New Classroom!

I’ve moved! To a much bigger classroom! I love love love all the new space. It is so much more light filled and colorful and I can actually have the kids work in small groups in different parts of the classroom. There are a few downsides though: I am much farther away from Sofia and Lisa now I don’t see them hardly at all. And the classroom is in the Infants building so we are with all of the teeny tiny kids. It's not perfect yet....still a work in progress!

All those woven baskets I have, (aka the basis of my organizational system) I bought from one of the mamas that sells them on the side of the street. She originally wanted 12,000 shillings for each one but I worked her down to 8,000 (roughly 4 or 5 dollars) This seriously took about 20 minutes and a lot of grumpiness on her part, but now that we have the deal I don't have to bargain any more. She actually greets me with a smile now when I show up at her stand, which is a big improvement...

On Duty Weekend

So I survived the dreaded duty weekend, but just barely. Friday night I went out (I couldn’t give up my whole weekend!) with Kelly and Becca to Colobus Club, a bar that is made up of one room for dancing and one room for karaoke. Becca is obsessed with karaoke so we spent the majority of our time in that room.

Anyway so we get back at a decent time, 1am I think, but then I have to get up at 7:30 in the morning to supervise the boarders eating breakfast. They had to eat a little bit earlier than usual because after breakfast we headed over to ISM (another international school about 5 minutes down the road) In order to get to ISM we had to all pile in the bus.

Funny thing about road safety in Tanzania, there is none. We piled 30 some kids on a little bus blatantly meant for 20 people at most. Seatbelts are nonexistent. There were kids sitting/standing in the front seat next to the driver; no seatbelts. The only thing from then and the road was the windshield. There were children in other children’s laps. Children perched on the back of chairs, standing in the aisles, sitting on top of boxes of juice and sandwiches. So basically if we hit anything more than a mini-pothole, there would be casualties. Luckily there were no mishaps and we made it to ISM.

Sports day consisted of students from 4 or 5 different school competing in track and field activities like the 100m, 200m, 400, 800, relays, discus, javelin, long jump, high jump, etc. For most of the day I hung out under the St. Cons awning and amused the children who were there to watch. The day extremely hot and dusty and every time anybody moved, a little puff od dust would wash over nearby people.

There were little grey and brown lizards everywhere. I found them really cute. They were roughly 3 inches long and caused some amusement when a few ran up one of the male teachers pant leg.

St. Constantine’s kids are super good at sports and so we ended up sweeping almost all of the awards. There were awards for Under 10 girls, Under 10 boys, Under 12 girls, Under 12 boys, Under 16 girls, Under 16 boys, Open girls and Open boys. St. Cons won all of these awards except two of them and we won the whole thing by almost 200 points. It was almost embarrassing how much we won; the kids loved it though.

Finally sports day ended and all the children made it back safely. I was hot and dusty and begged off to take a shower. After that we kinda puttered around until dinner.

After began my camping saga. The boarders had made it known that they wanted to go camping on the school grounds. So I took it upon myself to organize this. I has passed out a sign up sheet beforehand (originally I had planned to only take primary students but then the secondary kids kinda revolted and desperately wanted to come; though I was terrified that there was going to be some inappropriate behavior and someone was going to end up pregnant or something) So I ended up with 39 kids.

After dinner I took them all out to the field to set up the tents (this was the worst part) none of them had any clue what to do. There was only me and like two other teachers there and so there were children wandering around with tent poles and tent covers blowing away not to mention the sun was going down pretty swiftly. Somehow we got the tents up and Jose came by to make a fire for the kids to roast marshmallows on.

One thing that really surprised me was how many kids had no clue what a marshmallow was. Even the secondary boys had never experienced them. And none of the children had ever roasted them on sticks over a fire before. They ended up absolutely loving it; we went through soooo many bags of marshmallows.

After that I made them all sit in a circle around me and a lantern and sing songs. I figured the secondary students would think this part of the night stupid and I even gave them the option of not participating but I honestly think they liked it the most. I led them in the Tarzan song (a BIG favorite; One of the secondary girls told me that students were singing it in groups all over the dorms the next morning) We did Singing in the Rain (how very appropriate: warning: foreshadowing) and then I did the improvised skit Emily’s Candy Store. The students were soo into it and really had a great time.

At this point the other teachers left so it was just me and one dorm master, Jackson, with the 39 kids.

After singing I shoved the primary students into their tents, but let secondary hang out in little groups in the middle of the tent circle. They were really well behaved but I stayed on top of them when they decided to play a truth or dare game that involved spinning a phone in the middle fo a circle and whomever the phone flashlight landed on was the truth or darer. (Liiiitle too much like spin the bottle for the game to be kosher) I then shoved them into their tents at around 10 and settled down into a chair in the middle of the tent circle to read my kindle and watch for escaping children.

