The Victory Lap: Bar-Hopping, Turkeys, and New Suits

Well, it’s been about 3 months since the last entry, and I apologize for my tardiness with updates.  In my defense, though, the past few months of my life have been an unrelenting stream of highly engaging distractions, all of which have forced me to repeatedly put any attempts at expository self-assessment on the backburner.  There were a couple things---most of them introspective and kind of self-indulgent---that I really wanted to write about over these past few months; however, given that a bunch of stuff has happened recently, these will have to wait for a later entry.  For now, I figure my time is best spent throwing up highlights of some of my more recent PCV extension shenanigans.  Enjoy!

Halloween and Fond Farewells

Late October (namely, the week before Halloween) saw the first departures of members of my training class, many of whom have since elected to either head back to the US or embark on epic, post-Peace Corps trips around the world.  Luckily for me, I got to see a lot of them right before I left: although I was (and still am) extending, I was scheduled to participate in a meeting for the Shika initiative right before Halloween, meaning that both the first crew and I happened to be in Dar at roughly the same time.  As you’d probably imagine, this week in Dar was kind of like a “Peace Corps wake”: safi food was eaten, libations were imbibed, emotions were outpoured, and good times were had by all---when I wasn’t having a great time partying/hanging out with everyone, I was busy engaging in fits of deep, crushing nostalgia… that is, until I inevitably found something to distract me again.  And, luckily for me, there was plenty of that to go around.

Perhaps the most entertaining part of the week, though, was the fact that it took place during Halloween.  Take heed, potential visitors to Tanzania: there is no better place to get a Halloween costume than a Tanzanian soko (market).  I’m serious---the vast majority of Tanzanians get their clothes from huge used-clothing emporiums, which means, from the get-go, you pretty much have your pick of the finest America’s church donation bins have to offer (and, trust me, you can find some really crazy stuff if you look hard enough).  More importantly, however, one of the coolest things about living in Tanzania is the nearly limitless selection of cheap fabric and fundis (tailors) to work it---with enough imagination (and a good eye for detail), you can have literally any type of clothing made, all of it fitted and custom-tailored specially for you for under $10.  It’s kind of awesome, and very few volunteers make it through two years of service without getting at least something made, be it an East African-style shirt, creatively-colored pajama pants, or a belt cut from an old, shredded truck tire (that last one’s me).

Thus, as you can figure, this sort of situation opens myriad possibilities for potential Halloween costumes.  Need tights?  No problem.  A mask?  Easily done.  A funny hat?  Sketch it out and send it in.  A wig?  Buy it at the local duka for 5000/=.  The soko is literally packed with things that Tanzanians tend to wear un-ironically that can be exploited and worn very-ironically for the enjoyment of you and your knucklehead friends, and it’s only right that you take advantage of that fact while in country.

So, true to form, one of my friends and I decided to go big this Halloween and dress as Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunn from the tuxedo scene of Dumb and Dumber (i.e., over-the-top pastel tuxes in bright orange and baby blue)---not the most original idea, but still pretty awesome nonetheless.  Because we don’t play around, we went the whole nine yards---bowties, frills, cummerbunds, top hats, and even canes (which turned out to be sword canes… even more awesome).  I think the results speak for themselves:

New suits!

Perhaps the clincher of all this was that, in spite of it all, the suits were actually pretty good quality, with decent lining, hidden pockets, and ample frills.  The hats could’ve used a little work though (the fundi messed them up the first time and I made him redo them in the dark in 30 minutes while I held my cellphone flashlight above his head).  Regardless, literally the moment I put my suit on for the first time---alone in my house by lantern light at night, because Tanesco hates me---I felt entirely vindicated in my purchase.

