about the Africa’s Tomorrow Scholarship: an opportunity for a low-income girl to attend college in America.  We are both eager to see if this will pan out!

Wednesday, March 4: “Usiwapige Wanafunzi Wangu!” (Do NOT beat my students!)

The new teacher at our school used a TREE BRANCH to beat three Form 3 students. The diameter (I measured one of two pieces that broke and flew off before I could leave the room) was 3 cm.  I rarely speak my mind during our lunch meetings, but I had plenty to say today, armed with a “real-size” drawing I had one of the students draw.

Thursday, March 5: Building windows skyward to success

Our first successful meeting of Skylights Writing Club (a storybook and creative writing club started by another teacher and myself).  Each week we had tried to hold a meeting previously, some last-minute change in the school timetable forced us to cancel the meeting at the last minute.  We read one of Aesop’s fables about an ass and a load of salt, and our students wrote and illustrated their own fable about an elephant and a monkey. Kudos to them!

Friday, March 6: Scariest day of service to date

When I teach a period directly before lunch, I know that students will surely be sleeping.  Today was no different – except it was.  Maria, a Form 4 student who is not particularly bright or hardworking, but always sweet, had her head on the desk for half of the period, and would not respond to any of my questions.  I shrugged it off, anxious to attend to the rest of my class, and tired from a difficult week of teaching.  Making my way to the dining hall later, I saw a small group of these students clustered around a student lying on the grass.  It was Maria, lying unconscious on the grass.  The following hours were terrifying for me, as someone who understands Western medicine enough to know that something is gravely wrong, but not well enough to properly know what to do in a village where the idea of calling a doctor to come attend to a patient is actually laughable.  I learned more in the weeks to come about this recurring problem in Maria’s four years at school.  Without getting into great detail, this encounter, along with several others, both strengthens my interest in and fosters doubt about Western medicine.  After strong efforts of insisting and begging that she be taken to the hospital, we finally carried her unconscious body into the school car, and waved it off.  When the car faded off into a cloud of dust, some of my students braved the climb along our village road to our village shop to buy kilos and kilos of flour and sugar to prepare a cake for our International Women’s Day Celebration

Saturday, March 7: Full day fire-side

After returning from a morning of marketing, four of my students and myself began preparing the large cake for tomorrow’s event.  We started cooking at 10 am, creaming butter and sugar with a wooden spoon in my huge black basin, and pouring the cake batter in elephant-sized cooking pots over firewood.  By the time we put the finishing touches on our titanic work of art, it was just shy of midnight!

Some of the cooks with our final product!
The drawings and decorations
all compliments of my students.

Sunday, March 8: International Women’s Day!

Time was tight this day, and I saved time by attending our own Lutheran church service at school, instead of making the long weekly climb to our Catholic church.  It was a beautiful, energized, and joyful service full of dancing and performances.

Plans for the day were all on cue – decorations, music, cake, performers, and MCs.  A familiar beat pulsed through the hall, and the girls line-danced in, each one sporting a beaming smile and a pink tissue-paper flower that the boys had spent time making.  We rarely go a day without losing power, and I knew that our electricity would surely cut just as soon as we started.

Sure enough, just when our student MC welcomed a laughing, beaming group of youth, the microphones, speakers, and projector that we had carefully arranged abruptly cut.  After our usual scrambling to find fuel for our generator (which I had been ensured would be filled in case of a power cut), we managed to begin the event again.  It went miraculously smoothly.

"House of Talent:" a mother going into labor while working hard in the fields.

Students were attentive to the student-led presentations and songs.  Our school “House of Talent” put on an absolutely wonderful Swahili play depicting the challenges of women in Tanzania. The consequences of domestic maltreatment, early pregnancy, low expectations, and objectification of women were shown more clearly than I could have ever demonstrated in a classroom.  Roaring laughter alternated stoic pauses when the entire room of 350 young men and women re-visited some hard truths.  The students, with minimal help from me and another teacher, had planned and practiced a brilliant play.  I was already on Cloud 9 halfway through our event.

"House of Talent:" the consequences of early pregnancy.
This teenage mother will not wake up.

Students listened attentively to a video speech I filmed from one of our most successful village girls, as they did to a presentation I gave about Malala Yousafzai, one of the most inspiring and incredible age-mates of theirs.

Giving a presentation about Malala Yousafzai, one of my personal heroes.

