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.

Maisha Mazuri

I am using my laptop (for the first time in three months!) at a conference center in Morogoro (central Tanzania).  This milestone conference is my “Early Service Training” – which means that I have lived alone at site for almost three months.  I regret to say that I have not yet been able to write about the amazing, fulfilling, journey of the last three months – it’s a combination of being unable to access my laptop as well as more busy than I could have imagined.  But, I will do my best to write a few hasty  summaries on my cup full of blessings over the past three months.

Maisha Mazuri means “good life.”  Life is far too good to me – fact, not opinion.  My village is nestled in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro.  On clear days, the view of the peak, called Kibo, is breathtaking.  Most evenings, the cloud cover disappears for a while, and Africa’s tallest mountain is the backdrop for football, choir practice, food-begging, and the other evening student activities.

Our football field on a crystal clear morning 

The mountains make for a morning run with more “huffing” and “puffing” than the Big Bad Wolf himself, but I hope that my muscles will thank me later.  Our village is more accurately described as a lush banana farm, with houses and vegetable patches dotting the landscape.  The sun can get hot in the afternoons, but cool streams that run straight from the peak of Kilimanjaro are plentiful.

All smiles with some of my Advanced-level Students

My favorite place to visit in the village is called Kighunduma – a word in our tribal language, Kichagga.  It’s a hidden oasis, a virgin waterfall never marred by the feet of tourists.  The hike to the waterfall is long, and full of muddy slopes, thorny patches, and unblazed trails.  The final hurdle is a dangerously slippery, steeply graded hill that, I’m sure, most casual hikers would turn away from.  But, the persevering hiker will be soon rewarded, as this tumble-trap opens up directly into a rushing, rock-lined stream.  Carefully toeing the slippery rocks leads to the huge downward-tumbling column of water.  Days I have spent hiking to the waterfall with my students and friends are among my favorite in this country.

Visiting Kighunduma one day with my friend Seth, a nearby Volunteer.

“Buying local” is not even a choice, because I live on the most fertile ground on Earth.  I eat fresh eggs everyday from the school chickens that roam our beautiful campus and my house.  I drank fresh milk – well, until our mama cow passed away (a story for another time).  I can pick fresh papaya from a tree just outside of my house, and my students tell me that mangoes will soon be falling from the trees like rain!  My hope was to grow every variety of vegetables that I eat in my own mini-farm, but the chickens had other plans for the seeds that I planted and nurtured for weeks.  So, for now, I still spend my Saturdays conversing laughing and joking with local mamas at our weekly “sokoni,” or market.

The school, as a whole, has more resources than I could have imagined - and you will be hearing plenty more about the opportunities and challenges that accompany this soon!

I cannot believe the first house I have to myself is this beautiful!   I live on the entire top floor, and our school pastor, his wife (also a teacher, my mentor, and best friend), and their children live downstairs.

The house that my school provides for me is too good to believe.  I have three bedrooms – so plenty of space for my frequent visitors!  Clean, fresh running water is a huge blessing to all of the volunteers in my district.  In fact, I even have a Western flush toilet and a shower!  Electricity on most nights makes life incredibly easy.

My living room - I host chai guests here almost every day :)

It’s hard not to feel guilty, because many of my volunteer friends do not have running water or electricity, but I guess it’s another thing to accept the surprises of service, both good and bad.

You might call me a chronic optimist, but I truly do not think that anyone could have a complaint living in my community.  I could gush for hours about everything at my school and in my village, but I will let the pictures do some of the talking.  Enjoy a few glimpses into maisha mazuri – the good, good life.