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.

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?

Some Minor Updates, and a Formal Introduction to My Site

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.

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.

As for me, I wake up, go to school, teach, go home, play concertina/exercise, cook dinner, skip bed, and stay up all night typing up some dorky blog post.  And you know what?  I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

The Peace Corps Training Chronicles: Part 3

So... another update.  A couple things have happened since I last wrote: there was a cool trip up Mt. Morogoro on the 17th, followed by an awesome safari in Mikumi National Park this weekend.  It's not really worth describing these trips without pictures, so I'll try to upload some whenever I have time.

In any case, life has kind of settled in training.  Teaching, while originally a bit daunting, has slowly become easier, and I have gradually started incorporating my Kiswahili into the lessons to ensure that the kids get it.  Cheese, while originally the holy grail of food, has slowly become more accessible as I figure out ways to procure it.  Dagaa (sardines), while originally intolerable, well... still are kind of gross, but they aren't as bad as they used to be.

Regardless, here are a few tidbits about my life in Tanzania at the moment:

1) Apparently, I drink an ungodly amount of water.  I go through about one 10-gallon ndoo (bucket) every few days, which means that I usually have to spend a full night boiling water whenever I want to fill it up again.  This is a tremendous pain in the ass, since I have to spend hours hunting around for scrapwood to fuel the fire, not to mention hours boiling enough to last me for a little while).  Moreover, the water filter doesn't really get everything out... what this means is that I've effectively been drinking mud for the past few weeks.  Sterile mud, but mud nonetheless.

2) I feel as if we're in a never-ending, losing struggle against the relentless vumbi (dust) in the area.  There are no windows in the house---only screens---and the wind here blows constantly, meaning that nearly everything I own (not to mention me) is covered in a thin layer of rust-colored dust 24/7.  In other words, I am filthy: I wake up filthy, teach class filthy, hang out with friends filthy, and go to sleep filthy.  Whenever I mop my room, it remains clean for about 45 minutes before more dust blows in.  Whenever I wash my clothes, they get dirty again almost immediately when I hang them out to dry.  Bucket baths, while an efficient use of water, are laughably inadequate to clean all the dirt off my body.  I don't know, but there's something so beautifully ironic about cleaning a dirty room with dirty water, or picking out dead spiders in the water you shower with (or later boil into drinking water).  There's really not much I can do about this... I guess the solution is simply to alter my perception of "clean."

3) Every time I enter or exit my house, I have to pass through a gauntlet of barking, snarling dogs.  Tanzanians tend to mistreat dogs, either by locking them in a tiny shed all day or beating them whenever they're around.  Interestingly, Tanzanians are also deathly afraid of dogs, meaning that many of the better-off families keep them around as guard dogs to deter thieves.  My family is pretty well-to-do---their house is in a walled compound---so every day they let loose the eight or so dogs they own to prowl the premesis to ward off criminals.  Unfortunately for me, the dogs DO NOT like me, and I've had some pretty narrow escapes whenever the pack has found me, be it by vaulting over the gate or sneaking out an opening in the back part of the wall when they aren't looking.  I've recently found that screaming obsceneties at them in Kiswahili while wildly waving my backpack around kind of works, although doing this every morning is getting a bit tedious.

4) If I've learned one thing this week, it's that cheese that doesn't need to be refrigerated is not to be trusted.

5) Occasionally speaking in Kiswahili during class will do wonders for teaching here.  I'm currently teaching pressure in solids to Form 1 students, and I've been trying for a week-and-a-half to drive home the point that a large area means small pressure.  Just yesterday, I finally got fed up and shouted, "AREA KUBWA, PRESSURE KIDOGO."  Instantly, everyone laughed, and---more importantly---understood the concept... I can see now that it's really the language barrier that's holding these kids back, not the material.  In either case, it was awesome to have a connection with the kids, and they're really starting to grow on me.  I really have to do better at memorizing their names.

Anyways, life is good here... this is really starting to get kind of fun.  I know there are going to be lows here as well, but for now, I'm really enjoying myself.  Can't wait till I find out my placement next week!