Another couple of weeks, another blog entry. I’m hoping this one is a bit more cheery than the last, seeing as I haven’t experienced any further ghastly manifestations of death during the interim (save for a number of cockroaches and one pig, but who’s counting?). Just to get it out of the way, though, the brown puppy in the photos below has also passed away from presumably the same illness, raising the overall mortality rate of the litter to 80%. It’s becoming abundantly clear to me that Tanzania can be a harsh place to grow up.
Okay, but puppies aside, things have settled back to a rhythm here. Last week saw the wrap-up of final exams for the Form V students, and I am now the proud owner of approximately two hundred 10-page examination papers, all of which are just aching for my trusty red pen to begin its grim work once again. I made the conscious (and perhaps foolhardy) decision to make my exam much more like the NECTA (i.e. the Tanzanian SAT), and the results have been… less than stellar. I can sympathize, though: over the past couple of months, I’ve come to realize that the sheer breadth of the material students have to memorize for these exams---for physics, everything from simple harmonic motion, to the photoelectric effect, to even obscure crap like logic circuits and so-called “environmental physics”---is staggering, and that they don’t even get an equation sheet during the test borders on the absurd. As a result, while the problems themselves aren’t particularly difficult, memorizing the necessary material is, and that these kids have to do it for six different subjects simultaneously while learning English is straight-up unreasonable. I’m not saying that I can change the system (yet), but I can at least help my students prepare for it, even if it means writing up a seemingly cruel final. I guess the irony comes in that I’ve saddled myself with enough work to last me until the next millennium… grading these exams is going to take a long time.
In any case, given that this past week was Form V finals, the school is officially on break at the A-level, meaning that all the kids get to go home… but I’m lucky enough to stay because, well, I have work to do, and I kinda live here. Truth be told, however, things are a bit more relaxed: since I don’t have to teach, I’m more free in my hours, and it’s less frowned upon if I decide to take a leave of absence for a couple weeks. In that vein, there may be a vacation in the near future… I don’t really know where, but it’ll happen. At some point.
In contrast with my nebulous vacation plans, though, what is definitely happening in the near future is IST---In-Service Training in Morogoro. I’ll be honest: I’m pretty darn excited. On the educational side of things, we get to learn about grants, with additional enrichment on teaching and gardening technique. On the non-educational side of things… well, I’m going to be with my entire training class for a week-and-a-half in freaking Morogoro. It’s going to be awesome---seeing everyone again, sharing war-stories from site, eating pizza, and, most importantly, showing off my killer mustache (which apparently has been upgraded to “conquistador-stache”/“Johnny-Depp-stache”/“Emile-Hirsch-in-Into-the-Wild-stache,” all of which I choose to take as complimentary assessments). It’s only three weeks away, and I seriously can’t wait. Just gotta be patient.
Another minor update: my garden now kicks ass. Up until yesterday, I was seriously convinced that I had a complete failure on my hands… given the perpetual rain for the past few weeks, my garden was so overrun with weeds that it looked like a giant, green mat, and what plants hadn’t been dug up by marauding chickens had been ravaged by the local insect population. I was so embarrassed about it that I literally went out yesterday with the intent of weeding the garden and re-tilling the soil just so that it looked as if I planted something that simply hadn’t grown yet, meaning that my neighbors would stop laughing at me and leave me alone. To my surprise, however, as I bent down and ripped out my first bunch of weeds, an old, familiar smell hit my nose. Something piquant, with a certain je ne sais quoi that tickled the furthest recesses of my memory. I looked down at my hand: it was cilantro! FRESH. FREAKING. CILANTRO. I looked around: there was cilantro everywhere! And not just cilantro. There were melons, potatoes, carrots, and basil---all of which were simply obscured by the weed canopy that had grown up around them. I was sitting on a freaking goldmine of edible plants for weeks without even knowing, all because I was too lazy to get off my ass and do some weeding. Granted, the sage and rosemary didn’t make it, and the plants still have a bit more growing left to do, but overall the garden is looking really nice. And to all my Tanzanian coworkers, neighbors, and students who laughed at me, pitied me, and gave me so much grief over the past couple months for being an incompetent mzungu farmer, I have only one thing to say---BOOYAH. You all may have your corn and beans, but I managed to cultivate four non-native species in sandy soil with only a day’s worth of training. TAKE THAT.