But yeah, needless to say, my friend and I took every possible opportunity to wear these suits around Dar, both during Halloween and otherwise.  Some of my favorite suit-related memories of the week:

• Going to a Halloween party full of Europeans and Africans---as part of a group of ~15 rowdy, costumed Americans---and trying to explain to them why dressing up in preposterous costumes for one day a year is awesome
• On a different night, trying to reenact the classic Dumb and Dumber entrance at front door of a bar (which ends with me hitting my friend in the back of the knee with my cane, causing him to fall), only to have some random Tanzanian guy at the bar grab my cane mid-swing and yelp at me worriedly, “DON’T HIT HIM!!!”
• Storming into a Dar casino in full, suited glory and proceeding to systematically plunder the blackjack tables (by the end of the night, I had more than enough to recoup the payment for the suits… threefold).
• While gambling, telling one of the dealers that she looked very pretty… because her dress was made of the same material as my suit.  I told her I was prettier, though, since I had frills on my outfit, whereas she didn’t have any.  I suggested that she should have a word with her fundi.  She didn't laugh.

So yeah, I had fun.  And, in case you’re wondering, yes: my friend and I have made a pact to wear these suits at each other’s respective future weddings.  Any woman I marry will have to love me for more than just my looks or my personality; she’ll have to love me for that suit, too.

Work and Shadow Week

Following this fun little diversion, I found myself back in Songea, and back to work.  Remember, despite this blog's more apparent focus---fun anecdotes and assorted misadventures---I really do spend most of my time working here… it’s just that I don’t write about it too much because it’s esoteric and boring.  I mean, I happen to think that quantum mechanics and nonlinear dynamics are about as cool as it gets, but I also understand that not everyone agrees with me, so I just keep that crap to myself.  Besides, we’re nowhere near that point in the syllabus.

The first (and actually only) documented evidence that I do, in fact, teach here.  Bonus points if you can guess what the lecture is about.

Regardless, the general theme of this most recent term has been to get the Form VI students prepped for their mock examinations, which are currently happening this week.  To this end, I’ve been churning out a ton of weekly problem sets, study guides, and full-on practice tests… it’s been rough on me almost as much as it’s been rough on my students (remember, I have to solve these problem sets and type up marking schemes for each test I produce… it’s a pain in the ass).  Granted, at least I’m not making up the problems myself---THAT would be unreasonable---but I still have to compile these problems, add or trim certain portions to make them more NECTA-y, assign marks, import (or draw) accompanying diagrams, print these tests out (apparently, the nearest place to buy printer toner is Mbeya, so I literally have to take the toner canister out and shake it to collect the dregs to print one legible copy), and go to town and make 180 copies… it can be a hassle.  And of course, during this entire process, the power is constantly cutting out at random.  Ah, Songea.

Oh yeah, and during this whole time, I’m still teaching a full schedule (plus occasional weekends and night classes), and grading my students’ first term finals, which we had postponed to October.  So yeah, it’s been busy.  I remember one point a few weeks back when the class president asked me if I could grade the Form VI weekly practice examinations for the past three weeks (that’s a grand total of 540 exams)… I’m not gonna lie---I openly laughed in his face.  I’m pretty sure I handed him the marking scheme and told him that I was a very busy man, and that he “[had] 180 available students, so grade your own stupid tests.”  It’s true: my students, while hard workers with a tough life, still don’t quite understand some of the logistics and hardships of being a teacher (and I don’t blame them… I was the same way when I was their age).

Still, while all this has been going on, I’ve found time for one fun little side project (I guess you could call it a secondary project?)---what I perfunctorily call my “CD project.”  My students have always been blaming their poor performance on tests on a general dearth of math and science resources in the Songea area, and after a particularly abysmal round of failures with the term 1 finals (it was right after big break, so I know they didn’t study beforehand) as well as the obligatory aftershock of griping/despondency that ensued, I decided to remove the “we don’t have any textbooks” excuse out of the equation and furnish my students with complete digital math and science resource bundles via CD.  Why CD?  Well, CDs are actually pretty cheap here (affordable even for my students) and flash drives haven’t really taken hold outside of Dar… plus, my school just got a bunch of new computers from World Friends Japan that are barely being used, all of which have standard CD drives (and besides, most middle-class Tanzanians like my students have at least some sort of access to computers, even if it’s just an internet café, so my students will be able to view the CDs even at home).

