Back in the beginning of August, I was up in Dar
participating in our scheduled COS (Close of Service) conference, a mandatory
yet fun class reunion designed to help us PCVs efficiently tie up loose ends in
country, plan for the future, and slowly begin reintegrating back into American
society. Indeed, much like PST, IST, and
MSC, COS is one of the major meetings required by all Peace Corps branches in
all countries, and, despite its name, it’s actually supposed to take place ~3
months before a Peace Corps volunteer leaves, so that the PCV in question can
prepare him or herself for the inevitable transition back stateside. So yeah, while I guess COS conference isn’t
the end-all be-all Peace Corps service, it’s the harbinger of the end… and,
well, that can be a bit intimidating at times, even if the conference itself is
a blast.
I don’t know about other Peace Corps countries, but for us
in Tanzania, COS conference tends to be a pretty laid-back affair: it takes
place at a fancy beach resort, attendance policies for sessions aren’t strictly
enforced, and we usually get a lot of downtime during the afternoon and
evenings to go swim, play volleyball, or just relax. Tedious PowerPoint presentations are infrequent,
flipchart-based small group work is nonexistent, and most sessions are primarily
focused on us, the volunteers---reflecting on the good times had during service
while preparing our résumés for the job market back home. Moreover, all the food is prepaid, we sleep
in air-conditioned rooms, and, given that COS usually happens during the low tourist
season, we pretty much run the venue for the entire time we’re there. In all, I’d say COS was not your average PC
conference, and I had a pretty good time while I was there… the meetings were
fun, the buffet was sumptuous, and I got an all-expenses-paid trip to a fancy,
tropical resort on the American taxpayer’s dollar. What’s not to like?
Perhaps the most lasting impact COS had on me was, of
course, the food. While I only spent 5
of my 11 days in Dar at the resort, I’m fairly confident I gained at least five
pounds during my stay there, as we were constantly besieged by a relentless
barrage of delicious Indian and Chinese food, five meals a day, every day. A word to the wise for any would-be Peace
Corps Country Director out there: as PCVs out in the bush, we’re essentially
equivalent to a pack of mangy, starving dogs… if you present us with a
sumptuous banquet---particularly a free one---we will compulsively and
unhesitatingly devour it as if it were our last meal, every time. Thus, if you present us with FIVE sumptuous
banquets EVERY DAY, we will compulsively and unhesitatingly devour each one
until we puke our guts out or our stomachs rupture, whichever comes first. Thus, within 24 hours of being at the resort,
I quickly succumbed to the “feeding-your-goldfish-too-many-food-flakes” effect,
and it took no more than a few hours after Tandoori Tuesday for me to go
belly-up and slip into an overfed stupor for the remainder of the week. Moreover, given that it was mostly Bengali
curry or Sichuan hotpot sluicing through my insides, I spent a great deal of
COS not lying on the beach as I should have been, but rather doubled over in
gastrointestinal agony, often seeking sanctuary in the resort’s numerous (and,
thankfully, mostly clean) lavatories. Of course, though, this didn’t stop me
from crawling back to the buffet once dinnertime rolled around… it’d be a shame
to waste all that garlic naan, after
all.
Might I just add that we happened to be at COS during the
Olympics, and that the main dining area had a large projector with full-package
digital satellite cable. Nothing beats
drinking cocktails, shoveling delicious food in your face, and watching
international athletic competition. It was
like being in fat man’s Elysium.
While all this eating, drinking, and other assorted hedonism
was fun, one part of COS did stick out for me in the end---namely, that this would
be the last time our training class would all be together in one place. Sure, we’ve already hung out a bunch of times
in country, and a lot of the people present at the conference (namely, those whose
sites are near mine in country) are the same folks who’ve pretty much comprised
my friend group for the past two years, but it’s kind of crazy to think about
the fact that I might not see any of them again, at least in any predictable
capacity. Peace Corps really does foster
a strong family vibe among training classes and a strong community vibe in
PCV-dom overall, and since everyone is scheduled to leave at different dates in
the coming months, there’s this slow, inexorable feeling that the band is
breaking up. I guess this is something
that all PCVs go through---I’m confident it’s not just my class that undergoes
this weird, post-COS separation complex---but still, it’s a bit strange to
think about how far we’ve come since those nascent days back in Philly.
