The Songea Boys’ Escapades, Part 2: First Term Follies

A while ago, I wrote up a blog post detailing some of the more unique aspects of teaching a secondary school in Tanzania.  These stories spanned roughly from the beginning of my service in November to the first month of this year’s first term (i.e. May).  Well, now that it’s November again and we’ve made some headway into the second term, I figure it’s about time for a little recap session regarding some of the more entertaining (or, at least, interesting) incidents that have gone on over the past few months here at Boys’.  So, without further ado, I bring you The Songea Boys’ Escapades, Part 2:

Home Improvement 101

By this point, I trust you know that Tanzanian plumbing isn’t stellar.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it sucks.  I know I should be thankful that I have plumbing at all, but I’ve had THREE separate incidents in which I’ve had water spewing all over my house, one I described in detail in an earlier post, one I may have mentioned briefly in passing (it wasn’t too bad: while I was away for a weekend, the main storage tank in my ceiling burst and created a miniature rainstorm throughout my house… for two days), and one that happened about two weeks ago.  Regardless, while I like to consider myself at least mildly handy, all three of these incidents were pro jobs---i.e., they both required the expertise of the school plumber to fix.  And, well, so far, he seems to have done a good job, although I feel strangely compelled to put up one of those “_ days without an accident” signs in front of my house, just to keep tally.

Back in early August, however, I finally had an opportunity to flex my handyman muscles and fix up my house a bit.  Now, I had already made some minor household modifications in the previous months… I think my crappy cassava fences and elaborate cockroach torture mazes are testament to this fact.  But this was a slightly bigger fix: namely, I had to rewire the ceiling screens that encircled the roof cavity above my ceiling board, but below my corrugated tin roof.  Not easy, exactly, but definitely doable with enough determination, elbow grease, and can-do American spirit.

What necessitated the replacement of the old screens is that most of them were made with cheap iron wire fencing, which, after however many years of use, had completely rusted through due to the rains.  Thus, with no barrier to protect my warm, dark roof cavity from the outside world, the space above my house had become the prime meeting spot of the local screech owl population, who were not only as loud as **** during night hours but who also enjoyed bringing their prey back so that they could lull me to sleep with the pitiful shrieks of eviscerated rodents.  Given that I already have enough things waking me up in the middle of the night (chickens, dogs, pigs, neighbors’ stereos, neighbors’ babies, etc.) and that I don’t particularly enjoy the sounds of rat murder above my head, I figured that it was time to put a stop to these unwanted visitors and patch up the old barrier.  I was also pretty sure that they were crapping in my water tank, and that definitely needed to stop.

Given these incentives, I went to town and got some wire, nails, string, and glue, whereupon I returned to school to ask the school’s fundi umeme (electrician) if I could borrow his ladder.  Looking back on it, the whole operation was pretty hilariously bootleg: the wire was crappy, the nails were already partially rusted, and the ladder was literally two wooden ladders nailed to each other.  Of these three issues, the ladder was the primary cause of consternation on my part, given that it was ridiculously unsafe---old, very skinny, with no “A”-ladder-style support beam to keep it balanced… oh, and did I mention that it was two ladders nailed together?  As in, the only thing keeping it from snapping in two was two nails on either side, and both constituent ladders were straight-up bush wood: as in, some guy ten years ago or so wanted to make some money so he let some loggers cut down a tree in his backyard and some other guy made two ladders out of it… and then nailed them together.  With only two nails on each side.  Yeah, I know, the end result of this little venture should have been clear from the get-go, but what can I say?  I needed my beauty sleep, and those owls needed to **** off.

The first attempt to fix the screens was from the outside of my house, which proved abortive, to say the least.  Dusty, uneven ground with a wobbly 10-foot-tall ladder---plus no spotter---is just a bad idea.  I think this fact finally hit home when I overextended my reach, causing the ladder to lose balance and send me careening off to the right, forcing a quick bail-out before landing in my neighbor’s thorn bush.  Lesson learned.

The alternative method---inside the house---was much easier, if again hilariously bootleg.  While most of the ceiling board in my house is nailed down, there’s a small movable board that grants roof access in the small hallway outside my bathroom.  Unfortunately, the ladder was too big to fit in this hallway, and I was thus forced to create a makeshift bridge up to the board, propping the ladder up against my main sofa to keep the bottom half from slipping (it was a pretty low angle, like 30°).  Also, because the joint between the two nailed-together ladders was particularly weak, I placed an old chair in the middle to reinforce the hinge and prevent untimely death-by-concussion.  As a result of this setup, I was able to gain access to the roof by walking along the ladder like a tightrope, hoisting myself above the ceiling board when I was close enough to the access board.  Gotta love low-tech ingenuity.

In any case, I spent the next five hours crawling arm-over-arm through piles of owl pellets, spider webs, and desiccated rodent carcasses, squirming my way towards each broken screen and affixing a new one in its place.  I gotta say, the work was pretty shitty: not only was it dirty and cramped up there, but each time the wind blew, it would knock dust into my eyes, or, if I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, an owl pellet into my face.  My workmanship was pretty shoddy, too, since the glue and duct tape didn’t hold at all; I had to make do with nails and string.  Moreover, I didn’t want to put any weight on the actual ceiling boards since I’d probably put my leg through my roof, so I elected to spend most of my time getting splinters on the main support beams, which looked like they were going to snap due to extensive termite damage.  Not really a fun time, although I guess I did get the work done in the end.

So after a fair bit of labor, I finally wrapped up and began crawling back towards the ladder.  It was getting pretty dark by this point, and I didn’t have the foresight to turn on any lights in my house, so I could only roughly make out the outline of the exit, and not much else.

Unfortunately, this restriction of vision would prove problematic when, in the course of my groping around for a handhold, I accidentally put my hand into a nest of angry ants on one of the main support beams.  This naturally caused me to be bitten all over, and, panicking, I desperately clambered my way over to the access board to lower myself down to ground level and pick the little bastards off me.  As a result, I pretty much vaulted myself through the hole in my ceiling and down on the ladder, causing the joint between the two nailed-together ladders to finally snap and send me tumbling down onto the concrete floor of my house, while I proceeded to land directly on my coccyx while smacking the back of my head against the concrete wall.  It was like something out of a Warner Bros. cartoon… and boy, did it HURT.  It actually took me a good 5-10 seconds to process what was happening, given that the head trauma had knocked me silly and my tailbone had been pulverized… it was only when a few of the ants found their way into my crotch that I was jarred out of my stupor and began frantically cursing and picking them off.

One of the many ant colonies living in my ceiling, this one over my bed.  There's nothing like waking up to ants falling on your face, especially if they bite.