Regardless, the bundle I’ve prepared for my kids is---not to sound pompous---the complete package.  Each CD consists of four sections (math, physics, chemistry, and biology), each with its own textbooks, lab practical descriptions, and study guides, plus some additional animations/simulations, if available.  Moreover, I made sure to include instructions for installation/use, as well as a self-executing open-source PDF reader installer for easy viewing, no matter what the computer.  In sum, the CD contains pretty much everything my kids will need to know and more, all in one place (for the low, low price of 500/=... it's not like my PC salary is sufficient for this kind of expenditure).  I’m kind of proud of it.

Of course, while most of the stuff I’ve included in the bundle is open-source textbooks and various other free resources, I’ve definitely thrown in a bit of my own flair as well---a comprehensive equation list for physics.  I figured that, since these students don’t get equation sheets for their NECTA final (which, incidentally, is utter BS… that thing is what saved my ass during the AP), I could at least give them something to look at beforehand to help them memorize the appropriate relations.  As you can guess, I’m pretty pleased with the results… you can read it here (and yes, they need to know ALL that):

A-Level Physics Quick Reference.pdf

Plus, if you want an idea of what the NECTA final is like, I’ve posted two of my practice tests here.  These tests are actually a little on the easy side… if you want a true idea of what the NECTA is like, increase the difficulty, remove all the pictures, and throw in a few spelling errors/accidentally insoluble problems.  Note how, on Paper 2, you nominally only have to solve 5 problems, but, in reality, you’re solving 10 (on the real NECTA, it’s more like 15):

PhysicsNECTAExaminationPractice(Paper1).pdf

PhysicsNECTAExaminationPractice(Paper2).pdf

If this material looks hard to you, that’s because it is: standard high school physics curricula in the US typically don’t cover more than classical mechanics, electricity & magnetism, and waves (thermodynamics is usually covered in chemistry)---this stuff has a whole bunch of other useless crap about fluid mechanics, surface tension, the Bohr model, solid state physics, and even electronics.  Being generous, I would say that these tests are roughly on par with the standard AP physics test (at least when I took it), but remember what “AP” stands for---i.e., “advanced placement for college credit”, not “pass this test or go back to being a dirt farmer for the rest of your life”.  Now imagine taking this test without an equation sheet or any sort of reference, with a three-hour time limit.  Also imagine taking this test in your second or third language, with virtually no guidance except some tattered textbook from the 80s and two years of self-study under your belt (it’s not like the teachers are always present to help you out, after all).  Furthermore, say you're a student who one day wants to be a doctor... this means you'd have to be part of the PCB (physics-chemistry-biology) curriculum, which mandates---no joke---an 11-day-straight testing period (three days for papers 1 and 2, plus a practical, for biology, chemistry, and physics subjects, plus additional exams for mathematics (basic applied mathematics, or BAM) and general studies ("GS").  Does that seem at all fair to you?

It’s funny---Tanzanians love to say that math and science are the “sickness of the nation,” and I am constantly pestered about why this is so.  To this, I have a simple answer: Because doing all this crap is freaking IMPOSSIBLE.

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Going back to life events for a bit, in mid-November, there was one minor reprieve from all this school-related toil: shadow week.  Yes, the new health and environment class has come in, making me officially a super-senior, and some of them were selected to shadow me here in Songea (there’s this new policy now that you shadow where your site is supposed to be instead of shadowing someone who has a similar job to yours… lame).  I assume this decision was made strictly for geographical convenience---I can’t imagine any Peace Corps job being more different from mine than that of a health/environment volunteer---but, in the end, it was cool to see some new faces, and we had a good time that week.  I have to admit: I was probably the worst host ever, as I was fully wrapped up in my standard 8am-5pm workday (plus I was writing all these tests or burning CDs in the evenings), so I pretty much monopolized all the computer time and frequently abandoned my guests to go deal with my own problems.  I did, however, manage to work far enough ahead so we could relax on the weekend: we had a pretty cool churrasco (Brazilian-style BBQ pork) dinner at my house with the whole gang of newbies (nine of them in total), which was a pretty chill evening, and lots of fun.  We even took them out dancing at the local discotheque, which I’m sure was a nice break from the tedium of pre-service training.