At around midnight it started to drizzle. But then it stopped, I set up a tent for myself in the middle just in case it started up again. And oh did it start up again. At 1am it started to downpour and it didn’t stop until 6am.

Now some of the tents are like 10 years old and lack any type of waterproofing. Not to mention that there were three children in all of the tents so people were leaning up against the sides of the tents.

At around 3am I hear a plaintive, “Mees? Mees?” One of the boys tents full of three 9 year olds has entirely flooded, I mean a couple of inches of water in the bottom. I have no clue how they slept as long as they did. So I walked them back to the dorms and their beds. From about 3am until 5am I ended up walking back a total of 8 children for flooded tents, but all of the rest stayed.

At 6am I woke up the rest of the tents and even though all but one tent had water issues there were still children that didn’t want to leave. I had to promise a whole bunch of them that we would camp in the field again soon.

Sunday was rough; though the rest of my team let me sleep from the time when I woke the kids up until lunch time.

And sorry no pictures.......

Sports Day

A couple of weeks ago, one whole Friday was set aside for sports day. The whole school is split up into houses. Delphi, Olympia, Sparta, and Athens (Greek cities because the school was founded by the Greeks in Arusha) Each person gets a shirt with their teams name on the back and in the team color. (Delphi is red, Athens is blue, Olympia is yellow, and Sparta is green)

TO begin all the teams congregate and begin their team cheering (just generic chants. Nothing nearly as creative as the Comfort Zone Camp cheers) Then everyone marches around the field cheering and waving their team flags. Once everyone is settled in their team areas the sports begin. There were races (100m all the way up to the 800m) the long jump, high jump, discus, shot put, tug of war, and relays. The energy was ramped up pretty much all day.

All of the teachers had jobs Kelly was in charge of judging high jump, (And see if you can spot her in a neon green wig, haha) I was one of the teachers in charge of the teams. I’m on Delphi so I had to make sure that all of the Delphi kids got to their events and that they weren’t getting out of control. (The seating area for the teams was right up against the track so every now and then random students would wander out onto the track while people were racing. Part of my job was controlling that)

Almost the whole day I had a little shadow. Esme, one of the students in year 3 (though not in my class) decided to stick to me like glue. She followed me around everywhere and for part of the day I was carrying her around piggy-back. We even ate our lunches on the field together. She is such a sweetheart! And now whenever she sees me around campus (which is a lot) she gets really excited.

My favorite event of the whole day was the tug-of-war. All of the kids got super pumped for it (even the older ones who were wayyy too cool to cheer). Some of the battles were really intense! There was one match between us (Delphi) and Olympia that went on and on and back and forth (to everyone’s delight) until eventually Olympia yanked away the win.

By the end of the day I was sunburnt and tired but I had a good time.

School!

The first weeks of school were super, super busy. Those that I’ve talked to, know that I spend the majority of my time either teaching or lesson planning so that I can teach some more. Both Sofia and Lisa were teaching other grades previously so none of us have a store of lesson plans.

My class is good by American standards, especially when you take into consideration that I have 16 students shoved into a classroom half the size of other classrooms (Jose has decided to move my classroom. I have mixed emotions; delighted that I will get a full size classroom, but sad that I will be moving away from Sofia and Lisa. We are always in and out of each other’s classrooms to distribute things or chat) But by Year 3 (ages 6-8) standards my kids are the hellions. They don’t mean to be but I’ve got a few strong personalities.

One of my boys CANNOT stay in his seat/hold still to save his life. I’ve got two chatty girls that DO NOT stop talking, EVER. One of my kids likes to pick fights, etc. Personalities. Maria, the primary music teacher has had issues with them, a few of the other teachers have told me that they’re a handful.

One of the major irritations for me is a very Tanzanian habit. When the students want my attention, instead of raising their hand, they each call out “Mees! Mees!” Imagine a whole bunch of baby birds chirping Miss (but with a Tanzanian accent it’s Mees) all around you in a room that echoes. NOT OK. That is something we have been hard-core working on; Raising your hand quietly. I don’t answer to “Mees”!

All of my kids are African; I have Tanzanians, Ugandans, Rwandans, and Kenyans. I have more girls in my class but just by a little. I also have a very wide range of ability levels. Some of my students are still reading books with two lines on each page and one is at the point of chapter books.

Despite their faults, they are all pretty affectionate. One of my girls brought me in a rose the other day. I have two that regularly give me back massages at lunch and other students clean up my dishes at meals. Two of my kids are borders and so I see them at all the meals. They are both really sweet and love eating with me and Kelly.