With that small moral victory out of the way, let’s get back on topic. It’s recently been brought to my attention by a certain reader (i.e. my only reader, Mom) that I don’t talk enough about the people I work with, or the local Tanzanians, or the living conditions of said people I work with/local Tanzanians, or my living conditions, or something. I don’t know… she wasn’t very clear. But still, looking back at my previous blog entries, I can see that it’s been more of a highlight reel than anything; I guess I’ve neglected to talk about the boring, day-to-day stuff. Well, I guess now’s as good a time as any. So, without further ado, here’s the boring, day-to-day stuff---a reintroduction to my site, if you will:
I work at Songea Boys’ Secondary School, a Tanzanian public school located ~10km outside of Songea town in the Ruvuma region of southern Tanzania. As the name implies, it’s an all-boys school, with roughly 860 students spanning both the O- and A-levels (i.e., ages 12-18). As of now, I only officially teach A-level physics---more specifically Form V physics since the Form VI students have already finished their NECTA examinations are awaiting their results to go to university. I’ve had my hand in a few unofficial tutoring sessions in math and chemistry as well, although these teaching experiences have been sporadic over my time at site so far. I’m in talks at the moment to potentially increase my repertoire for the coming academic year, which will start mid-April. We’ll see how that goes.
My site, by Peace Corps standards, is really nice. I have reliable electricity and running water (as I’ve said before, working >50% of the time = reliable), and I live only a short daladala ride from town. I have a capacious, four-room house---part of a duplex---which is owned by the school (I got a picture up! See below.). Given that I can buy most of what I need around my house (and given that I have a cool hill, Unangwa, and a gorgeous mountain, Matogoro, within easy hiking distance), I’d say I’m sitting pretty.
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| Nyumba yangu! |
As for my fellow teachers, they live a lot like me. About 50% of the teachers at Boys’ live in school-owned housing, and about 50% live in town and have to commute. My next-door neighbor in my duplex is actually a junior teacher like I am, although how she’s managed to cram her entire extended family into what is essentially a one-man apartment still remains a mystery to me. In all honesty, though, given that this school is somewhat prestigious (it’s old, at least), the teachers actually tend to make a little more than I do, and, as such, they tend to live in slightly nicer (or at least better-furnished) houses than mine.
That being said, their priorities with money are a little different. I have a computer; they have a TV. I cook on an electric hotplate and pay an expensive electric bill; they cook on a charcoal stove and save the extra money for more sofas for their living room set (I have yet to fully understand the Tanzanian national obsession over furniture). I invested in an mp3 player so I can listen to my music on the go; they invest in enormous, earth-shattering speaker systems so that they don’t have to bring their music with them… it follows them around. I distinctly remember the day I told the staff at Boys’ that I didn’t own---nor could I afford---a refrigerator. My statement (namely, that I couldn’t purchase a refrigerator because it would cost a month’s salary) was met with complete incredulity, followed by questions asking about why my government didn’t give us Volunteers a larger stipend (a question I’ve often considered myself).
My neighbors, on the other hand, are a different story. Turn right from my house and walk about 100 paces, and you hit the mashambani (i.e., farmland). These folks are of a different social stratum than we teachers; namely, they’re farmers. They grow corn, beans, and sometimes some potatoes or spinach, if they’re so inclined. There are also a few ranchers, mostly goatherds, who own a few pastures in the area as well. Most of these folks make their living by going to town and selling their goods, using the profit to take care of all the basic necessities. They’re not terribly poor by Tanzanian standards---they can afford at least two sofas per living room---but they’re also not rich like us teachers. For them, there’s no question of whether to use a charcoal or an electric stove… if you live in the mashambani, you use charcoal, basi. In spite of this, some of them do, in fact, have generators, which means they’re equally adept as my coworkers at waking me up at 5am with blaring gospel music. So there’s that.
This brings up one interesting aspect of Tanzanian culture that I have neglected to mention thus far: everyone farms. It doesn’t matter what you do---farmer, teacher, daladala driver, storeowner, chipsi mayai guy, whatever---if you have land, you work it (or at least your wife works it while you do other stuff). Pretty much all of my teachers, some of whom are well-off enough to own cars, work their respective mashamba, which is a big part of why my garden was so ruthlessly mocked during my time at site. This being Songea, the typical crop is corn, and I gotta admit, these guys know what they’re doing: the corn here is already 9-feet tall and budding, and the rainy season is only half-over (I take some small comfort in the fact that my garden’s diversity makes up for its relatively pathetic yield). If I had to use an analogy for this practice, it’s as if every person in the U.S.---regardless of profession---grew maize on their front lawn and routinely harvested it to make ugali (boiled cornmeal paste) for their respective families. I dunno… it seems a bit incongruous to me.
Still, though, I have to say that there’s no fundamental difference between the folks here and the folks back home. My fellow teachers wake up, go to school, teach, go home, watch TV, and go to bed, just like your typical American teacher (although I’d venture that Tanzanian teachers are a bit more handy with a switch than your average American teacher). Similarly, my neighbors get up, go to work (or whatever it is they do), come back, probably skip the TV, and go to bed, just like everyone else.