It was kind of funny, dealing with all these folks… for the first time in my service, I truly felt old.  Well, maybe “old” isn’t the right word---more like “seasoned.”  It was kind of surprising to see that things that totally come second nature to me at this point (knowing how much tomatoes cost, coping with electricity/water shortage, getting in screaming arguments with kondas, etc) don’t necessarily come second nature to everyone else, and it made me think a lot about what a (relative) dumbass I was when I first came to country (read my first few blog posts, and you’ll know what I mean).  This is not to put down any of the newbies, who are all very smart in their own right and who, I’m sure, will have very fruitful and productive services of their own (and besides, some of them are my age or older and thus far more seasoned than I am anyways); I’m just saying that I was a bit taken aback by their greenness---or, rather, my apparent lack of greenness.

Huh… maybe I’m growing up after all.  I’m not getting any younger, at least.

Thanksgiving and IST

This year marked my first non-Songea Thanksgiving, which turned out to be pretty awesome.  It was expertly organized by a PCV couple living in neighboring Njombe, and it was pretty much everything I hoped a Tanzanian Thanksgiving would be.  Seriously, I was impressed: we were able to create (or, at least, very nearly replicate) nearly every standard Thanksgiving dish---mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, greens, fruit salad, etc.  Of course, given that this was a Tanzanian Thanksgiving, we replaced the not-existing-in-country cranberry sauce with the more conventional PC TZ staple of guacamole, which definitely altered the general motif of the meal a bit.

Oh, and did I mention that we had a legit turkey?  I’m not even remotely kidding.  We managed to score a whole bird from Iringa, and we cooked it by improvising an oven out of a charcoal jiko.  You heard me right: we cooked a full turkey using nothing but a few sufurias (aluminum pots) and charcoal.  THIS is why Peace Corps volunteers are, by nature, the coolest people ever.

Preparing the turkey.  Note how I am "supervising."  I'm so helpful.

One big happy family.

And, of course, after the feast was over and we were lying in a tryptophan-induced stupor, we watched Dumb and Dumber.  In all, it was a perfect day.

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Soon following Thanksgiving was a brief visit up to Morogoro to do some more science stuff with the new ED class (or, as I call them, “baby EDs”, although I guess they’re now sophomores… again, I’m old) for their IST.  It was a pretty run-of-the-mill session, although we shifted the focus a little bit to describe extracurricular ways to make science more accessible for students (think science fairs, mathletes, Bill Nye the Science Guy... you know, catnip for geeks like us).  In all, it was a nice, productive visit.

The only thing that I guess merits special attention was our intro to our session.  For those of you who read some of the old blog entries, you know that we have a knack for making gunpowder out of fertilizer… well, given the time we had, we couldn’t think of anything else that wasn’t (a) too expensive or (b) too dangerous to demonstrate the awesomeness of science, so we just opted to make a crap-ton of said gunpowder (about ¾ kilo) and set it on fire all at once.  Of course, since we care about presentation (and we’re huge nerds), we did a little skit to lighten the mood: one of the volunteers and I dressed up in some old jedi-esque costumes we had lying around (don’t ask) and had a mock lightsaber battle with flaming sword-canes (we used an improvised bug-spray flamethrower to light the cane-swords from our Halloween costumes on fire, and proceeded to battle each other with them, all while playing the Star Wars soundtrack).  We finished by stabbing a giant, ¾-kilo-of-gunpowder-stuffed paper crane (made from flipchart paper and soaked with kerosene) with the aforementioned flaming swords, igniting it and creating a pretty big explosion (although we might have needed some additional help from the bug-spray flamethrower to get it going).  Nerdy?  Yes.  Childish?  Sure.  But awesome?  Absolutely.

Oh, and I forgot to say: we did this little skit in front of all the ED volunteers, plus their corresponding Tanzanian counterparts (i.e., pretty much normal Tanzanians who are teachers at their respective schools from all over TZ and are thus unaccustomed to the hare-brained antics of giddy, immature American twenty-somethings).  It’s kind of amusing that Peace Corps always insists on its volunteers maintaining a modicum of professional decorum when interacting with host-country nationals… well, I can think of nothing more dignified and professional than two guys dressed in unwashed space cadet uniforms and spandex leggings fighting each other with flaming swords while setting a giant paper crane full of gunpowder on fire.  I’m putting that shit on my résumé.