All wistfulness aside, the rest of my stay in Dar was fun as
well. I had to add a few days both
before and after COS to take care of some minor medical stuff, and, naturally,
I took full advantage of my downtime to bask in the opulence of Tanzania’s
capital---eating lots of safi food,
abusing government resources at PC HQ, and hemorrhaging money like it was going
out of style. I won’t bore you with the
details, but let it be known that I went and saw Batman in theaters, ate a
crispy chicken sandwich, tore it up in the Peninsula club scene, purchased
delivery pizza, slept on a real mattress on a king-sized bed with down
comforters, enjoyed hot showers, consumed more cheese than is safe or
reasonable, and ate my first Dorito in two years (it was Nacho Cheese flavor,
and it was incredible). Overall, it was
pretty awesome, and I think I can now finally upgrade myself to from
Songea-Based Country Bumpkin to Sophisticated Dar Urbanite. It’s about time I figured out how the daladalas worked up there, anyways.
---
So yeah, after a fun 1.5-week stay in Dar, I hopped on my
standard 2x2 Super Feo Express Yutong Bus, which, after the normal 15 hours,
dumped me back in good old Songea town.
Given that I had school the next day, I unfortunately didn’t have a lot
of time to decompress from this little jaunt to Safi-land… but hey, I had a job
to do, and I needed to assuage my massive guilt for abandoning my students for
a whole week (yeah, I had given both my Form V and Form VI classes enormous
problem sets before leaving, but I still felt pretty bad for forsaking them).
So I went to school the following day and everything
proceeded as normal… until I made the unwitting discovery that---surprise---Songea
Boys was ending its winter term three weeks earlier than normal. A little backstory:
This year, the Tanzanian government decided to conduct the
national census during the month of August.
I’ve heard that this was supposed to be the 2010 census, but whatever… in
the end, at least the census is getting done.
Regardless, to accomplish this task, the Tanzanian government has
decided to use public secondary O-level schools as tallying centers, or
whatever kind of home base census workers need to get their work done. Thus, to accommodate for this decision, most
O-level schools in the country have changed the dates of their large breaks so
that students wouldn’t be at school when the census was taking place, and the
census workers could therefore make full use of the facilities. A-level schools took longer to negotiate an
acceptable compromise, but, back in July, it was decided that A-level schools
would not be used as census centers and thus maintain their normal schedule of
a September-October break.
This put Songea Boys in a difficult position. Being primarily an A-level school but with a
significant O-level component, the administration here couldn’t really decide
whether or not to move the break to accommodate for the census. To make matters worse, there was a nationwide
teacher’s strike from mid-July to early August, meaning that most of the Songea
Boys faculty only showed up to school to get their daily free lunch, and no
major decisions were made regarding school schedules.
Fast forward to when I got back from Dar. Turns out that, while I was gone, the strike
was lifted and the decision was made to follow neither the O-level schools nor
the A-level schools, but instead give Songea Boys its own break located between
the two other breaks (of course, no one told me this until I happened to ask
the day I got back). This means that not
only was I forced to cut all my Form V and Form VI syllabi short, but all
A-level terminal examinations were suspended until the students return in early
October, which pretty much guarantees that they’ll either (a) forget the
material over the break or (b) miss the exam entirely because they’re late
coming back to school. Moreover, this
effectively increased the number of major make-or-break tests my Form VIs will have
to take to 4 over the course of the second term---Term 1 Finals, NECTA Mock
Examinations, Pre-National Examinations, and NECTA Finals. Needless to say, my Form VI students are in
for a rough semester.
Incidentally, this also means that literally all my plans
for travel, work, etc. during the break are now messed up, as half of them take
place in early to mid-October, when my students will now (apparently) be back
in classes. I am less than pleased with
this prospect.
But, in truth, not all is lost with my surprise early
break. With my now copious amounts of
free time, I’ve been working on a bit of a secondary project with my sitemate
at Songea Girls (Songea Girls is still adhering to the normal A-level break, so
they finished their winter term a little later). The project is primarily focused on teaching
students about solar power and its uses, and it was originally put together by
a few MIT graduates for use in secondary schools in Ghana. Regardless, the material remains fairly
applicable here in Tanzania: my sitemate and I have received a “kit” from back
in the States that includes lesson plans, solar cells, and LEDs so that we can
give students a bit of hands-on experience in building their own solar lamp
(all while, of course, we stress the real-life applications of physics). As of now, we’re still hammering out some of
the details (how the heck am I supposed to find a 4.5 V lithium ion battery in freaking
Songea?), but I’m still confident
that we’ll be able to effectively continue the syllabus with my sitemate’s
students when they come back in mid-October, or perhaps start afresh at Songea
Boys when my students come back in late September.
Alright, not much else to report at the moment. There might be some minor adventuring close
to the end of break, primarily as an attempt to salvage what’s left of my shattered
travel plans… but yeah, we’ll see how that goes. Maybe it’s all for the best: by being forced
to stay at site during break, I’m obliged to be a better volunteer, starting secondary
projects and whatnot. In the end, I
guess that’s always a good thing.