So yeah, no hubris goes unrewarded, and I definitely learned a lesson here---namely, that some things are best left to the professionals… then THEY can get hurt, and not me.  In all, though, I’d say that the head welt, the ass bruise, and the ladder repair compensation may have actually been worth it: the new screens are working like a charm, and, although it may sound a tad sadistic, I kind of enjoy listening to the owls smack into them every evening.  Makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something with my time here.

Slash and Burn

Tanzanians live and die by the seasonal rains, and with Songea’s rainy season only one month away, everyone has been feverishly preparing their fields for planting over the past couple of weeks.  Again, this being Songea, the primary crop is maize: the Ngoni people (i.e. the tribe living in Songea) are obsessed with corn, and literally every person---from the highest-ranking district official to lowest daladala konda (conductor)---has some sort of shamba (field) on which to plant it, usually for the purposes of ugali.  My teachers are no exception to this rule, and they’ve been spending the past month or so clearing the area around my house of all dead organic matter so that they can re-till the land in the coming weeks.

I’m no agricultural specialist (nor am I an environmental volunteer), but the typical Tanzanian M.O. when it comes to farming is pretty basic: plant maize ridge-and-furrow style, plant supplementary plants (pumpkins or beans work well), let it rain for five months straight, harvest maize, let the field run fallow during the dry season, burn everything to the ground, and start again.  From what I understand, this methodology hasn’t really changed much over the past century, and I can easily see why: it produces results (maize grows like crazy in Songea… see below), it’s cheap (the only real tool you need is a jembe, or hoe), and it’s not too labor-intensive.  Thus, since we’re at the “clearing” portion of the cycle at this point, everyone is setting fire to their fields, meaning that the whole of Songea Boys’ has been enshrouded in a giant smoke cloud for the past week.

And you wonder why ugali is the national dish.

The problem with slash-and-burn farming, aside from the long-term environmental ramifications, is that it’s somewhat hard to control.  When it hasn’t rained for months and you have entire fields full of dry corn stalks, fire spreads quickly, consuming pretty much everything in its path.  This isn’t helped by my neighbors’ general attitude towards slash-and-burn, which doesn’t extend much beyond putting everything in a giant pile, setting it on fire, and ignoring it.  Thus, there have been a few select instances where the fire has been a bit out of control, resulting in a neighborhood-wide firefighting scenario, in which a bunch of us have to grab big buckets of dirt and put out the blaze before it reaches someone’s house.

It wouldn’t be a story unless one of these instances affected me, and, true to form, such an incident happened a few weeks back.  It was a weekday evening, and, after an action-packed night of eating ugali and beans while writing lesson notes by lantern light, I did what I usually do when my house doesn’t have power---say “to hell with this” and go to bed at 8pm (it doesn’t help that it’s gotten hot and the mosquitoes are back, either… I kill roughly 15-20 a night). Being persistently sleep-deprived and suffering from mild hayfever at the time, I no sooner laid my head on my pillow than slipped into a mild coma, dreaming of physics lectures to come.

I awoke around 10:30pm, drenched in sweat and hacking profusely.  My room felt like an oven, and I was having difficulty breathing.  As I slowly regained consciousness and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, I found that my eyes stung and I couldn’t really see anything, although my room was a lot brighter than normal.  It was only until I heard the distinct pop and crackle of burning biomass that I finally put two-and-two together; namely, my neighbors had set fire to the shamba behind my house and had left it going through the night, which, given the direction of the wind and the shape of my roof, had essentially funneled the smoke directly into my room, creating a hotbox effect that was threatening to suffocate me.

Initially, I freaked out.  Still groggy and disoriented, I could only come to one possible conclusion: my house was totally on fire right now.  Remembering all those fire safety videos from my elementary school years, I instantly dropped to the floor, frantically commando-crawling around my room in search of something to cover my face, eventually settling on an old t-shirt from my laundry pile.  With this hurdle out of the way, the next logical thought was water.  I needed water.  Water would put out the fire and fix everything.  Going with this line of thought, I opened the door, commando-crawled into the bathroom, and hurriedly filled one of my 20-liter buckets to the brim in the bathtub.  Then, still in my underwear and with a dirty t-shirt clenched over my face, I bolted out the front door, sloshing water everywhere in the process, to put out the blaze.

Sure enough, rounding the corner to the back side of my house, I saw the fire, the smoke, and---to my immediate surprise and chagrin---my neighbor’s teenage housegirl tending the flames.  She literally jumped when she saw me, and I don’t blame her: imagine a wet, panicked-looking white guy in his skivvies leaping out of the bushes with a giant bucket… that’s not really something that happens every day in Tanzania.  For a moment, I thought she was going to scream, but, thankfully, she quickly understood the situation, muttering a quick “pole” and dumping dirt on the part of the flame that was near my house (but not before saying the requisite shikamoo “I respect you” first, which I find pretty amusing since I looked like a half-naked crazy man… of course, I responded with the obligatory “marahaba”, “I accept your respect”.  Just because I’m half-naked and covered with twigs and leaves doesn’t mean I can’t be polite.)

So yeah, that was the story of when I got smoked out of my own house and scandalized a Tanzanian teenager.  The rains are coming more frequently now, and although they won’t truly begin in earnest until December, I doubt I’ll have any more incidents like this one.  I just hope I didn’t scar that poor girl for life.

The Dangers of Do-It-Yourself Combustion

On a Sunday in late August, I was sitting in my house grading papers when I was approached by one of my fellow teachers and the Form VI class president.  After exchanging initial pleasantries, they informed me that Songea Boys’ had been invited to attend the Ruvuma Regional Science Fair in Mbinga, an event sponsored by the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (i.e. the powers-that-be in the Tanzanian public school system).  Songea Boys’ had accepted the invitation but was currently lacking an appropriate demo to exhibit; I was needed to provide ideas and guidance.

After flirting with electric motors, magnetic bells, and homemade galvanometers, we decided to ditch the E&M theme (primarily because neither my Form V nor Form VI students have learned electricity or magnetism yet) in favor of the more tried-and-true explosion-themed demo---The Creation and Combustion of Hydrogen Gas---this one straight out of the excellent Peace Corps improvised lab manual, Shika na Mikono (“Hold with the Hands”).  We settled on this demo because it was not only simple but also could be easily assembled with improvised parts (those who have read the last post know that proper flasks and safety equipment are generally not available on the Songea Boys’ campus… ahem).