Sadly, while I know pictures/video of this awesome event exist, I don’t have any on me at the moment.  What I DO have access to is the pictures of the 3^rd annual IST prom we went to that night (making this the 5^th prom I’ve been to in my life… Jesus):

Yeah, we broke out the suits again.  After reading this blog post, would you expect anything less?

So yeah, good times were had by all.

Future Plans

So that about drops us off to when I’m currently writing this, mid-December 2012.  I’ve settled back into Songea fairly nicely, and I’ve resumed my standard routine of grading massive quantities of papers and burning massive quantities of CDs (power permitting).  Things have returned to normal, but who knows what tales the next adventure will bring…

Oh wait, I do: over Christmas this year, after two long years of waiting, I will be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I know it’s not a huge deal and that tons of people do it every year, but nonetheless, I’m stoked.  This trip is going to be all sorts of awesome.  Granted, I have a couple… unsavory experiences from climbing large mountains before (Emeishan in China evokes some particularly unpleasant memories), but, nonetheless, I feel confident that I have prepared accordingly---both in terms of adequate climbing gear and general physical fitness---that I should be able to do this one.

Hell, I have to do this one.  I’ve been to Moshi.  I’ve stared at the mountain, and it has stared right back at me, taunting me from on high with its snow-capped arrogance and utter remoteness.  I must conquer it, or else turn in my Tanzania card and relinquish all rights to my manhood.  I'm a young man of means in my twenties, with nothing to lose and everything to prove... did you really think I was going to let that happen?

In any case, I doubt I’ll be writing in here until after the event.  I’ll see you guys after I’m done!

Contract Extension, New Teachers, and How to Make Homemade Gunpowder

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about site, and since I’ve pretty much been doing nothing but chill here at Boys since April, I figure it’s about time I threw an update out there to keep the folks back home informed on all-things-Paul.  I mean, hey, I owe it to my fans, don’t I?

Again, because none of these events are really related to each other, I’m opting for another vignette-style post.  It’s a crutch, I know, but it works.  Plus, with the way most internet writing is turning out these days---brief and skim-friendly to suit today’s busy procrastinator---it’d probably be best to keep things short and noteworthy.  It’s not like I’m shooting for a Pulitzer or anything.

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Perhaps the biggest piece of news since the last update is that I’m extending my service here at Songea Boys until the end of the school term in March 2013.  Well, I guess this isn’t new news---extension was always part of the plan---but now I guess it’s more official than before since I’ve (finally) turned in the forms to PC HQ.

There were a number of influencing factors that led me to make this decision, not least among them being the fact that, under the normal schedule, I’d be leaving my school as early as November 2012, abandoning my kids to the fates right before their terminal NECTA examinations.  While it’d be nice to go home and eat hamburgers a little earlier, I’m confident that I wouldn’t be able to do so without being racked with guilt: again, my current Form VI students are the Form Vs I managed to snatch up near the beginning of my service, and I’d really like to see them through the entirety of their secondary school career.  Of course, the unstated agenda of all this is that, one day, when my students are all successful physicists and biologists working in state-of-the-art Tanzanian research labs in the now-famous Ruvuma Technology Corridor, they can look back and say, “I owe it all to that crazy mzungu back in A-level who kept invoking the Second Law of Thermodynamics to describe my own mortality.”  An unrealistic fantasy, yes, but I just really want my kids to know that they had a teacher for two years who genuinely gave a crap about their education, and I feel I can much better accomplish that by finishing out the school term.

