Scenario 1:
I look out the window of the staff room to see a whole class of students running around one of the school buildings while the teacher stands at the door and prompts them to keep running. “Faster, faster!” The last girl comes around and I hear the teacher say in Swahili, “Fat girl, run! Run, fat girl! hahahahaha”
Scenario 2: I walk into a Form 1 classroom to count desks and chairs (more inventory). I notice that there are remnants of the day’s English lesson on the board. The first column talks about giving commands and I read the examples given. The second column is about statements and I, again, read the examples given. Everything is fine and dandy and then I get to the column on predicates. The second example: “My mother is beating me.”
Scenario 3: Every day, I walk out of my house and there are two little girls under the age of two walking around by themselves, unsupervised, with no adult in sight.
Eight months ago, I would have been appalled by each of these scenarios, and you’re probably thinking “ummmmm… YEAH.” My response now is a small chuckle as I just turn and walk away. Do I sound horrible? I wonder how I’ll do when I get back to the States.
Scenario 1: The girl the teacher was talking to thought it was funny. Not the “I’m going to laugh so that no one can see that I’m hurt” funny but legitimately funny. I could see her beaming whites from across the courtyard. Being fat here is not considered bad. Actually, there are many that are mighty proud of their large size. My guess is that it’s because large is harder to attain here but it could also be due to the amount of respect elders are given and elders tend to be larger than the youth. Still pondering…
Scenario 2: It is completely acceptable, no expected, that mothers will beat their children. It’s defended in the same way spanking is in America. The most common form of punishment in schools is hitting students on the hand with a stick and it happens everyday. Students actually prefer this to other forms of punishment as it’s over in a couple of seconds. Another option includes having students kneel with their arms in the air for extended amounts of time. The thing is, in Tanzania, you can’t use things like cleaning as a punishment because they do that everyday anyway (no janitors and yet the school is, for the most part, spotless). Detention doesn’t work either because they spend most of their day sitting in a classroom with only their notebooks and nothing else to entertain them. When punishing students, you either have to get creative and put in a lot of extra effort (but remember, five teachers, 500 students) or you have to resort to the traditional corporal style. Every single American is guilty of falling back on something they’ve always done instead of trying to think of something new. This is no different from that. I doubt that anyone in that Form 1 class even thought twice about the statement “My mother is beating me” and, in the Tanzanian context, there is no reason they should.
Scenario 3: Two little girls under the age of two running around here is perfectly fine because everyone knows each other and everyone watches all of the children as if they’re their own. Tanzania is like one big happy family. Everyone helps, everyone shares, and everyone is, for the most part, pleasant (every family has a few crazies, of course). If the kids fall, they get back up and dust themselves off. No one is going to coddle them, sorrrry. Guess what? Children cry for a maximum of 30 seconds before they're playing again. No one has to worry about kidnapping because everyone knows everyone and what they’re doing every second of the day. For example, another PCV stopped by my site and we decided for dinner we would have a beer with dinner. When we bought the beer, I didn’t see anyone I knew. The next day, my Tanzanian friend says “So you had beer last night?” Turns out the person we had bought the beer from told her we had come by. Everyone knows everything aaaaand… they talk about it. They expect you to know too. "You didn't see me come home at midnight last night? I went to Masoko." "Nope, sorry, I chose to sleep rather than stare out my window waiting for you to get home." As for running away, these two girls, even with free reign, stay very close to home. My guess is that it’s because there’s not much reason to leave. Their families, friends, and nourishment are right here. Why leave when it’s so fun to be with all these people that love them?
My aim in writing these things is not to get you to go “oh my gosh, Africa sounds horrible!” There’s enough of that already and it’s off base as Africa, especially Tanzania, is a phenomenal place full of happy, competent, intelligent, and beautiful people. My goal in writing these things is to try and give you a dose of the perspective change I’m getting while I’m here. Everything we do, everything we believe, everything we say, everything we are as a culture is the product of our society and environment. Not only do I get the opportunity to see a new culture, but I have also been given the chance to really study ours. While I’ve been here, I feel like I’ve been putting everything our culture and society does under a microscope. I analyze it, chew on it, kick it around, and then I think about it some more. For example, why is it so inappropriate for us to say hi to a stranger on the street? Why don’t people just stop by your house to say hi? Why do we get so defensive when someone feels sorry for us? Why do we get so defensive, just in general? I’m not sure, yet, how to put all of my analyses into words but I’ll let you know if I figure it out. It’s mostly just a lot of questions and it may stay that way. I also, of course, have even more questions about Tanzania that I will probably never be able to answer or understand but I’m continuing to learn anyway and we’ll see where it takes me. Anyways, all I ask of you now that you’ve read this is that you take these snapshots of Tanzanian life and try not to judge, as everything is dependent on context, but instead appreciate how wonderful it is that this world is full of all kinds of people and cultures for us to learn from and enjoy. WOOT!
Anyways… enough of that and onto BOOKS! Books?! Yes, books. I. Love. Books. Novels, nonfiction, fiction, encyclopedias, textbooks, etc. Probably the result of parents that read me stories growing up and grandparents that took advantage of every chance they had to give me books. Should I also mention that my parents’ house is overflowing with books and my grandparents have floor to ceiling bookshelves in addition to their very own book house? What about the fact that my mom trades books with my aunts and grandma by the caseload? Tack onto that a family full of curious minds and what you get is absolutely no hope for me whatsoever. Even to this day, I get books for Christmas, birthdays, days that end in “y,” etc. I love it. As a teacher in Tanzania, I’m realizing how valuable those books REALLY are. Until this week, my students were entirely dependent on the notes I wrote on the board for their learning. Can you imagine going to school and your only resource is the blackboard? This is in a school without enough teachers to teach all of the subjects on their national exams. If they wanted to learn more or had questions about math or physics, they had to come talk to me. That means going to the office, walking up to the foreign teacher, and either asking a question in your close-to-non-existent English or asking in Swahili while she looks at you with a deer-caught-in-the-headlights look as she is basically a two-year-old when it comes to your language. A little intimidating, to say the least or maybe more work than it’s worth...
When I walked into the office on Tuesday, there were boxes and boxes of books. Eighty BRAND NEW math, physics, and chemistry books for both Form 3 and Form 4. That’s enough for each student to have their own copy for the year! And when I say brand new, I mean, like, published in 2011. I couldn’t believe it. Then I started actually looking through the books and they’re GOOD books. People from Tanzania teamed up with people from South Carolina State University and, with funding from USAID, fixed Tanzania’s math and science books. The typos are gone, the information is laid out clearly, and they have indexes!!! The improvement is 150% and I can give one to each student. No more writing every single math problem I want them to do for homework on the board (you have no idea how much time this will save). I can ask my students to open their books and look at page 64. “See that picture of the ear? The sound waves go through there and are amplified by… blah blah blah.” Can YOU draw a good picture of the inside of the ear on a blackboard? Turns out I can’t. Nor can I draw a good sound wave no matter how many times I try. The most important thing of all this, though, is that they have an opportunity to find out how useful books can be in learning. I’m excited to show them and hope to eventually teach them how to use the internet for research as well. The possibilities are endless! For some reason, my students don’t seem to be as excited as I am. Weird.
Anyways, my love for books has obviously grown a little deeper.
Happy February!
*LOTS of books
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