It’s funny being a teacher on campus. It’s almost like being a minor celebrity. In the first few weeks I would be walking around and hear children whisper to each other, “That’s Miss Fano”. Other times, children I had never met would call out “Hello, Miss Fano!” It’s really funny to walk by a table of children, because then they all call out in a little chorus “Hi Miss!” and “Hi, Miss Fano!”

My popularity is really helped by my neon blue slap watch. The kids here are super fascinated with it. They all know what they are because a few of the students have them. I’ve seen a neon pink/purple on one of the secondary girls and one of the Year 6’s had a brown one until he broke the watch face. The little kids love to take it off my arm and put it on their wrists, ankles and heads and the older kids like to slap themselves with it so it curls up.

September 4th, 2011

On Sunday we were finally able to move into our new house! I was originally told that Kelly and I would be living in a two bedroom apartment, but as it turns out the apartment was actually a house. It’s actually really nice. The front window has a view of Mt. Meru!

the view off our front porch

Our neighbors are the primary and secondary principals on one side.

And the other girls on the other side.

The kitchen and the living room are open to each other and it came with all of the furniture (couch, chairs, coffee table, bookshelves, dining table, mini fridge (ours is as big as it gets here. The power can’t handle American sized fridges) and gas stove/electric oven)

Our rooms are enormous in my opinion, much bigger than both my JMU apartment room and my room in Richmond. The room comes supplied with an armoire, a desk, and a bed. The bed for some reason is like a single and seems miniscule in the room. The bed is smaller than both my double at JMU and my day bed at home (which you wouldn’t think would be possible but this bed is considerably shorter) I put up my photo collage!

I love the view out my bedroom window!

The bathroom is very basic toilet, sink, shower head. (I like this shower much better than that strange bath tub with a showerhead and no curtain thing they had going in Berlin.) No storage though.

The house is fabulous! …but there are a few downsides….the floor is straight up concrete, complete with scuffs and paint marks. Also, the dust here comes in and coats it so when you walk across it you get the weird walking on a chalkboard feeling. Our poor maid Gudilla (not how you spell her name) has to mop it everyday.

It was looking pretty bland and the lack of decoration was kinda freaking me out when we first moved in. It took them about a week to give us couch cushions. (Made of some industrial foam stuff that is a very solid rectangle. It does not cushion at all when you sit. It’s the same stuff they choose to make mattresses out of here, haha. But pure exhaustion will make any mattress feel good…)

The other weekend Kelly and I set off to the used market to buy some furnishings. I think this market is called Matumba or Matoomba or at least that is how it’s said. It’s this big row of people selling anything from clothes (some cute ones and good deals) to curtains, bedsheets and shoes.

Our trusty cab driver, Jimmy took us and helped us bargain. Not that Kelly needs help bargaining, she’s much more assertive than I am when it comes to that. We ended up getting:

a gorgeous curtain panel in chocolate brown for the living room. I ended up paying 20,000 shillings for it or 12$. It needed a few alterations and I hung it up that same day.

Bathmats and a shower curtain for the bathroom. A set of three bath mats came to 15,000 shillings or 9$. The curtain Kelly got for 10,000 shillings or 6$ because she bargained the poor man to death. It is a super good curtain from Target that is worth 30$ new. (I know this because I had the same curtain only a different color scheme in my college bathroom) Gudilla washed the mats for us before we set them out.

For my room I picked up a beautiful woven rug that cost me about 20$. Which actually was a rip-off, I should have gotten it for half that price. But they saw the color of my skin and read sucker…and Jimmy wasn’t there at that point. But now we know.

I also got a purple bedsheet for about $3.50 that I cut in half and strung it on my curtain rod in my room. Sometimes the askari’s (the school’s guards) like to creep around back there and I needed a curtain for when I got dressed or changed. It’s looking a lot better now and I feel like I’m finally settling in.

I will definitely feel settled in once I plant some stuff out front. Right now it's all depressing dirt...

September 3rd 2011

To welcome all of the new teachers to the school Jose set up a safari in Tarangire Park for all the newcomers. It’s a 2 hour drive there and we wanted to be at the park pretty early so we got up and met at the front of the school at 4:30 in the morning. (This was difficult for some people because the faculty bbq was the night before and there was, of course, alcohol involved) I think I managed to get to bed around 11pm so I wasn’t too bad.

The safari company, East African Voyage, came to pick us up in the safari cars and we settled in for a long ride. We went through all these little towns on the way and actually got stopped by some kind of police in one of them. (They were guys in normal clothes carrying guns. The driver didn’t seen too distressed so I wasn’t worried) As we got further away the towns turned into Maasai villages surrounded by bush. Every now and then you could see a Maasai warrior walking with his staff. We turned down the road that leads to the park just as the sun was rising and it was absolutely beautiful. My cameras really only got a shallow imitation of how big and colorful it actually was. We turned into the park area and were greeted with a massive baobab tree. ( I love love love these trees. They are so massive and so utterly picturesque that I took tons and tons of baobab pictures.) We got out of the safari cars to stretch our legs and so thesafari dudes could raise up the roof of the car so we would be able to stand up and watch the animals once we got going. Jose warned us to not even stray away from the parking lot here because a few years ago a child from Braeburn (another school in the area) was killed by a leopard just a few feet into the brush.