The basic principle of this demo was simple---create hydrogen gas via the following reaction, then explode it with matches:

Fe (s) + H₂SO₄ (aq) → H₂ (g) + FeSO₄ (aq)

Iron would be provided by steel wool (to maximize surface area), sulfuric acid would take the form of battery acid, a water bottle would double as an oversized test-tube, and a balloon would capture hydrogen gas for later combustion.  Thus, hydrogen gas could easily be captured and exploded by placing the steel wool inside the water bottle, pouring the sulfuric acid on top, quickly placing the balloon over the nozzle of the bottle, and lighting the balloon with a match when it became full.  Moreover, aside from the battery acid and the combustion parts of the experiment, the demo was reasonably safe, and it was definitely a crowd-pleaser; hydrogen makes a pretty big bang when you light it on fire.  Having decided that this was the demo for us, we adjourned for the day, and I told the teacher and the class president that, if they got the materials, I’d show up early the next day to show them how to do it.

Monday morning rolled around, and I didn’t see either the teacher or the class president at the main office, so I figured they were just running late and plopped down to work on some more lecture notes.  About an hour into my work, one of my Form V students came running in with a particularly anxious look on his face:

Student: “Excuse me, sir, there is a problem.”

Me: “What problem?”

Student: “The experiment, with the hydrogen.  It is not working.”

Me: “What, you mean you aren’t getting a reaction?”

Student: “No, there is… a problem with the bottle.”

Me: “A problem with the bottle?  How could there be a problem with the bottle?”

Student: “Maybe it is better if you come and see.”

Still somewhat perplexed at what possible problem there could be with the bottle---I mean, it’s a bottle for chrissake---I followed my student to one of the empty classrooms, where, apparently, my teacher had opted to try the experiment without me.

Me: “OH. MY. GOD.”

Sure enough, sitting on the main table in the room was the steel wool, the bottle, and the balloon… only all of them were submerged (and slowly melting) in the BIGGEST pool of sulfuric acid I’d ever seen.  I seriously couldn’t believe it… it was a veritable lake of corroding materials and toxic sludge, slowly eating its way through the table and dripping onto the floor.  Standing around this catastrophe were the teacher, the class president, and five of my Form V students, all of whom were aimlessly milling around the scene, treating the incident with the same nonchalant, one-eyebrow-raised quasi-agitation given to a spilled beer at a frat semi-formal.

Me: “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!”

Teacher: “We are following your instructions.  We put the steel wool into the bottle, and then we poured the sulfuric acid on top.  But I do not think we are going to get hydrogen gas now because the acid has melted the bottle.”

Me: “HOW MUCH SULFURIC ACID DID YOU USE?”

Teacher: “About half a liter…”

Me: “HALF A LITER?!  ARE YOU CRAZY?!?!?!”

Teacher: “That’s what [the Chem Lab Master] gave us.”

Oh no.  This was not good.  They didn’t go out and buy battery acid like I told them to; rather, they used the lab stock.  My eyes quickly darted to the now-empty glass bottle sitting on a nearby chair: H₂SO₄, 18 M.  Ho-lee crap.

For the non-science people, 18-molar sulfuric acid (a.k.a. “murderously concentrated sulfuric acid”) is EXTREMELY corrosive and INCREDIBLY dangerous, and it is responsible for pretty much everything you remember about acid in Saturday morning cartoons---melting through walls, eating through tables, etc.  The Tanzanian Ministry of Education and Vocational Training has mandated that all A-level laboratories stock this chemical, which I can only assume is for cost-saving purposes (i.e. you can buy the concentrated solution and make dilutions as you see fit).  Never mind that no one in this country has gloves, goggles, or lab coats, or that the stuff will burn through your skin in a matter of seconds; it’s slightly more economical, so it’s set as the standard.  To give you some perspective, battery acid (which, again, is also highly corrosive and quite toxic) is usually about 5 M, and most lab-grade sulfuric acid ranges around the 1 M range.  This stuff was EIGHTEEN TIMES that, 98% pure H₂SO₄ by mass.  In other words, it was definitely not for greenhorns, much less a group of bewildered Form V students.

Compounding this most grievous of errors was the fact that the teacher had dumped the whole freaking 0.5 L container into the plastic water bottle, which, predictably, had melted instantly, spilling concentrated sulfuric acid everywhere and taking the steel wool and the balloon with it.  The resulting watery sludge had now thoroughly metastasized over the surface of the table and was spreading to the various desks and chairs in the classroom, eating through everything in its path.

At this point, I figured I could kill my coworker later and should instead focus on damage control:

Me: “I need some sodium bicarbonate or sodium hydroxide solution RIGHT NOW!”

Teacher: “Naam?” [“Come again?”]

Me: “SODIUM BICARBONATE OR SODIUM HYDROXIDE.  NOW NOW NOW!”

Teacher: “What are you saying?”

Me: “BASES!  I need BASES to neutralize the acid!  BASES UNAZO?!”

Teacher: “I don’t know!  [The Chem Lab Master] just gave me the acid and we did the experiment.  He did not tell me about any bases!”

Me: “Is he still in the lab?!”

Teacher: “Yes.  No.  I don’t know!  Maybe.”

Me: “You and the students go to the bomba [water pump] and get as many buckets of water as you can.  Have them ready for when I get back.  Whatever you do, DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING.”

Teacher: “I understand.”

Goaded by the prospect of an incipient hazardous condition, I sprinted as fast as I could to the chemistry laboratory, where---surprise of surprises---it was locked, with the chem lab master AWOL.  Because this is Songea Boys’ and there’s only one key to each lab (I’ve made little headway in the battle to get duplicate lab keys), this meant that I simply had to hope that the lab master was still somewhere around campus or the surrounding village and could be reached by cellphone---never a sure thing in Tanzania.

So, after checking each of the three lab buildings and running back to the main office, I was able to get the lab master’s number from one of the teachers.  Luckily, he picked up when I called, and, after laughing at my panicked state, he informed me that he was simply in the village and would be back presently.

Again, luckily, the chem lab master was fairly good to his word, and, after ten excruciating minutes, he showed up at the lab with the key.  Once the door was open, I sprinted to the back room, grabbing a medium-sized vial of NaOH solution and the biggest tub of NaHCO₃ I could find.  After stuffing both into my bag, I muttered a quick “asante” to the lab master and sprinted out of the lab to clean up the mess.

After speeding back to the classroom and nearly breaking the door in the process, I entered the room to find that not only did my students not bring buckets of water, but they also were actively cleaning the spill with brooms, sweeping the spilled acid out the door (with the teacher supervising, of course).  This pissed me off a bit since I explicitly told them not to touch anything, and I had asked them to bring water to help dilute/wash the affected area, and why are they using an old pair of dress pants as a sponge, and where did they even get an old pair of dress pants… and OH MY GOD THEY’RE CLEANING IT WITH THEIR HANDS.

