Headmistress

So far, I like and respect our school's headmistress.  She speaks slowly and clearly (a big help to us, when she is speaking Swahili!) and with authority.  She is tactful, but she is firm about the proper way to run the school and relate to the community. She moves with dignified decision, but has a good-natured twinkle in her eyes. 

Our headmistress is in her early 50s, tall, and solidly built. She usually dresses as a conservative high school principal in the States would--suits or jacket dresses.  But at the graduation ceremony this weekend, she dressed in an African style, and she looked spectacular!  

Tanzanian dresses are usually closely-fitted to the body down to the knee, and then they flare out.  Her dress at graduation was more of a caftan or tunic worn over a full-length sheath.  It was patterned in black and gold, and had piping around a long, square yoke.  She wore a matching turban-like headscarf, wrapped elaborately.  With my limited vocabulary, all I could think to say when I saw her was "Umependeza sana!"  (You are very pretty!)

Start of school

The school term has officially been open now for 2 weeks.  Which is not to say that we have been teaching all that time.  Not many students showed up for the first day of school, and those that did were set to work cleaning the school.  There is no regular maintenance staff for cleaning (although there are a couple of repairmen), and it is the responsibility of students to clean classrooms and school grounds.  This is typical among African public schools. 

One other reason students start the school term late (besides missing out on major cleaning duties) is that they have to pay school fees, even at the public schools.  Government funding is not enough to run the schools without "contributions" from students.  Even though the word sounds like it would be a voluntary payment, the students are not allowed in the classroom until fees are paid.  The school fee amounts to about $13 USD per term.  That may sound trivial, but most families have very small incomes.  Public school teachers, for example, earn about $200 per month.  I shudder to think what farmers, cattle herders, and market venders earn.    

Anyway, by the second week things were up and running with regular classes and almost full classrooms.  I am teaching first year math at our secondary school.  This school is unusual in that the first year students are divided into classes of 40 to 45 students, so as not to "discourage" them (our headmistress' word).  It is more typical that classes have 70 or 80 students, and some of the upper level classes here do, too.

My students have varying abilities in math and in comprehension of English.  In Tanzania, primary school is taught in Swahili, but secondary school is taught in English.  They take English in primary school, but it is only one of their subjects, and hearing the entire curriculum in the language comes as something of a shock.  My students aren't totally clueless by now, though, as the school year started in January, and this is just the start of the fall term.

One thing students especially lack is school books.  Schools do not provide textbooks like they do in the States.  If students want one, their parents have to buy them in a book store.  In each of my classes, perhaps 4 or 5 students have a math book.  Most of them are not the newest text, but rather 2 or 3 editions old.  Fortunately, math doesn't change much.  However, the situation means that it is impossible to assign reading or exercises from the textbook--there isn't one to which the students have access.  So, everything--definitions, examples, problems, and so on--must be written on the chalkboard.  The students have to copy it all in their notebooks, which become their own, home-made texts.   They do the best they can.  I am giving a test next week, so then I will see how well they study from their notes.  

A couple of surprising things

Just wanted to briefly mention a couple of recent experiences that made us think, "Now, this is really odd."

·       At a recommended "authentic" Chinese restaurant in Arusha, Tanzania, we listened to country singer Don Williams over the restaurant's sound system as we ate.   

·       We went to an outdoor market in a Maasai village about 10km up a dirt road into the mountains above our small town.  The village looked very poor to us--tiny mud huts without doors, and lots of dust.  We appeared to be the only non-Maasai there, and were almost the only people in Western clothes.  The market had the usual produce and cloth, but ALSO a kiosk selling cell phones that was crowded with buyers!   

One thing we've noticed is that Tanzania seems to have skipped a layer or two of technology.  For example, I haven't seen a single land line phone in the 3 months we've lived here, but many, many people have cell phones.  Typewriters are very rare.  Most things are generally written by hand, but some are typed and printed from a computer.    

I guess my conclusions are that globalization is here, and that the rate of technology change is fast, but uneven.  Not startling revelations, but made more meaningful to us lately.

Transporting stuff

Tanzanians have all different ways of transporting cargo.  Cars, trucks, and motor cycles exist, yes, but fewer of them per capita than in the U.S.  Here are a few other modes:

Bicycles.  People use them to tote all sorts of things.  A load of sugar cane, balanced so that 3 feet or so sticks out on either side behind the rider.  A cubic yard of animal fodder.  Several jerry-cans of water or oil.

Donkeys.  Often used to carry burlap bags of produce to market.

Heads.  This is really impressive. It's almost always the women who carry things this way.  They typically have a cloth tied around their heads, twisted in such a way to provide padding and a level surface.  I have seen a woman hoist a 5 gallon bucket of water (that's 40 pounds, folks!) atop her head and walk off with it.  In the small towns and villages it is common to see women carrying large sacks of potatoes or onions this way.  Sometimes a woman will carry a small suitcase on her head on the way to the bus station. 

Backs.  It is less common to see women carrying cargo on their backs, but babies are always there, wrapped tightly in a sling.  Sometimes a woman will have a baby on her back and a sack of produce on her head. 

Finally, 2-wheeled wooden carts.  These are built of heavy wood.  They have an axle with large rubber tires, and a front extension with a bar running the width of the cart.  When I first saw them, I thought they were donkey- or ox-carts, but these are always pulled by a man.  They are loaded with all kinds of heavy cargo:  loads of lumber, several large sacks of who-knows-what, and sometimes another man to steady the load.  The muscle-power it takes to pull one of these, especially uphill, must be huge.  We see the carts moving along the streets all over the country, in big cities as well as in rural areas.  Drivers seem to respect them and steer around them as they would another vehicle.  (Actually, they are great for running interference with traffic when we are crossing the streets in Arusha, which doesn't have any stoplights, as far as I've seen, and certainly no pedestrian "Walk" signals).       

All of this makes me feel puny, but grateful that my life has not been that hard.

 

Mostly about food...

 When we first saw our house here, two
weeks before we moved in, the kitchen was absolutely bare---no
furniture or appliances, only a concrete floor and a few shelves
attached to the wall. Our school then had a sink installed and gave
us a two-burner gas cooker, a table to set it on, and a tank of
propane. They also gave us a starter kitchen set: two plastic
plates, two spoons, two aluminum pots, a wooden spoon, two mugs, and
several buckets filled with water. Such riches! (And, I am not being
sarcastic).

Yesterday, we decided to splurge and buy half a kilo of ground beef,
which we ate with spaghetti sauce for lunch and dinner. It's a
splurge because it is hard to have perishables on hand without
refrigeration.  Our small town's general store offers frozen ground beef,
stew meat, and whole chickens. There are one or two butchers in town,
but I haven't been brave enough to shop in them. They have slabs of
meat hung in the open from hooks in the ceiling, exposed to flies and
everything else.

The cookbook the Peace Corps gave us gives detailed instructions on
how to kill, pluck, and butcher a chicken. I haven't been brave
enough to do that, either, and I think I would rather live on peanut
butter than do so.

Actually, we do eat a lot of peanut butter. Peanuts are grown in
abundance here. We also eat rice, beans, eggs, fruit, and vegetables.
We shop at the produce market almost every day, and so most of what
we eat is absolutely fresh. It is also cheap. Processed and imported
foods are of course expensive. We bought a small can of tuna in
Arusha last week that cost 3300 shillingi--a little over $2. That's
about third of the daily living allowance the Peace Corps provides
each volunteer. We're saving the tuna for a special occasion.