Whimsical perspectives of service aside, there were practical considerations as well.  For whatever reason, it seems that PC TZ has been losing interest in the Ruvuma region over the past few years, as neither my sitemate nor I are being replaced, and new education or health/environment volunteers have been few and far between over the course of my service.  Thus, if my school is to find a replacement teacher for me, I need to give them an early heads-up so they can start looking… there’s not really that large a pool of eligible teachers to draw from around here.  In fact, I’m pretty sure my sitemate and I alone represent a significant percentage of the A-level physics teaching staff in the Ruvuma region as a whole (according to last year’s NECTA stats, there are only three schools that teach A-level physics in the entire region, and we represent two of them).  By leaving a little later and informing my headmaster that I’m not getting replaced, I save Songea Boys from a frantic mid-semester scramble to find a new physics teacher, which would mostly likely result in the hasty appointment of some fresh-out-of-Form-VI neophyte who probably got a 20% on his physics NECTA.  My school doesn’t want that, I don’t want that, and I think we’d all be better off I stayed a little while longer.

Lastly, there are selfish reasons for extending.  Going home in November would make me too late for school, too early for applications, and under too tight a period to find any meaningful employment.  By finishing service in March, I’m at least a little closer to the summer school/summer employment market, which will hopefully open up a few more opportunities for me in terms of the ol’ career path.  So yeah, between the choice of working a little bit longer in Tanzania or spending six months as an unemployed 25-year-old living with his parents, I’ve made the easy decision.  Plus, if I extend, I get to do a little free-form traveling after service, and that’s always a good thing.

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In other Songea Boys news, I’ve been (somewhat) relieved of my duties as chief A-level biology instructor this term, as we managed to recruit a new teacher from nearby Chipole Secondary---a nun who apparently did some studying in America once upon a time.  Overall, she’s really nice: her English is great, and she’s definitely more dedicated to her students than the average Songea Boys teacher.  She’s also had me over to her place a few times, and we’ve had some nice conversations about America over chai and boiled magimbi (yams). Perhaps most importantly, though, she’s been helpful in alleviating my workload: teaching Form V and VI physics as well as Form VI biology, not to mention occasionally teaching Form V biology when I had time, was beginning to crush my spirit, and it was getting to the point where I actually was getting seriously depressed in anticipation of our regularly-scheduled exam weeks---grading 450+ exams every couple of months is no picnic.

Despite her help, though, there are some aspects of her teaching style that I find a bit troubling… although, admittedly, they provide some insight into the system I’m working with here.  For one, despite her having been an O-level biology teacher for a few years at Chipole Secondary (and having “majored” in biology back in her seminary in Kansas City, where she graduated, or something), she’s really not qualified to teach high school biology, at least by American standards: she doesn’t know what atoms are, she has serious issues understanding how modern genetics works, and she’s a devout creationist (like, “Adam-and-Eve-in-the-Garden-of-Eden-5000-years-ago” devout… she’s a nun, after all).  I mean, I didn’t even think you could pass biology without knowing what atoms were, much less make a career of teaching it at the magnet A-level secondary school in a major province in a nation of 40 million people.  What’s fortunate is that she recognizes her lack of expertise in the subject, and she’s asked me to give her private tutoring sessions to help her review the material… it’s a shame, though, that after a number of such sessions over the past few months, it’s become apparent that she really just needs to go back to school (well, that, or pick a different line of work).  I’ll give her some credit: she does seem to really want to learn the material and she is working hard (well, hard for Songean) to gain a general level of competency.  I just don’t know if it’ll be enough to ensure a high level of biology tuition at Boys for years to come.

Another problem is that, again, while she’s nice and fairly dedicated, she’s just so… Tanzanian.  I’m sorry, I love Tanzania and the Tanzanian people, but there really is a lack of independent thought in Tanzanian culture: Tanzanians are the type of people who will spend 12 hours a day every day lugging sacks of maize up a hill on their backs but won’t spend 6 hours one day designing/building a wheelbarrow and 6 hours every other day doing the same chore for less energy.  The same principle---that is, lack of critical thinking and disregard for individual ingenuity---applies to the education system here, and despite the time our new biology teacher has ostensibly spent getting an education in America, she remains an unmistakable product of a Tanzanian public school education.  As a result, she---like most Tanzanian teachers I know---sticks unquestioningly to the MoE-approved syllabus (despite the syllabus’ flagrant omissions and her lack of understanding of the material in general) and champions the classic “learning-through-blindly-copying” approach to higher education.  Yes, she “studies” biology for three hours a day, but I’ve seen her notes, and all she does is literally transcribe her biology textbook onto a piece of paper, which she then proceeds to transcribe verbatim on the blackboard during class the next day.  Thus, while I’m constantly badgering my kids with annoying, theme-oriented questions during my biology classes (“So, we’ve talked a bit about the differences between arthropods and vertebrates.  But why do you think arthropods tend to be smaller than vertebrates?  Why aren’t we getting eaten alive by giant spiders as we speak?!”), she spends most of her classes writing down the eleven (and yes, according to NECTA, there are exactly eleven) advantages and disadvantages of flowering plants and making the kids repeat them back to her ad nauseam.