Let me repeat: they were cleaning an 18-molar sulfuric acid spill with brooms, a pair of slacks, and, as was the case with two of my students, THEIR BARE HANDS.

Now, I’ll be honest.  I understand that there’s a general lack of expertise with regard to the sciences in this country.  I understand that many Tanzanian schools are poor and lack the funds to purchase proper safety equipment for a laboratory. I understand that purchasing a small quantity of ultra-concentrated sulfuric acid is more economical than buying large quantities of more dilute acid.  I even understand that this particular teacher wasn’t really trained for this type of situation (he teaches O-level Kiswahili… why he was put in charge of an A-level science expo is beyond me).  But at this point---flustered and exasperated---I could only muster one response:

Me: “YOU IDIOTS!”

I shoved the NaOH vial into one of my students’ hands, threw the NaHCO₃ tub at the teacher, and practically tackled the two students wiping the spill off the table with their hands.  After a quick “Bomba.  NOW.”, I hustled them out of the room as fast as I could, raced them over to the nearest spigot, and turned it on full blast, dousing their hands in as much water as possible.

Student 1: “Teacher, it hurts.”

Me: “No kidding it hurts.  Scrub it all off well.  The acid didn’t touch anywhere else, right?”

Both: “No.”

Student 2: “Sir, do you think my pants will be fine?”

Me: “What?”

Student 2: “My pants.  We could not find any cloths so we had to use my other pants to clean the acid.”

Me: “Um, pole, I don’t think your pants are gonna make it.”

Student 2: “What?”

Me: “Your pants are destroyed.  Finished.  I’ll make [the teacher] buy you some new ones.”

So, after sending those two students to the nurse (who took another hour to find) and supervising an intensive cleanup involving lots of baking soda and water, we finally managed to get the classroom back to a reasonable state of repair.  The table got the worst of it by far, sporting a huge black burn mark, not to mention a decent-sized depression in the middle.  I have no doubt that, if we had waited longer, the acid would have burned clear through.

Also, not to be deterred, we performed the experiment again that day, this time with my supervision.  Luckily for us, it went without a hitch, although making the appropriate sulfuric acid dilutions from the stock 18 M solution without latex gloves was a bit nerve-wracking, to say the least.  In truth, I actually didn’t do the dilutions myself; I was too chicken, so I made the lab master do it.  He’s an old hand at this, and he knew about stuff like preparing the water first and THEN adding the concentrated sulfuric acid (doing it the other way around can apparently cause an explosion).  Moreover, due to the breakdown of the ionic bonds in the H₂SO₄ solution (I think), the dilutions got incredibly hot---so hot you couldn’t even touch it without gloves (we used my oven mitts)… so it was good to have the lab master around for reassurance.

And, just for the sake of closure, my kids did a great job with the demo at the Mbinga Science Fair.  I think that the combination of melted furniture, painful acid burns, and my screaming at them for an hour was enough to permanently ingrain proper lab safety procedures into their skulls, at least for this particular demo.  That being said, before going to Mbinga, I still made them bring an additional tub of sodium bicarbonate… you know, just in case.

So that’s that.  Again, these stories, while entertaining, aren’t completely indicative of my day-to-day life here… but, then again, I wouldn’t really consider my average day in Tanzania to be blog-worthy (I can only kvetch about ugali and beans so many times in this thing).  In the end, school is school and teaching is teaching, and, while I’ll admit that I still can’t hold a candle to my old high school teachers and college professors back in America, I do feel like I’m doing some good here.  I mean, something is better than nothing, right?

Office Politics and Teaching Tribulations

With eight months in Songea and a term-and-a-half of teaching under my belt, I’d say I have a pretty decent grasp of the “Songea Boys’ Experience”: what gets taught and by whom, the typical schedule of the average student, and special events that may or may not disrupt the flow of the average school day.  Although there’s a fair bit of turnover, I’ve learned most of my fellow teachers’ names, and I’ve even bonded somewhat with some of the smarter kids in my classes, enough so that they aren’t afraid to come up and ask questions after class or ask for homework help during office hours (I hate when they knock on my door at 6am though).  Indeed, for the most part, things go fairly smoothly here: I get my hours in, and all of my classes are, in fact, progressing through the syllabus.

That being said, no job comes without difficulties, and no Peace Corps experience is complete without moments of excruciating, aneurysm-inducing frustration.  While I do, in fact, enjoy teaching at Songea Boys’ overall, I also get frustrated a lot here---not so much with the students (which I think is more of an O-level problem) as with the teachers, the school, and the system as a whole… all of it exacerbated by the sleep deprivation and general fatigue that comes with teaching a full schedule.

And yes, my schedule is indeed full.  I don’t think I’ve quite made this clear in earlier posts, but I actually work pretty hard here: I teach three classes, ~180 students each, over two different A-level subjects, each period lasting 1 hour and 20 minutes, three periods a day, five days a week.  This means that, every week, I spend a good 20 hours simply talking… it’s straight-up impossible to have group work in a giant lecture hall, just as it’s impossible to encourage class discussion amongst a group of students with limited English.  Add in additional time giving homework help, holding lab practical sessions afterhours, writing lecture notes, typing tests/problem sets, solving tests/problem sets, grading tests/problem sets, assisting in various Peace Corps activities (the income generation empowerment training grant proposal I’m writing up, the monthly PSDN newsletter I’m trying to cobble together, etc.), a mildly strenuous workout routine (I’m going to try to at least run the Kilimanjaro half-marathon next year), and daily household chores (cooking, cleaning, laundry etc.), and I simply have NO time to spare.  Heck, the only reason I’m describing my work situation so thoroughly and eloquently in this blog post right now is because I’m procrastinating grading the ridiculous pile of midterm tests that’s currently burning a hole in my desk back home.

My "to-do" pile.  Look upon it and know fear.

As a result, if I may take this moment to kvetch a bit, I find the overall lack of organization at Songea Boys’ to be incredibly frustrating.  I mean, here I am, working my butt off, and everything around me is just a giant, disorganized mess.  For example, in theory, all the teachers are supposed to adhere to a set timetable to teach classes, which is drafted by the administrative office for each term.  In practice, however, getting your students to assemble for a particular lecture is always a giant sh*tstorm of conflicting schedules: there are only two rooms on campus that are big enough to hold more than 150 students at a time, and teachers are always showing up late for their classes, spontaneously changing when the class is held to suit their personal needs, or simply blowing off their class, leaving a large number of confused students milling around outside the classroom.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run around campus gathering my students for my pre-scheduled lecture, only to find that both lecture rooms are already occupied by teachers who showed up an hour late and are now trying to make up for lost time during my period.  I mean, I know the culture is different here, but that’s just straight-up unprofessional, and I hate teaching my classes in the tiny classrooms, where my students literally have to sit on each other’s laps or climb up on the windows to get a good look at the blackboard.  Moreover, if they’re teaching my students, I have to take time out of my schedule to teach overtime in the afternoon or evening, which has led to many a missed lunch or late night.  And yes, I’ve sometimes just gotten fed-up and gatecrashed a teacher’s session, but I try not to do that often because that’s a surefire way to make enemies among the staff here.