After a quick potty break we all piled back into our cars and set off. I was sharing a car with Kelly, Maureen and Victoria. The first animals we saw inside the park were gnus, zebras, warthogs, and ostriches. There were animals all around but they were kind far away from the road so it was hard for me to get real good pictures (as I accidentally left my good zoom lens back in Virginia) We drive and drove and drove. We got into the park at 7 or 8 and didn’t end p stopping for lunch until around 1pm. In between we saw impalas, our first elephants, giraffes and lions (including a mama lion with at least two cubs. They were so freakin adorable frolicking around this rock pile. It was very lion king) I also loved seeing the elephants. They were hard to find at first but then it was like they were everywhere.

The terrain is very dynamic. There were flat bits where it was very bush-like and then there were hills and then even places that had small cliffs. At times it was trees, like gigantic baobab trees or marsh or scrub. It’s dry season here so there were many dried river and creek beds.

We finally stopped for lunch at a little outdoor area literally right in the middle of the park. There were no fences or anything so we were wondering what would happen if a lion or leopard decided to join the party. At this point none of us had eaten breakfast and we were practically starving. I think we were all staring a little too hard at the spread of food the safari guys were putting out because they handed us a bunch of bananas and sent us away. (The bananas here are differentfrom the ones in the US. For one thing they are tiny. Usually they are no longer than your middle finger, but they make up for it in taste. They have so much more of a flavor here and much sweeter. The school serves bananas all the time and I love it!)

The company fed us well. They laid out loaves of fresh bread, cheese, some kind of quiche, fresh cut pineapple and watermelon (the school often feeds us this too. The pineapple is super good here, but the watermelon is definitely not as good as what we grow next to our driveway back home) as well as all kinds of cut veggies and cold chicken, potato salad and eggs. It was all really delicious and exactly what we needed.

After lunch we took off again. Tarangire is huge; just to get out of the park from where we had lunch would be two hours. We drove by the marshy area which I think was the most beautiful part. Elephants, zebras, and birds and all kinds of other animals congregated here because of the water. Also, I loved how the ground went from brown dirt, to red clay, to green grass. The color contrast was fabulous. After luch we saw elephants up really close. SO close that we had to be quiet so as not to scare them. At one point I actually ducked back down into the car because the elephant got so so close. (They are massive and slightly frightening when you’re that close) We also saw a wild Kudu, which are very rarely seen, dik diks (cute tiny deer looking things) some hippos, more water boks and a bunch of different kinds of birds.

All along the safari we were fighting off these biting flies (tsetse flies, I believe. Although the guide said they don’t carry sleeping sickness in this area) Those things were obnoxious! They would land on you and nip your skin pretty badly. They could even bite through jeans. I don’t know how this is possible but it really hurts so I know it’s true. Just as we were all grtting really tired and frustrated about the biting flies we spotted more lions. There were two female ones lying underneath a low tree. We stopped to look at them for a moment before moving on a few feet and realizing why they were there. They had recently killed a zebra right up against the gravel road our car was on. One lion was next to the zebra which had been completely gutted and chewed on. We could see light through its body where the lions had eaten completely through. The zebra’s eyeballs were also missing but I’m not sure if that was the lions doing or the work of some other scavenger. That was basically the last exciting event before we left the park.

On the way home we stopped by a little town where women were selling baskets and rugs made of some kind of woven together grass or leaf. We bought the place out. A whole bunch of people got rugs for their classrooms or houses. (I got one for my classroom so the kids would have somewhere to sit) I also got a really nice laundry basket. Then we drove the two hours to get back home. By the time we got home it was around 7pm and we were hungry and exhausted. So we ate and then crashed into our beds.

September 2nd, 2011

Professional Development Week = hellish. .. There have been some big changes and it has made many people very upset so there was a lot of tension in the air. Not to mention the first day was nine straight hours of sitting and listening to presentations. I was soooo grumpy after that day that I dragged Kelly and Nick into the field and forced them to ply Frisbee with me so I could get out some aggression. The rest of the week was basically full of meetings or lesson planning from 8am to 6pm. ROUGH. In terms of lesson planning we pretty much designed the entire curriculum and then planned out the first two weeks. It was a long and arduous process; nobody enjoyed themselves that week.