Perhaps the clincher with all this is that, as far as my school is concerned, she outranks me.  Oh, sure, I’ve been at Songea Boys longer and I’ve been working with the A-level syllabus one year longer than she has, but she’s got one more year of overall teaching experience than I do (she’s class of 2008), and she’s a biology teacher, whereas I’m a physics teacher who’s merely dabbling in biology to help the school out.  It doesn’t help that most of the administration doesn’t really know much about biology, so, as far as they’re concerned, she knows more about biology than I do---never mind that, again, she really doesn’t know what atoms are (seriously, she really doesn’t…  I had to tell her what oxygen was and why it is essential for life).  Therefore, whenever an issue comes up between the two of us, we are frequently and dismissively told to “work as a team,” which doesn’t really solve the problem and results in further clashes of interest down the line.  This is especially the case when my supposed “teammate” is constantly trying to get me to do her grading for her or teach her classes because she’s not “comfortable with the material.”  Or when she decides to spontaneously take a sick week and call me at 5am Monday morning to tell me that---surprise---I now have to teach double my periods because she has “malaria.”  Again.  For the third time this term.  Even though it’s cold season.

I’m actually still a bit divided on that issue: do I bite the bullet and teach her classes for the benefit of the students, or do I abandon the students so that she might get in trouble and I teach her a lesson about professionalism and responsibility?  It’s a tough choice.

In the end, though, I’m not going to hate on her too much.  She's a nice person, and she really is more dedicated than most teachers at my school, which is always a good thing.  Moreover, I need to emphasize that I am NOT a model teacher myself: there have been plenty of times I’ve stumbled into a class entirely unprepared and ended up winging it for 80 minutes (I’ve actually gotten remarkably good at that).  I guess this is just part of what happens when you work within a cruddy system: when there’s a dearth of teachers in the country overall, you have to make do with what you’ve got.

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Of all the comparisons to other American institutions, I’d have to say that PC TZ is a lot like high school.  We’ve got our principal (the CD), our deans (the APCDs), and we have four “classes” of PCVs in country at any given time---two classes a year, two years of service.  Moreover, given that we’re mostly a bunch of bewildered, post-baccalaureate twenty-somethings desperately trying to stave off real life by moving to another country for two years, I’d say our general maturity level ranges somewhere between 9^th grade and freshmen orientation week in college.  So there’s that as well.

Going with this analogy, my class would currently be the “rising seniors” of PC TZ, as the health/environment class before us has just started leaving to return home to America (or extend their contracts as super-seniors).  Therefore, after they’re gone, my class and I will enjoy three glorious months of being the kings and queens of Peace Corps High before we too move on with our lives and bequeath our coolness to the next class below us.  In the end, it’s all part of the wonderful, never-ending cycle that is Peace Corps.

So, given that the 2012 cycle of PC TZ has started and the newbies have arrived, I was summoned to go do a hands-on science training with our current prefrosh earlier this month.  On the whole, I’d say it was pretty fun: the new group seems like a pretty solid bunch, and although we’re not getting any of them down here in Ruvuma (total bummer… thanks a lot, Peace Corps admins), I’m sure they’ll all have happy, productive services at their respective sites in the near future.  Here’s hoping our session was helpful (and maybe even inspirational?) enough to get them started.