Of course, this problem somewhat solved itself in June, during which time I was literally only one of three teachers who was actually teaching.  This was then followed by the first two weeks of July, when I was literally the only teacher teaching on campus.  This doesn’t mean that there weren’t any other teachers present at school during this time---far from it---but for whatever inexplicable reason, literally every other A-level teacher at Songea Boys simply stopped teaching students around the first week of June.  It’s incredible: they simply stopped doing what they were paid to do.  I mean, that’s just lazy, and it’s pretty irresponsible, given how profoundly screwed these kids are for the NECTAs (again, it’s not the intelligence of the students that’s in question, it’s that the NECTAs are incredibly unfair).  Regardless, many of the teachers here routinely see me sprint by them with my books when I’m late to class and come back from the classroom exhausted and covered in chalk when I’m done; they hear me whine about how much work I have to do on a daily basis; they see me miss lunch regularly because I’m too busy helping students with their schoolwork… and no matter how much I (admittedly) try to guilt them into going to class, there’s simply no reaction and no shame.  (Incidentally, sticking around and helping students with homework or simply having an afternoon class will pretty much guarantee that you’ll miss chai break or lunch, and that is very frustrating.  It’s like getting punished for working harder.)

Now, to be totally fair, there are teachers on both sides of the spectrum here.  The secondmaster is a hard worker, and he’s helped me out a lot with regard to my living situation as well as my various teaching problems.  There’s another teacher who teaches at three different schools, six periods a day, five days a week, and, naturally, he makes me look like a lazy piece of crap by comparison.  Even the plumber has been awesome, helping me fix both of my flooding incidents (yeah, there was a second one) with relative speed.  Still, though, on the other end of the spectrum, you have the less effectual employees---like the guy who took the one class he teaches, scheduled all his periods on a Monday, and then doesn’t teach them---who simply go through the motions of showing up and signing the clock-in book, but don’t actually do any work.  And, as much as I hate to admit it, it seems to me that these individuals are a bit more numerous than the hard workers, which leads to a general aura of lethargy and ambivalence at Songea Boys’.  (Personally, I refuse to sign the clock-in book on principle, because everyone just lies about when they show up anyways).

This lack of enthusiasm and general disorganization can have a serious effect on a number of important school functions, such as the midterm examinations, which were supposed to occur the week before I left for Dar the second time (i.e. before the one-week school break in June when I was gone for the 50^th).  The administration set deadlines for A-level teachers to turn in their exams to the academic office, and, accordingly, I hauled ass to get my papers in on time before I left for PSDN training in Dar.  When I got back, it turned out that I was the only teacher to turn in his exams at all, and that midterms would have to be postponed until after the break.  After returning from the 50^th celebration in Dar, I found out that still no one had turned in their midterms, and, in fact, most A-level teachers were still out of town and thus could not turn in their midterms until the following week.  As a result, we finally ended up doing midterms the week of the 11^th---four weeks after the originally-intended period.  I mean, if we’re caning students for being five minutes late for morning parade, what kind of example are we setting if we can’t even turn in a midterm examination until four weeks after we’re supposed to?

By the way, if I may complain about one last thing, I hate, hate, HATE it whenever the other teachers elect to skip class and watch the Tanzanian parliamentary sessions on TV.  It’s not just that the Tanzanian parliamentary sessions are incredibly long-winded and boring (they really are); it’s that the teachers laugh and poke fun at the politicians and have a grand old time, saying that these fat cats are lazy, ineffectual, and don’t know what’s best for the country… meanwhile, their students sit outside the classroom, waiting to be taught.  Again, I’m not saying that all the teachers at my school do this, or that my fellow teachers are bad people---a lot of them are actually really cool and have been nothing but nice to me---but the irony of this situation is never lost on me.

So yeah, I’ll admit that most of this blog post has just been me being whiny and nit-picky, but none of these incidents has anything on the Lab Nazi, who is quickly becoming my arch nemesis on campus.  In fact, he’s the only teacher whom I actively dislike, aside from the moron who keeps calling me nguruwe ("pig") because my skin is pink and I’m supposedly immune to the cold (I usually retort by calling him a monkey… hooray racism!).

But yeah, as far as the Lab Nazi is concerned, well... he's just not a nice guy.  For one, he calls me mzungu a lot, which is a surefire way to piss me off in any situation.  I mean, imagine you’d been working your butt off for free in a Latin American school for eight months and a fellow teacher was still calling you gringo and laughing at you when you eat rice… as if no one else eats rice, dumbass… wouldn’t it get irksome after a bit?  Maybe I’m a bit oversensitive, but, in my opinion, that’s just kind of an a-hole thing to do (incidentally, if you think it’s weird that people make fun of me for eating rice here, you should see the reaction I get from the local villagers when I ride a bike or try telling them that corn, potatoes, and tomatoes came from South America… or that there's such a thing as South America, for that matter).  In any case, though, the Lab Nazi also has a frequent habit of talking as if I weren’t there, and he’s made a number of catty comments about me in Kiswahili while I was literally sitting next to him.  Whether he does this out of ignorance or malice, I don’t know, but it’s still pretty annoying.

But I’m getting ahead of myself: the Lab Nazi is head of the physics laboratory at Songea Boys’, and, as such, he’s charged with teaching all the physics practical sessions for Forms I-VI at the school, as well as holding a few theory-oriented sessions for the O-level kids (Forms I-IV).  This task is not nearly as daunting as it seems, as most O-level practicals are simple and can be done as demonstrations, most O-level students don’t really need practicals to pass the NECTAs, and the O-level classes are much smaller (~40 kids) and only take up roughly nine 40-minute periods a week (Forms I, II, and IV, three periods a week).  As a result, all the Lab Nazi really needs to work hard on is physics practicals for the A-level students, particularly the Form VI kids since they have the end-all-be-all NECTAs at the end of their 2^nd term (i.e. next January).

