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.

Market Day

Sunday is the big market day in our small town.  We went early, to see the sights and to buy some things for our house.  The weekly market is held in a large open area that looked to me to be about 4 acres in size.  Entering the area, we passed a small herd of patient tethered donkeys.  They carried the goods in, and will carry the unsold items back home when the day ends.   

At one end were the produce sellers, women dressed in colorful kangas and head wraps, who displayed their wares spread on tarps on the ground:  potatoes, onions, garlic, ginger, carrots, cabbage, tomatoes, and more.  We greeted Vicky, a vender whom we had met the day before at the regular city market.  Sellers of beans and grains are in another area.  I bought what was probably about a kilo of red beans for the equivalent of about 65 cents.  The vender didn't have a scale, but scooped my purchase from a large pile with a can the size of a coffee can.  Later today we sat on our porch and sorted them, removing the sticks, rocks, and nasty shriveled beans.  What have remaining will make several meals for the two of us.   

Other vendors sold household goods, spices, clothing, shoes, and Masai "mashuka", or blankets.  This is a Masai area, and they are a stately and colorful people, very interesting to our Western eyes.  They wrap plaid blankets of red or blue around their shoulders and let them hang to below knee level.  They generally carry long walking sticks which double as cattle prods when they are out on the range, and often have foot-long knives hanging from their belts.  I have seen some of the men with earlobes pierced with holes the size of a nickel, wearing elaborate earrings.

But we are always aware that we are the strange-looking people here.  In the three days we have been in this town, we have only seen one other white person, glimpsed briefly at the market.  We are a source of interest and amusement to the populace.  They often smile and laugh when we speak Swahili to them--I haven't decided if it is in surprise and delight, or if it is because our accents and grammar are just dreadful.

Travel

Most Tanzanians take a bus when they travel, especially between cities.  There are different kinds, and the best choice depends on distance and cost.

Dala-dalas are vans that are used primarily for short distances, often within cities.  There is a saying here, "There's always room for one more in a dala-dala."  They are usually crammed full, to the point of discomfort.  When the seats are full, people stand, cheek to cheek, so to speak.  The conductor often hangs out the sliding door of the van as it moves down the road, so that he can spot even more potential passengers waiting for a ride.  They are cheap, though.  The standard fare within Morogoro is 300 shillingi, about 20 cents.

Coasters are small buses.  They are often somewhat overcrowded, but not to the same extent as dala-dalas.  They can travel between cities, but aren't the travel mode of choice for really long trips.

Full-size express buses come in come in a number of grades of quality.  "Luxury" is far better than "semi-luxury" in terms of comfort and roominess.  They also make fewer stops to pick up passengers.  They may cost a few shillingi more, but I think they are worth it, for those who can afford the expense.

What coasters and buses have in common is that they are surrounded by venders whenever they stop, even for a few moments.  At the bus stations, people carry trays of items in strange assortment:  sunglasses, socks, nail clippers, and chewing gum may be on display from one vendor, while another may have wallets, jewelry, and lollypops. When riders are sitting on the bus, people appear at the windows, hawking their wares.  I find that it's best not to even look at them, or they will continue to insist for several minutes that I really do need something from the tray. 

When the bus is on the road, the vendors are usually of a different sort.  At any stop, road construction, or police checkpoint, young men run up to the bus holding such things as bags of oranges, loaves of bread, roasted corn on the cob, or grilled meat on a stick.  There are also people with the ubiquitous trays offering sodas, water, candy, dry and tasteless baked goods, or bags of nuts.    Sometimes, and this surprised me, the tray people are allowed on the bus, and walk up and down the aisles, offering their snacks.  If the bus starts up before they get off, they simply ride to the next stop, where they (presumably) get off and catch another bus back to where they started.  I think the bus driver must get a percentage of all of this commerce.

The most unusual offering I observed in my recent travels was when a man thrust a live chicken, held by the feet, in the door of the coaster I was on.  I guess he thought one of us might want a chicken dinner that night.  Much to my relief, he got no takers on my bus.