For our final activity, girls left the boys behind to participate in a global movement called “Join Me on the Bridge.”  The Join Me on the Bridge campaign started in 2010 when women from Congo and Rwanda joined together on the bridge connecting their two countries, showing that they could build the bridges of peace and hope for the future.  Uroki women, at first, complained that we had to walk on our parched, dusty, bumpy village road, down the mountain to the river, while the boys stayed and danced to music.  However, within less than a minute, they realized that they had the freedom to dance and sing because of the empowerment of the day.  For the rest of our way down, and the strenuous climb back up, there was chanting and dancing that could be heart throughout the village – “Wanawake JUU! Wanawake JUU! Madam Carol JUU!  Wanawake JUU!” (Women RISE!)

Join Me on the Bridge: "Wanawake JUU!"

The best part of the day was when one of my sweet Form 4 girls, Glory, said, “Madam – you make us happy!”  I could see the joy radiating from her heart.  A Form 2 student, Beatrice, pressed a handmade card into my hand, along with a small lollipop.  I finally had time to unfold the two sheets late that night.  Amid whimsical cartoon drawings, was an acrostic poem about MISS CARO.  It read, “Mother is Someone Special, Coulors Around Rimble bright Over.” The main message read, “Your special because your so kind to every one, your so faithfull, you always care every one, that’s why your special.”  Beatrice’s words, in their imperfect English, were perfect to me, and brought me to tears after an inspiring, wonderful day.

Tears of raw human emotion – the full spectrum – are a regular part of Peace Corps service, and this “Peace Corps” weeks represents many of the weeks of my service. 

Ears to Hear Me Dream

“All I really need are some ears to hear me dream!”  Extra credit if you can name that song J Once again, I have been in worlds far away from the World Wide Web.  It figures that I would have taken the time to remember my long-forgotten blog during a power outage, sitting by candlelight with rain pounding against my roof and thunder I can feel deep in my bones.  So let’s jump in, as quickly as the mighty rainy season descended upon the dry, thirsty soil in my village.

Before I fully realized that the eventful holiday season and the turn of the new year had come to a close, I found myself once again center stage in front of the bright eyes and impressionable minds.  This year, I have the opportunity to teach each and every one of our 380 students; which is a blessing, but provides quite the workload!  Through feelings of intense homesickness and occasional despair as I learn more about the self-propagating factors that are preventing this Tanzania’s development, I am realizing many things.  One of them is that all I really do need are young people to keep me on my toes and at my best.

This year, I am teaching Biology to Form III students – a new class of students for me.  I am making it a point to have interactive activities and teaching aids during every single class period, which occupies my nights but helps to bring momentum into my classroom.  In response to poor student responses to the homework exercises I assigned last year, I introduced a carefully monitored grading scale in my classroom this year.  Immediately, students were enthusiastic about knowing that their work in the classroom everyday would play a part in their overall grade.  Even a few weeks into the school year, I notice a definite difference in the motivation and behavior of my students.  I hope that other teachers will take notice soon (Sidenote: Before the start of the school year, I gave a presentation to teachers regarding teaching strategies, creating a positive classroom environment and student rapport, as well as my views toward corporal punishment.  Together, we wrote and signed a covenant to make Uroki Secondary School a safe and enriching place for students, teachers, staff, and guests.  I have yet to see any changes in the matters that frustrate me the most, but I think I’m just feeling a taste of the frustrations of generations of change-makers around the world.)

This year, I am wearing many, many hats.  One of my favorite hats is one that I wear everyday.  During my first few months at Uroki, I saw a definite lack of creative thinking skills in my students.  In both Chemistry and Biology classes, I often assigned homework questions that would require students to apply their science knowledge to every-day situations (as well as practice writing their own ideas in English).  I would reiterate the importance of “using your own words” almost every day.  Inevitably, however, I would receive a stack of 80+ exercise books with identical answers.  I left the school year unsure if students were incapable or just unmotivated to think for themselves.

So, I decided to create a course for all students centered around problem solving, critical thinking, creative writing, study skills, and science activities.  The name is “UFANISI” – a Kiswahili word for success.  To me and my students, however, it stands for “Unlocking Future Achievement, Namely, Intrinsic Student Ingenuity.”  Since our students range from Form I students (who speak only a handful of English words) to Form V students (who are already scoping out various universities), I plan a variety of activities for each class.  I open each period with different riddles and puzzles, and continue with all sorts of activities.  Especially for the classes taking national examinations this year (Form II and Form IV), I have trouble balancing hands-on, fun activities with teaching study skills and memorization tricks.  To say the least, we have a long way to go this year.

I won’t deny that the challenges of living and being change maker in Tanzania get the best of me on some days.  However, the curious eyes and malleable minds in my classroom, garden, and football field keep me focused on larger goals.  However frustrated I can be with the education system, some cultural factors, and other teachers, my commitment to my students, and theirs to me, makes my small, enchanting part of the world keep turning.  All I really need, for my life to feel complete, are some ears to hear me dream.