Part of the issue is that the school year was made significantly longer by like 3 or 4 weeks. (A whole Easter break was done away with) The school day was made longer by a couple of hours. (We have to be at school from 7:40am to 4:30pm. I bit much in my opinion especially when the kids get out at 3:30) Teachers that eat meals provided by the school must eat with the students (a rule I heartily disagree with. I spend too much of my time with the kids; I do require an adult break during the day. Thank you very much. We’ve been trying to get around this one.) Also they have increased the amount of duties that each teacher will have do. There will be eight weekday duties during the year. On these days you just have to monitor breakfast, lunch and dinner and then deal with the two hour homework block after dinner. (I’ve already done one day and it’s just plain boringggggg) On Friday duty you deal with the meal times and then you have to stay on campus that whole Friday night. And then 4 weekends out of the year you have weekend duty. You have to amuse the 50some boarders for all of Saturday and all of Sunday. (Not looking forward to that. I’m hoping my group will at least make it interesting by going on a weekend trip or something.)

On a better note I got to meet the other teachers in my grade. Lisa has been here about five years and has an adorable baby boy. Sofia has been here a shorter time but still a few years. They are both new to Year 3 (Lisa was Year 6 and Sofia was Year 2) so we’re all scrambling to come up with lesson plans. They are both fabulous and I am really glad to have them in my Year group.

My hall

I finally got into my classroom this week. I got the smallest classroom in the entire school (figures) just by luck. According to Lisa, last year the son of the prime minister of Tanzania lived in this room. Very strange…there has to be more to that story. Anyway because if that I am also the only classroom in the school to have curtains, which is nice. These pictures are the before pictures...It actually looks alot better now and will hopefully actually look nice and colorful as soon as I get some of the students' work up on the walls.

My classroom has to be majorly swept everyday because everything gets dusty soooo easily. They don’t really do carpets here because the dust gets in it and then it’s nearly impossible to get out. Also, the amount of dust sticking to the walls means nothing else will stick to them. Posters held up with sticky tack, scotch tape, or even command strips fall within minutes. The only thing I’ve found that works is long strips of clear packing tape on all sides.

Kelly and I are still not able to move into our houses yet, but we’re better off than some of the other girls. Alex and Becca were put in a room in the borders dorms until the houses are finished and the other day the dorm room they were in flooded. A whole bunch of Alex’s things got all wet including her phone, ipod and camera. (They’re ok though, excluding the phone I think.)

Anyway……lesson planning must be done…..

August 30th, 2011

To catch up: On Sunday we met a few more new teachers, Becca, Alex, Victoria, and Maureen (they are all 20something girls like me and Kelly). Later in the Afternoon Jose and Monica drove us to the Main Market in front of Shop-rite and the Maasai Craft Market.

On the way there I took pictures of the area that we walk through to get to Shop-Rite. There are other parts of town that are more town-like.

The main market is where you an get anything you need from fruits and vegetables to skirts and homewares. You have to bargain with everyone though, because they see the color of our skin and charge us the muzungu price which is usually A LOT more than their regular one. We were just exploring today so we didn’t end up buying anything; We just wandered everywhere. The housewares and vegetable areas are just like any market, people have stalls with all their stuff and sometimes call out to you to enter and look. The clothing people tend to be a little more pushy and bid you, “Welcome to enter.” Nick, Kelly and I were being adventurous and ended up walking around the back of the market and into the fish area (men there were screaming stuff at the top of their lungs and a few were right in my face. We were unsure if they were advertising their fish or maybe bad talking their neighbor’s fish, or what, but it was very loud. We walked by the butchers area where they had the skinned animals hanging up on hooks. They also had something with a bit of fur still stuck on it. We didn’t know what it was at the time, but in retrospect it was probably goat. We also managed to wander behind the scenes to an area that I think was the back of the little cafés. The ladies that watched us go in there were very friendly and helped us with our Swahili so I don’t think we were breaking any rules. I didn’t take any pictures of the market because people here are still shy of cameras (It makes a lot of people nervous because some still believe that the camera will steal your soul and others will ask for money if they think they are in it).

During our wanders, Kelly ended up buying a baggie of dagar, basically little dried fish that look like minnows. They are eaten as a snack and according to the Tanzanian teachers are much better when cooked and served over rice (I think). Her and I tried one once we got back on the bus. They were not salty (which is what I had been expecting because I had eaten salted fish before) Instead they were fishy tasting and it mellowed as you chewed. It did leave a kinda fish tase in your mouth (which while not being pleasant, was not puke worthy)

Kelly tasting the fish...

