Every Teacher’s Worst Nightmare (by Courtney)

I am not sure what every teacher’s worst nightmare is but I am sure everyone has one. It is the nightmare that keeps you up the night before the first day of school. The other day I lived through my worst nightmare. The first day I went to the preschool the teacher was late. I sat down on the front step and ten preschools came running at me. They sat down as close as they could to me holding on to me any way they could. I had 20 eyes looking at me expectantly. I tried asking them what the liked to play. But all I got was blank looks. I tried asking them if they knew any songs. Blank looks again. There was no teacher in sight and I had ten 3-6 year olds waiting for me to do something. Every teacher has a tool bag of tricks and I couldn’t use any of them since I didn’t know the language. So I did the next thing I could think of which was to sing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” As soon as I started singing all the kids chimed in. I was saved for at least a few moments. The teacher arrived and all the kids filed into the room. I sat in the back and watched. There were 15 students sitting in rows. The teacher started reviewing numbers in English. After 20 minutes the teacher disappeared for 10 minutes. What do you think happens when you leave a room full of 3 year olds alone for 10 minutes? They start running around, yelling, hitting each other, and crying . Before things got too out of hand the teacher returned. Since it was my first day I didn’t know if this was how things normally went. After another 20 minutes the teacher disappeared again. The kids had been sitting for an hour now repeating numbers in English. Three year olds have an attention span of about 10 minutes. I figured out that the teacher was leaving to go teach the other class since the other teacher wasn’t there that day. I didn’t know how to ask the teacher if she wanted my help since she didn’t speak English. So once again the kids started running around, yelling, crying, and hitting each other. The teacher in me kicked in and I tried to get them to sit down and stop hitting each other. But how much can you do when the students don’t know you, they have been sitting for way to long, and you don’t speak the language? Not much. All I knew was that I had woken up and was in my worst nightmare. Since that day things have gotten better at the preschool but it is a challenge. The teachers have no official training and the kids sit for the entire class repeating words out loud in English. Not my idea of an ideal education but it is very hard for me to help the teachers or teach the kids with out having a common language. Each day we try again and each day I get a little closer to feeling like I am a capable teacher.

Pictures

Here are some more pictures of of our life in Songea!

Felix (our house mate and the head of the community center) and Courtney showing off Courtney's new found hobby of crocheting.

Arthur helping our the neighbor get a truck unstuck from our neighbor's yard after picking up bricks that he makes.

Courtney with our afternoon soccer buddies on our front porch

Our Neighbors

We thought we would introduce you to our neighbors. There is King George, King Henry, and King Mzungu. They kindly wake us up every morning between 6:00 and 6:30. King George has much nicer crow but we do not know how to explain to King Henry that we would prefer if King George give us our wake up call. Most afternoons they bring their families to our front yard for afternoon foraging. If you have watched barn yard behaviors of chicken families you would know what makes a good rooster. Both King George and King Henry are good guardians of the roost. They lead their brood to good foraging grounds to hunt for worms, ants, or anything else that they might find. They might even be so kind as to bring a worm right to one of their ladies if they find a good one. King George has a habit of wandering away from his family but as soon as he hears a call of distress his head lowers, body tilts forward, and with feet flying out behind him he makes a bee line to his family. It is a very funny sight to see a chicken run. These birds are truly free range chickens and can breed (naturally with no help of humans!) with any chicken they so choose. The outcome is some very beautiful color combinations (and tasty flavor when they become kuku supu). Luckily for these birds we have made the fatal mistake of naming them which will make it very hard for us to bring them to our table. Welcome to the neighborhood!

King Henry

Time

Time is very different here. There are many different types of time and there is lots of it.  There is more than we know what to do with.  That might seem weird to those of you at home who wish there were 30 hours in the day but here we some times wish there were 15 hours in the day.  Everything moves a lot slower here. Having one meeting a day that lasts an hour is having a lot to do.  But what do you do with the other 23 hours in the day?  That is limited when you are in a very rural setting and you don't speak the language. We read, write, crochet, sleep a lot, but that can only take up so much time.  People here have a very different concept of time. There is local time. If you have a meeting at 10:00 that really might mean 11:00 or even tomorrow.  So to accomplish something that would take a day at home might take a week or even longer here. Then there is Swahili time. Their time starts at sunrise and ends at sundown.  So 7:00 am is 1:00. 12:00 pm is 6:00.  It can be very confusing when asked what time is it.  Then there is US time. Those of you on the east coast are 7 hour behind. This can make it challenging to set up a time to talk. Then there is Courtney time. My watch is broken and I cannot reset the time so my watch is always one hour behind.  There is so much time that we spend half of it trying to figure out what time it is. 