What I liked best about the week up in Moro was that it was pretty much a non-stop geek-out.  There were three of us PCVs from my class and one PCV from the new (2011) class, and with the four of us representing the three major disciplines of science (biology, chemistry, and physics), we were tasked with introducing the new (2012) class to the so-called “Shika kwa Mikono Initiative”, a PC- and MoE-sponsored project designed to encourage low-income schools to use locally available materials to ghetto their way through the NECTA syllabus.  As bootleg as it may sound, it’s true: with patience, perseverance, and a little low-tech ingenuity, it’s amazing what you can engineer out of a bunch of seemingly random garbage, and you can pretty much set up a fully-functional biology, chemistry, or physics lab for ~1/10 the cost of buying everything directly from the science supply stores.

Thus, upon our arrival in Morogoro in early July, we were essentially given a wad of cash and instructed to go downtown and buy whatever local materials we needed to recreate common NECTA practicals.  What’s funny is that, if you’ve spent any time with science nerds, you’d know that this is roughly equivalent to handing a bunch of kindergarteners $500 and setting them loose at a Toys-R-Us.  So yeah, we went a little wild over the next two days.

Granted, as a physics guy, my shopping list was pretty lame (rock + string = pendulum!), but I got a lot of joy out of some of the more random crap we bought: I managed to get a hold of a computer-murdering 25-W speaker magnet and some VCR guts for physics, we scored some 15-molar NaOH solution for chemistry and biology (which we promptly mixed with some 5-molar battery acid to “test it out”… bad idea), we literally cleaned out a traditional medicine store for their cheap CuSO₄ and sulfur, and I bought my first packet of urinal cakes ever (for the NECTA physics practical where you freebase them over a charcoal stove… no joke).  I gotta say, it was probably one of the cooler shopping sprees I’ve done in recent memory.

And, of course, no geek week would be complete without explosions, and we did our best to hold true to this mantra during PST.  Because we were spending our 4^th of July in Moro and exploding hydrogen gas is for little girls, we opted for something a little bigger this year---making homemade gunpowder and setting it on fire.  As it turns out, gunpowder is actually incredibly easy to make: all you need is fertilizer (specifically, KNO₃), sulfur, and charcoal dust, all of which are in plentiful supply in TZ.  There are a few minor steps involving grinding, boiling, and drying the powder, but it’s nothing that can’t be accomplished in an evening with a few basic tools… we managed to get by with a standard wooden mortar and pestle (kinu and mtwangio), some gauze, a charcoal stove, a thin, aluminum sufuria (cooking pot), and a little elbow grease.

It’s funny: every time we do a hands-on science training session in Moro, it looks like we’re operating out of a meth lab… this time, I think we finally graduated to “domestic terrorist hideout”: imagine a dimly-lit concrete room containing a few scruffy PCVs in dirty clothes, all of whom are hunched over their respective preparation stations, vigorously grinding, stirring, or drying some suspicious-looking black paste onto pre-prepared racks (read: flipchart paper).  Yeah, I’d be thinking the same thing.

Also, let me just add that it’s a bit unnerving squatting over a red-hot charcoal stove, whisking a rapidly-drying pot full of highly-combustible gunpowder.  Don’t try this at home, kids.

Oh, and one last description of the maturity level of our little operation: over the course of the evening, we discovered that you could throw KNO­₃ directly into the fire, whereupon it would immediately burst into a shower of sparks and make a loud “woosh” sound.  This started a combustion-frenzy, where we proceeded to throw handfuls of the fertilizer directly into the charcoal stove while periodically shouting “WIZARD!”.  I think we went through half the bag… yeah, we’re grown-ups.  If anything, the numerous scorch marks we left around the house are testament to that fact.

But yeah, the gunpowder worked, and we had a pretty cool opening to our session where we set all of it on fire in front of the main conference hall.  Apparently, that stuff burns pretty hot: we put our fireworks on a large trash can, and we melted a giant hole in it.  Go figure.

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Not much else to report.  Teaching is teaching, work is work, and we have a COS (close of service) conference coming up in two weeks.  Man… I know that with my extension I’ve got another 7 months of TZ-time left, but I can’t help but feel that this crap is almost over.  Before I know it, I’m gonna be back in America.  Scary.

And since I don't have any relevant pictures for this post, here's a cute picture of one of my dogs.  Enjoy.