So, the real core of this guy’s d-baggery is his pronounced, adamant---and, in some ways, almost defiant---laziness.  The simple fact of the matter is that he doesn’t do any of the above, but, at the same time, he won’t let me take over any of his responsibilities.  I’ve repeatedly asked to take over teaching his lab classes for him since the A-level students (especially the Form VI kids) need to be taught practicals, but he interprets that as an insult to his intelligence and work ethic, and he promptly rebukes me.  When I tell him, fine, then how about you go teach your damn classes, he begins whining and complaining that he has so much work and simply no time to teach everything so he can’t do it.  I simply can’t win with this guy, and, while I would be totally cool with ignoring his bitching and teaching the necessary labs anyway, he has the key to the laboratory, so I can’t get in or use any of the lab’s resources without asking him.  As a result, I must resort to diplomacy, like the meeting I had with him and my academic master last week:

Lab Nazi: [to the academic master, in Kiswahili] “So, what does the mzungu want this time?”

Me: “Hey, mwafrika [‘African’], I’m sitting right here.”

Academic Master: “So, according to what Paul has told me, you haven’t been teaching the lab practicals to the A-level students.  Is this correct, Paul?”

Me: “Yes.  My Form VI students have unanimously told me that they have been taught only three practicals over the past year-and-a-half, and they are growing increasingly worried about the mock NECTA examinations, which are coming up at the end of August.  I’d like to see if [Lab Nazi] would allow me to use the school’s lab to teach the Form VI classes for him, to ensure that the necessary material is covered before the deadline.”

LN: “No!  That is not acceptable.  I only have one key to the laboratory, and I need it to get into my office.”

Me: “Well, maybe you could leave the key in the administration building when you’re not at school, so that I can still access the lab while you’re away.  Or, better yet, we could make a second key that lets me into your lab, and you can lock your office, which I know is in a different room inside the building with its own lock.”

LN: “I still cannot do that.  The laboratory is my space; I am responsible for its maintenance and cleanliness.” [in Kiswahili, to the academic master] “Do you really want him to teach practicals?  He’s just some dumb mzungu kid!”

Me: “Again, I can understand you.”

AM: “Mzungu or not, these classes need to be taught.  One of you has to do this.  Normally, [Lab Nazi], I would want you to do this because you have more than ten years of experience.  But, if you have no time…”

LN: “I don’t have any time!  I work so hard… there’s simply no time to teach all of my periods.”

Me: “Then let me teach the practicals.  I WANT TO TEACH THE PRACTICALS.  I AM GIVING YOU FREE LABOR.  I JUST NEED THE FREAKING KEY TO THE LAB.”

LN: “No!  I can’t allow that.  I have much more experience and I know what I’m doing much more than this mzungu.”

Me: “Yes, but if you don’t teach your classes at all, then your ten years of experience isn’t worth much, is it?”

LN: [in Kiswahili, to the academic master] “Doesn’t Paul already teach 30 periods a week?  Isn’t that the school limit?” [Note: Technically, each period is 40 minutes, so I teach double periods]

AM: “Hm… you’re right.  We can’t have Paul teaching more than the maximum; it would be too hard, and the quality of his teaching would decrease.” [to me] “So how about this: Mr. [Lab Nazi] will continue teaching the Form VI lab practicals, and if you want to do extra sessions, you can just ask Mr. [Lab Nazi] for the key.  Does this sound fair?”

Me: “You realize that this doesn’t help me at all.  He’s only here two days a week, tops.  And what if he goes on break?  Then how will I get the key?”

LN: “Um, excuse me, I am always here at the school.”

Me: “You were just on break.  For two months!  You missed seven weeks of classes!”

AM: “Paul, I really don’t see any other option here.  We can’t have you teaching more than 30 periods a week, and Mr. [Lab Nazi] is the only other person qualified to teach the lab practicals.  Therefore, he will continue teaching the Form VI practicals and you can get the key from him whenever you want.”

LN: “I think that’s for the best, Mr. Academic Master.”

Me: “Can he at least tell me his general teaching schedule for the next month or so, so I can maybe possibly think about tailoring my classes to discuss the relevant material at the time he’s teaching the lab?”

AM: “Can you, Mr. [Lab Nazi]?”

LN: [pause] “No.”

AM: “That’s okay.  Just do your job, Mr. Paul, and let Mr. [Lab Nazi] do his.”

Me: [in Chinese] “You are all retards.”

AM: “Pardon?”

Incidentally, the academic master isn’t my favorite person at the school, either.

So yeah, despite the fact that Songea Boys’ has one of the cleanest, most well-stocked physics laboratories in the area, I simply can’t use it.  This hasn’t stopped me entirely; I’ve been able to pull together some basic practical sessions at night using stuff I can find around town (water bottles, syringes, string, copper wire, batteries, light bulbs, etc.), but it’s a real shame that I can’t use, you know, glassware, professionally-manufactured springs, thermometers that didn’t come in my medkit, incremental weights that aren’t simply sand wrapped in a plastic bag, etc.  Let it be known that this struggle is ongoing, and, one day, I WILL be able to use the laboratory resources, even if I have to break in and steal said resources under cover of darkness.

What IS good is that, as of yesterday, the Lab Nazi has finally begun to teach physics practicals to my Form VI kids, after much coaxing from the secondmaster (that’s right, I went above your head, bwana!).  In truth, all this procrastination has put the kids in a bit of a bind, as they have roughly three weeks to learn ~2 years’ worth of physics experiments, but I guess it’s better than nothing.  Moreover, I fully intend to continue holding night sessions during the month of August, although I’m quickly running out of ideas for experiments using improvised teaching materials… water bottles and copper wire will only get you so far.  The only real problem that I’m experiencing right now is that the Lab Nazi has decided to completely disregard the schedule, yanking the Form VI students out of all their regular classes and forcing them into day-long, deathmarch practical sessions in a desperate attempt to catch up with the syllabus… which, naturally, results my Form VI physics class being virtually unattended.  I’m gonna have to talk to him about that, too.

In any case, sorry for the whiny post.  I figured that the last few additions to the blog were full of whimsical journeys and delightful misadventures, so it was time for a bit of a reality check.  Again, I must stress that I do like my school, I do like teaching, and, by and large, progress is being made here.  But like all things, Songea Boys’ isn’t perfect, and, on rare occasions, I feel that it isn’t indecent of me to vent my frustrations… in moderation, naturally.  But rest assured: there will still be plenty of whimsical journeys and delightful misadventures to be had in the coming months… I mean, if I’m having this much fun only a third of the way into my service, who knows what’ll happen in the remainder of my time here?