PIctures

Here are some pictures from the last two weeks. We will post more next week. Enjoy!

Our afternoon soccer buddies and a wonderful African sunset

Courtney with pre-school kids

Arthur playing soccer

Courtney sitting in our room

Courtney on the porch of the house

Local Food for Blog Action Day

What does it mean to be an environmentalist these days? Being socially conscious? Being a hippy? Winning the Nobel Peace Prize? Eating all local and organic? Not all environmentalists receive prizes in Stokholm, but even Al Gore must sometimes choose between local and organic food. Which is better: the local apple grown with pesticides or the organic apple that travels thousands of miles from New Zealand? Today is blog action day, a day where all bloggers post about the environment. We think that being an environmentalist means being more connected to the land. So today, we will describe our adventure with getting food and eating it in Songea.

Coming from New York City and Boston, we are used to being able to get anything we want at any time of year from any where in the world. But we generally had no idea where our food came from, who grew it, or what it took to ship it to us. Now we are living in Songea, Tanzania. Our food choices are limited, but we know that everything is local. The person selling it is the same person who grew it, and we most likely walked by her field on the way to the market. When we hand over our money we know where it is going. Food is cheaper, but the farmers get all of the profit, and nothing goes to big corporations, shipping companies, or super markets. Do we miss all those choices of the super market? We would be lying if we said no. But the lack of food variety, and the fact that it’s all local, has taught us to appreciate the labor involved, and to appreciate the growing seasons a lot more. We also know that it’s fresh, and we know that is tastes great. In a month, avocados and mangos will be in season here and we can’t wait for them. Because we can watch it grow and know when it will be ripe enough to pick, that first avocado will taste better than any avocado we have ever eaten. So maybe there is something to be said for not having everything you want at all times. Maybe the strawberry that flew halfway around the world and was picked before it was ripe is worth leaving on the shelf, because we’re willing to wait for the juicy flavorful ones in the middle of the summer.

Moving to Tanzania has made eating local a lot easier for us, though only because it forced us to do so. But when we get back, we plan to put more effort into shopping the local farmers’ markets and figuring out what is actually in season, and what had to be shipped on an airplane to reach us. So while we’re waiting for the avocados and mangos to ripen, see if you can eat local, too, and let us know how it goes. We hope that you find some surprisingly yummy new foods. And when you do find some, think of us in Songea, eating our rice and beans for the next month.

Songea

We have made it to Songea Tanzania.  We have been in the country a week and it is already an adventure.  We spent two days in Dar es Salaam buying bus tickets, trying to arrange visas, and arranging for our trip to Songea.  A good friend of MCW is Ambassador Mwakawago. He was the Tanzanian ambassador to the UN for many years and then ran all UN programs in Sierre Leone for two years. He is now retired and living in Dar. We went to his house for dinner to help him break fast (it is Ramadan).  We had wonderful transitional food and tried our hardest not to do something culturally inappropriate.  The next morning at 5:15 we were off to the largest bus station in East Africa.  We manage to get on the ride bus and we were off to Songea. The bus was new, the road was good, and we saw elephants and giraffes out the window on the ride there!  The bad part is it took 15 hours!  Felix (he runs the community center) met us at the bus station and helped us get to the community center which is out side of town.  Songea is the largest town in southern Tanzania. The town has a market that is open everyday and an open air market on Sundays. But there is no grocery store or any store you would find back home.  You either buy it in the market or in one of the many small "stores" which consists of three walls and a counter in front in a space of 10 ft x 6ft.  We live at the community center which is in the town of Kipera about a 45 minute walk outside of town.  We live in a house with Felix which consists of two bed rooms, a common room, a kitchen, and two choos (bathroom - aka hole in the ground).  The kitchen consists of shelves and a table. The bed rooms have a bed, a small book shelf , and a mosquito net. The common room has a table, three chiars, and a desk.  That is our new home! On the community center is two classrooms for the pre-school, a dental center (which has all the equipment but isn't open right now), a couple homes where community members live, a community center, a library (no books though), and a computer room (only two work I think), and lots of kids who want to play soccer.  That is it for now! We will post pictures and more about life here in Kipera later.