The bus then drove us over to the Maasai Craft Market. There are stalls set up selling things like beaded wire baskets, kanga material which is the fabric that the women make their outfits out of, scarves, wooden carvings, jewelry, and other crafty things. They really want to sell you things so everybody welcomes you to their stall and a few even step into your way in the narrow hallways so that you have to go in their stall. (One man actually trapped me in his stall and tried really hard to persuade me to buy a scarf. It took several minutes of emphatic statements on my part to get him to move.) They like to overcharge muzungus so you have to bargain them down, but I wasn’t going to buy anything so I didn’t bother. (My money situation right now is a bit tight and I don’t get paid for a while so no souvenirs for now).

We then headed back to campus and had the new staff bbq . The grills they use are pretty cool; they're halved oil drums. We hung around, ate some fabulous food and drank some beer (or wine) and talked.

I’ve been seeing the monkeys a lot around campus now. One morning they sat and watched us eat breakfast. Other times I see them just wandering about or walking on fences. I’m afraid they are going to get into my classroom and tear things up. As it turns out they’ve got some spunk. The male one apparently chased Monica into the computer lab and the patrolled porch so she couldn’t leave. I saw them growling at Ava (Jose’s maid) the other day. It was quite intimidating, every now and then it would run at her (but then again she was throwing rocks at it)

August 27th, 2011

The past few days have been relatively similar. We’ve woken up in time to go and get breakfast form the cafeteria. Generally toast and a fruit like a banana, and then one morning we had a hard-boiled egg. I have no complaints. For lunch we ate out one day and in the cafeteria the next (rice and potatoes and gravy and watermelon). The cafeteria hasn’t been doing dinner because the boarders aren’t here yet and only a few staff are here, so we’ve eaten at Jose’s house or gone to the coffee lodge. (All the meals will be served starting next week)

During the day we generally explore Arusha. One day we (Me, Kelly, Nick and Maria) took a taxi to a little mall. It had a general store and a movie theater. (Bridesmaids is playing mid September and a group of us plan on going)

Yesterday Kelly and I walked to Shop-rite (we think a 2 mile walk one way) without male accompaniment. Turns out you get a lot more attention as two girls alone. IT was nothing dangerous, but guys would scream things at us and a few would try to stop us to talk. One even reached out his hand and like caressed my face as I walked by. We also got quite a few “muzungu” calls. It wasn’t bad and we would walk it again, no problem.

In a break from the general plan, yesterday morning I helped Monica, Doreen, and Sean (a lower primary teacher) assess the lower primary students. Their parents brought them in and we basically played with then to see how they could emotionally handle being at school, what they knew about colors and letters, and how they interacted with the teachers and other students. The kids were all really cute!

On a different day, in the afternoon, I took my kindle and my hammock and set it up between some trees near the athletic fields and read for a while. That was really relaxing and both (the hammock and the kindle) were good investments. The kindle has come in handy when the power is out because I have 3G so I can still check my email. While I was out there John, one of the guards (we call them askari’s) came to investigate. He wasn’t sure exactly what was hanging from the trees but he laughed when he saw it was me.

That same day I saw the troop of monkeys that live on campus. They are called Vervets or blue-balled monkeys which, if you saw them, you would understand. I saw a daddy monkey, possibly a momma monkey and two babies. The babies were the most adventurous and would get fairly close to me but the daddy monkey kept his distance and watched me suspiciously the whole time. They aren’t too big and therefore not too scary (but apparently they like to kill cats for fun). Kelly and I do not approve of that at all as we are trying to befriend/adopt a little calico kitten who lives near the office.

At night we just hang out sometimes on campus and sometimes at the coffee lodge. One night we headed to bed really early to get rid of the last bits of jet lag and last night we watched a movie with Maria and Nick. Heather went out with some people she knew in Arusha and had a really good time, so one of these nights (hopefully before school starts) we’re gonna head out on the town.

I certainly hope Virginia doesn’t fall apart while I’m gone! What with all the hurricanes and earthquakes….I actually think it’s safer in Africa… (oh, one of the office ladies told us yesterday that if you go walking into the coffee plantations across the street you have to be careful because there is a patch of wild forest area near here that has cheetahs!)

Here is the headmaster's porch where I've been doing most of my blog writing and posting.

August 24, 2011

We got up to our first full day in Tanzania! Breakfast is served at 10am this week so me and Kelly got up and showered just a bit before that. We get meals for free through the school so we wandered down to the cafeteria and had had toast an omelet and a banana as well as some interesting instant coffee. After breakfast we decided to walk with Nick to Shop-rite. This involves going straight down Dodoma Road for maybe two three miles. (I haven’t yet taken pictures of all this because I didn’t want to appear too conspicuous.)

The road is lined with various one storey shack-like buildings that house low budget pubs or sketch kinda lookin shops and people are everywhere! There are people sitting around, people selling things, people pulling carts or shooing animals or talking in groups. And then there are the vehicles cars, bus, carts, motorcycles anything with wheels all careening down this narrow road swerving around each other horns blaring. The horn is very versatile. It can say things like “move over” “Don’t step out I will hit you” “I want to merge” “Do NOT merge” “Stop stopping” “I’m trying to get around you” etc. It can say basically anything and EVERYONE uses them excessivly.