Dar es Salaam, the Great Flood, and Why I’m So Very, Very Tired

A month and a half since the last blog entry… yeah, I’m not so good at this.  Let it be known that I deeply apologize for sucking so bad at everything.  June was, well, pretty crazy, and a great deal of it was spent in Dar es Salaam, which was definitely a bit of a shock given how long I’ve been in Songea (seven months… holy crap).  Given PSDN training, the 50^th Anniversary Celebration, my birthday, and the 4^th of July---all of it interspersed with an intensive teaching regimen---I’m very happy to finally have a nice, peaceful weekend, where I can take a deep breath, collect my thoughts, and SLEEP GODDAMMIT.  So yeah, a recap of events:

PSDN Training

Within Peace Corps Tanzania, we have a special group of volunteers who are members of PSDN, or the Peer Support Diversity Network.  The purpose of this group is essentially to help our fellow volunteers cope with life here in Tanzania via confidential counseling and assistance, and, well, let me just say that it’s a good thing it’s around: as PCVs, we got issues.  Moreover, PSDN kind of acts as an additional liaison between volunteers and the Peace Corps staff in Dar, which is also pretty important given that issues tend to arise between those two groups.  In any case, I am now a proud member of said PSDN group, although, admittedly, I may have had an ulterior motive in joining (PSDN happens to be in charge of the volunteer newsletter; I figure the Camp Fantastic folks can figure out the rest).

So, being a member of the new PSDN recruits, I was obligated to go to a special training in Dar from the 8^th to the 11^th of June.  Technically, this was during the school week, so I unfortunately had to abandon my students for a little bit… I felt so bad about this that I lent them all of my textbooks and gave each class a gigantic problem set to do while I was gone, which I’m sure they just loved </sarcasm>.  I think they know that I have their best interest in mind, even if it means solving a ridiculous number of brutally difficult problems on a day-to-day basis.  Don’t blame me if the system sucks.

At any rate, I won’t talk about the PSDN training (nor should I, technically), but it was pretty interesting stuff, and it was cool to see a bunch of folks from my class up there (we were somewhat overrepresented… it was awesome).  By and large, the stuff that sticks in my head from that trip is, unsurprisingly, the food: we ate Subway, got delivery pizza (it came in a box!), got kickass Lebanese food, and I had proper bacon for the first time in nine months.  Decadence in its highest form.

Not too much else to say about that little jaunt up north.  Dar, as always, is ridiculous, and as I rode the 16 hours back to Songea on a bus filled with carsick Tanzanians, I couldn’t help but realize that I would be back up there in literally five days.  Exciting.

The 50^th Anniversary Celebration, and My Birthday in Dar

So when I got back in Songea on Sunday at 10:30pm, I went to sleep, woke up at 6:45am the next day, went to class, lectured for four hours, helped with homework for another four, argued with the Lab Nazi for roughly thirty minutes (more on him later), went home, wrote more lecture notes, graded some papers, ate dinner, and went to bed late.  I then proceeded to continue this schedule until Friday morning, at which point I found myself back on a 16-hour bus ride to Dar… again.  I guess, technically, this second trip up was broken up into two days, with a brief stop-off in Iringa, but you get the idea.

In any case, this PARTICULAR trip up to Dar was awesome, and it happened during a week-long school break so I didn’t feel guilty.  Peace Corps is celebrating its 50^th Anniversary this year, and in honor of this fact, Peace Corps Director Aaron Williams came from DC to visit all of us grunts here at PC Tanzania, seeing that Tanzania was one of the first countries to host Peace Corps volunteers (we’re still arguing over who was truly first with PC Ghana… screw those guys).  As a result, following a town hall meeting and a PSDN sit-down session with the Director, we had a huge gala event at the US Embassy; I had to wear a tie and nice shoes and clean clothes and everything!  Besides my being blinded by luxury at this event, we had a ton of performances from different volunteers, speeches from government officials, and a RIDICULOUS buffet.  I know this post (and this blog, for that matter) is quickly turning into “What Paul Ate and Why It Was Mind-Blowingly Delicious”, but, trust me, this thing was AMAZING: we got T.G.I.F.-sized monster plates and were essentially allowed to go buck-wild over a huge assortment of curries, pilau, steak, cheese, chicken, Chinese-style noodle dishes, whole freaking grilled flounder… wow, I can’t really write about this now.  Let me just say that I deeply regretted filling up on a double cheeseburger earlier that day.  Which was also delicious, for that matter.

What was perhaps cooler than the 50^th celebration, however, was hanging out with all the other volunteers who were in town.  Roughly a third of Peace Corps Tanzania showed up for this event---everyone from different classes and locations---so it was a real mix of PC culture.  It was truly surprising how many folks I straight-up didn’t know… I guess my acquaintances only range from Iringa southward, with the exception of my training class.

In any case, hanging out with a bunch of the seasoned veterans in Dar was an awesome experience.  Believe it or not, this was the first time in my service that I truly got to see Dar as a city; all of my previous forays into the metropolis were fleeting at best and disastrous at worst (the very worst involving a number of AK-47s… ahem).  Moreover, this trip to Dar was the first time I truly got to see the Peninsula portion of the capital, which is somehow both incredibly safi (it’s full of huge, gated compounds and is where the majority of the expats live) and incredibly dangerous at the same time (if you walk along Toure Drive at night, you will be robbed or kidnapped).  Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of our combined Peace Corps exploits around the Peninsula and Dar proper during this time were centered around food: during the course of my stay, I ate an unreasonable amount of foreign (i.e. non-Tanzanian) meals, each of which I still remember with utter clarity and tender longing.  My obsession over food even freaks me out a little bit.

Perhaps the coolest day I spent in Dar was my 24^th birthday, which happened to be the day after the 50^th Anniversary celebration, when everyone was still in town.  As a kid with a summer birthday, this happenstance was divine retribution in its sweetest form: after a lifetime of having only small celebrations due to summer camp absenteeism and family vacations, I now found myself celebrating my birthday during the unique few days when literally everyone was around… it was a pretty big ego boost.  So, true to form, a bunch of us went to the Mlimani Centre (it’s a legit American-style mall… in the middle of Dar es Salaam), where I had a McDonald’s-style fast-food chicken sandwich (!), got caramel corn (!!), and went and saw X-Men: First Class in a freaking legit movie theatre (!!!).  Okay, I know this birthday sounds totally lame to you folks back home, but, trust me, this was so awesome I could barely contain myself the entire time I was there.

After this particular awesomeness, a bunch of us decided to hit up Las Vegas casino in town to take a crack at increasing our pitiful Peace Corps salaries.  Now, to be totally honest, while I technically have been in casinos before, I was---and still am---a complete gambling neophyte.  I mean, I know how the system works in principle, but I am still far from understanding the various nuances and intricacies of the practice---which games to play, when to hit, when to stay, how to comport myself in an appropriate manner when I win, how to comport myself in an appropriate manner when I lose, etc.  But man, I gotta say: after that particular night, I can see why this crap is addictive, and I am very, very glad I had some fellow volunteers help show me the ropes.  I owe those guys a huge debt of gratitude, because Lord knows I would’ve been screwed otherwise.

