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?