The smells, too, can be quite overwhelming. There is a paved sunken ditch on the sides of the road and this tends to be filled with various trash (damp or burning), sometimes excrement, and very questionable looking liquids. I was very careful around those, I did NOT want to fall in.

The name for white person around here is Muzungu and every now and then people will scream it out cars at us. Touristy looking people are generally thought of as having lots of money and therefore get charged more almost everywhere. There can also be issues with pick pocketing.

Despite this the walk is actually quite safe especially when you are in a group. We got to Shop-rite which is a grocery and convenience store and looked around. We purchased some food and a few house things (even though our apartment is not ready) Here’s a kinda crappy pic. Sorry about that...I call it an apartment but it’s really more of a house. We're not sure which one will be ours but they're all the same anyway.

And then we walked back (I used the bags that Deb and Gram gave me and they were fabulous!) On the way back, we accidentally saw a naked man washing in one of the culverts. Whoops!

We snagged some lunch at the cafeteria. (Beans and rice and bbq) and chatted with the school accountant for a while. (We’ve met a whole bunch of new people but it would be exhausting to catalogue them here. So you’ll just have to meet them as they come up in the narrative.)

Then we wandered around campus taking some pictures...

I'm pretty sure these are dangerous snake holes!

There are two pools next to each other. This is the big one. (hopefully we'll be paying water polo in this later in the year.)

before heading over to the Coffee Lodge to hang out and use the internet.

We figured out some phrases in Swahili. What is your name? (Jina lako ni nani?) My name is… (Jina langu ni…) I like Tanzania. (Nina pendi Tanzania) Bye.(Kwaheri) And tested them out on the Coffee Lodge guards and the guards at our gate; they were all delighted. And really wanted to help us with some more phrases.

Later, Monica and Jose made us dinner and we all (including Heather and Maria) ate on the front porch. Afterwards Kelly and I went to hang out at Maria and Heather’s house. The power was out so we ended up chatting by candlelight (which I rather liked)

An aside about the power situation; Tanzania has really unreliable power. It goes on and off all day and all night. The other night in the Coffee Lodge the power went out and it took a few minutes for the generator to kick on. The school has generators too, but we only use them at certain times. They are on from 630am to 8am so that teachers can get up and shower and cook if they want to. It is on for the school day naturally. And then after school gets out it’s only on from 7pm to 9pm. You may get electricity at other times but it’s not guaranteed and often patchy. The wireless internet also turns off when the power is off. There is one exception to the power rule. There is a second generator for the computer lad that runs basically all the time. This way we at least have the ability to lesson plan at any time of the day or night. It can be a bit of a nuisance sometimes but it’s generally not too bad.

August 23, 2011

My flight left from Richmond International at 6am so Mom and I had to drive to the airport at 4:30am and I didn’t finish packing my bags until 3 that morning. So I stayed up all night. We drive to the airport and dealt with the bag issue….(They don’t joke around with the price of extra bags, especially the overweight ones) Mom and I hugged and then I made it through security. (Those body imaging scan machines, not a big deal. I don’t know what all the fuss was about. And honestly if it means some surly airport official isn’t going to awkwardly pat me down that’s a-ok in my book.) Short flight: we literally got up in the air and then started to descend.

I had to wait about 4 hours for my next flight so I hunkered down in the terminal. I had a minor panic attack about some paperwork I thought I botched (it was a non-issue. I was confused.) It was then that I met up with my (soon to be) roommate Kelly. She’s from Wisconsin and taught one year of middle school social studies before this. She is great. We discussed this so it’s ok to post, but we were both worried that the other would be really dirty or unclean or weird, but thank goodness that’s not the case. And we get along surprisingly well. Our seats on the plane weren’t next to each other though.

Me and Kelly

The plane from Washington to Addis Ababa (and I was pronouncing it correctly, Mom) was fairly calm. It was long, 12 hours, but not too bad. I watched a few movies and ate airline food (not as good as South African airways, but decent)

We got to Addis and hopped into one of those little buses that drive you to the terminal. We ended up talking to a girl on the bus who was headed to Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. She was going there to work for the Center for Disease Control either as part of her residency or as her job after her residency (I can’t remember; I was half in a coma from lack of sleep. I only got three hours in the plane.)

The airport in Addis btw is gross. In the ladies bathroom: none of the toilets flushed and from the looks of it had not been flushed in quiiiiiiite a while. The floors were gross and it was blechhh all around. The rest of the airport not much better it was very small.