In any case, to give you all an idea of what went down, I started the night with 50,000/=, which I promptly lost in about 30 minutes.  I then cashed in an additional 20,000/=, which I again promptly lost in about 10 minutes.  I then proceeded to sit at the table looking sad until one of my friends decided to throw me a bone and lend me 10,000/= from his winnings.  From this, I somehow was able to win 165500/= by the end of the night, putting me at a net gain of 95500/=.  This was huge; to give you some perspective, I make 230000/= a month as a volunteer.  Throw in about five or so chicken-and-cheese sandwiches as well as multiple beverages---luxuries in their own right and all of it comped by the casino---as well as the fact that literally everyone in my group came out on top, and I can safely say that, by the end of the night, I was happier than a pig in shit.  So yeah, I’d say it was a pretty excellent birthday.

So, after a number of other Dar shenanigans in the following days, I finally boarded the 6:00am bus back to Songea.  Granted, I was horribly sleep-deprived and about five pounds heavier, but I was happy---happy I had a good time with good friends in the capital, and happy to go home and sleep in my own bed.  I have no idea when I’ll next be up there, but the collective awesomeness of my two trips there this past month will be hard to top.

The Great Flood and The 4^th of July

With my return back to Songea two weeks ago, my life began to regain a bit of its normalcy---and by normalcy, I mean work.  I’ll write up another post complaining about my most recent teaching woes later (it’s really not that bad… I do, in fact, enjoy my work here), but for now I’ll just focus on covering the major events that have been going down in the past few weeks.

For one, at about noon on the Wednesday after I got back from Dar, I was getting out of my ice-cold shower (given that it’s cold season right now, the water in my shower is so cold that it literally gives me a headache and makes my teeth hurt... taking a shower during midday helps this a bit), when I noticed that there was a small amount of water leaking from the hot and cold taps of my bathroom sink (although, in reality, they’re both actually cold).  Not having the foresight to put clothes on and then investigate, I poked the hot tap hose lightly, at which point the connection between the rubber hose and the metal pipe (which had practically rusted through) exploded, snapping the hose completely off and causing a four-foot-high jet of water to arc across my bathroom.  This explosion was enough to cause the cold water tap to also burst at the same time, sending another jet of water arcing in the other direction across my bathroom.  Luckily, both pipes were fairly small in diameter, so I could stop both with my thumbs; however, after frantically looking around my bathroom for a little bit, I realized that literally every valve that could technically stop the flow of water to the sink had been encased in concrete.  So, in essence, I was stuck---cold, naked, and shivering, my thumbs pressed on two broken pipes, kneeling in what had become a small lake of ice-cold water in my bathroom.

My first logical thought when presented with this dilemma was that I needed to turn off the water to my house.  I knew where the meter was... this would, in theory, lead me to the main shut-off valve.  The primary issue was that my water meter was located outside, and, given my current state---wet and naked---and the fact that I have neighbors who are conservative Christians, simply running out nude and turning off my water would prove… problematic.  Yet, I had no other recourse (save for the nude part), and so, after muttering a quiet curse on all Tanzanian plumbers, I let go of the pipes, raced into my bedroom, threw on whatever clothes I could find (track pants, a sweater, and flip-flops), and sprinted outside my house to my water meter.  As it turned out, I was correct about the main shut-off valve being connected to the meter, but, as I was horrified to discover, the handle had been broken off, meaning that I couldn’t turn the valve without the help of a pipe wrench, which I didn’t have.

So, after a brief moment of panic, I raced to my neighbor’s house, banging on her door and yelling something along the lines of “HELPMEHELPMEHELPMEHELPME”---not my most dignified moment in Tanzania, I know.  Unfortunately, she didn’t have a pipe wrench, either, but she sent her son over to see if we could do anything about the situation.  Luckily for me, her son was pretty handy, and, over the course of fifteen minutes or so, we were able to fashion some makeshift stoppers for both pipes out of a few plastic bags and a lot of duct tape.  At this point, however, the damage had already been done: five minutes of unchecked water flow had left my bathroom, bedroom, closet, and main hallway all submerged in about an inch-and-a-half of water, meaning that the majority of my clothes and my shoes were completely soaked, not to mention my backpack and the books inside of it.

After doing some preliminary damage control (and opening all the windows), I ran over to the school to see if the school plumber was around.  After being laughed at by all the other teachers (Tanzanians aren't big on sympathy), I finally managed to get a hold of his number, and he agreed to come check out my situation right away.  It took him about two hours to finally show up (even though it’s a 15-minute ride from town), so, in the meantime, I went ahead and taught my scheduled Form VI class in my (now sopping wet) sweater, track pants, and flip-flops, using my (also sopping wet) textbooks and lecture notes.  Needless to say, my students got a real kick out of that.

So the plumber came, turned off my water, assessed my situation, made a parts list, and pledged that he would fix it.  Unfortunately, given that I still had a large, full storage tank located in my ceiling constantly applying pressure to my improvised plastic-bag stopper, I had to front the initial cost since I wanted the pipe fixed immediately; getting the school to pay upfront would take more than a week. Luckily, the plumber was true to his word, and after a brief visit the next day, followed by a lot of mopping on my part, my house pretty much returned to its original state.  All I have to say about the entire ordeal is that it’s a good thing that it’s still dry season; I don’t think all that water would’ve ever evaporated otherwise.

As for the 4^th, I feel it’s worth mentioning since I have a few goofy pictures to go with it.  We had a pretty subdued celebration overall down here in Songea: a few folks out in the bush came into town and we hiked up Matogoro, after which we had a decent little gathering at my house and made some patty melts, which, for lack of a better term, were crotch-grabbingly delicious.

The pinnacle of Peace Corps culinary art.

Oh yeah, and Mom and Dad, in case you’ve ever wondered if we truly appreciate your gift packages:

Don't judge.

Aside from this particular event, we also had a pretty cool (and spontaneous) patriotic sing-along Monday night on the streets of Songea, which even included a few fireworks that we bought at a local duka.  For sure, nothing expresses the true American spirit like inflicting your culture on everyone else.  Fortunately for us, most of the locals got a real kick out of this, and some even tried to sing along with us, which was pretty hilarious.

So yeah, it was a pretty good 4^th overall.  I’m not gonna lie: I’m a little jealous of you folks back in the States, but I think we pulled it off fairly well here in Songea.  To be fair, I was also pretty exhausted at this point from Dar and indoor floods and whatnot, so I was perfectly happy to keep things low-key for the weekend.  But yeah, even though it’s a week late, I hope you guys all had an excellent Independence Day, and I promise to update a bit more frequently in the coming weeks!