Our next flight, once again we were not sitting together, stopped in Mombasa (though we didn’t have to get off) before completing the second leg to Kilimanjaro. The first leg of the flight: absolutely miserable. The damn plane was bouncing all over the sky. I was exhausted and trying to sleep and ended up falling asleep for at least a few minutes, because I woke up, sitting straight up and literally hugging this little airline pillow in a death grip. The young Muslin guy sitting next to me obviously found it amusing.

We chatted for a while and I couldn’t understand all of what he was saying, but he apparently had been living away from his family and home in Mombasa for the past 8 years. (He might have been in America, because he identified my accent as Eastern USA, though he couldn’t tell if I was North or South.) We were looking out the window and he got so excited when he could see the palm trees.

On the second leg of the journey we could see Kilimanjaro reaching up through the clouds as we got closer. Once we landed, we had to make it through customs.

IF YOU ARE A TANZANIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL READ NO FURTHER

Our resident visas weren’t ready so we had to tell them that we were visiting Monica and Jose (Office administrator and headmaster) for four weeks and bringing donations for the school (hence all the school supplies). So we write all this down on the visa, jump through a few hoops and give them $100 for the visa. At which point we go to collect our bags and go through the rest of customs. We get to the bag guy (keep in mind that all of the other officials had been really, really helpful and nice to us, so this anecdote was not general to all our interactions) We take all our bags to the customs guy abd he immediately starts asking what’s in them (especially me cause I have four large bags) We tell him clothes and some books to donate to the school. He then decides to go through one of our bags and picks my red one (lucky he didn’t decide to choose the one with the projector in it.) It had random clothes and a camera and some books in it. So then he tries to tell us that there is a tax on books (which there isn’t) we argue a bit back and forth till Kelly takes control of the situation and tells this man that we are NOT going to be paying a tax on these books because they are a donation to help the children of Tanzania! Annnnd then he backed down.

The driver from the school, Veda, picked us up and drove us the hour to get to St Constantine’s. On the way there we saw dust devils in the distance, lots of people transporting water on their donkeys, and lots and lots of people. The school is straight down Dodoma Road (I’m sitting on the front porch of the headmasters house right now and I can clearly see a long stretch of the road.)

The way people drive here is very similar to the way they drive in South Africa: aka dangerously. Dodoma is a two lane road but on occasion it turns into a three or four lane road depending on the drivers and who decides to pass who. And pedestrians are on their own here. If you are stupid enough to step out in front of any moving vehicle, it’s your own problem. (Nick, the secondary music teacher, has already seen three massive accidents and he’s only been here two more days than me and Kelly.)

Our house isn’t finished yet (it’s one of the new ones). Though we snuck inside one and it’s really nice. So we’re staying at the headmasters house. He and his wife had two extra bedrooms and our house should be finished within the next week (fingers crossed). They are very nice and it’s really not awkward at all.

We then went to the computer lab and met a few of the other faculty that had already arrived. Let’s see if I can remember them all. There are a lot of people our age Maria from Florida, Nick from Wisconsin (Him and Kelly did not know each other before getting here) Heather from Oregon, Sean and his wife Juliet (I don’t know where they’re from) Alvaro (and not sure where he’s from)

Later, we had dinner with Jose and Monica, Nick, Maria, and Heather at the Coffee Lodge, an upscale tourist lodge within walking distance from the school. It’s fairly American food, we had penne pasta. (And I was so excited because they have Castle beer up here. It’s what I drank in South Africa) Kelly and I were so exhausted after dinner, that we immediately went back to the house and fell asleep. Under our mosquito netted beds. (I like it. I think the mosquito netting makes them seem more cozy.)

I promise to put more photos and less words in later posts.....I just didn't take many pics of the plane trip.

Arusha, Tanzania!

To make a long story (kinda) short: After my student teaching experience in Berlin, Germany I knew I wanted to go into international teaching. Per this decision I applied to many, many international schools and no schools in Virginia. A few months in my mother had become a bit pessimistic about the whole ordeal. (She asked me in early April if I had heard back from ANY school. Which I had btw. It just wasn’t one I felt like pursuing because they could only offer me a pre-k class. And if you know me well enough to know about my issues with kindergarten you understand why) Annnyway, soon after, about a week before my birthday, I received an email from the headmaster of St. Constantine’s International School in Tanzania. I ended up interviewing with the headmaster over skype two days later. I came downstairs from the interview and told my Mom, “I think he’s going to offer me a job!” (It was just a feeling I had) And sure enough the next day he did. I took two days to think about accepting the position, but really my mind was made up. I accepted a primary (elementary) position on the day of my 23 birthday on April 22. (That same day I totaled my car, but that’s a different story and not one I relish telling) I spent the following months collecting a whole bunch of stuff that I may (not) have been able to take over with me. And waited for August 22nd, which was when my flight left.