May-O

The rose is red,
my nose is too,
violets are blue,
and so are you.

And yet before
I think I'm through,
I'll have another
drink or two.

O good ale, thou art my darling...

A verse for the Braggarts. Thanks for calling! Russ was very happy.

Well, the first term has ended, the rains have stopped, and winter is upon us. This is what has been going on for the last month or so...

I'm writing this blog entry at my school because there is only one computer that is able to use my ipod shuffle and therefore I can write this blog, save it, then just upload it when I get to Dodoma. Then I can use my time at the Internet cafe in Dodoma to do Internet stuff rather than writing a blog entry. =)

Before I gave my students their second exam for the term I wanted to play a little review game for them. Their exam was on Friday and the last time I would see one class would be on Wednesday. So on Tuesday I told them we're going to play a review game tomorrow. The next morning I showed up promptly at 7:40 am for the first period and there was nobody around. Usually at that time in the morning all the students have just finished their morning parade of singing the Tanzanian National Anthem and announcements and they are talking before the bell rings and classes start. I was told by one of my students who happened to be doing his laundry nearby that it was a holiday, Union Day I believe, so there were no classes. Oh well, so I played the review game with the second class on Thursday. It was a sort of Jeopardy type of game in which the team trying to figure out the answer had one minute to give me an answer, otherwise the question went onto another group. But I found after a few mintues that the students in other groups were getting bored so I changed the game so that each group had a question to work on. I've learned you've got to keep all the students involved, thinking, all the time or they will tune out. Another thing I did after a few minutes that seemed to work well was to create two groups of only girls. When there were one or two girls in a group of boys they would not participate, but if you put the girls together they all talk and come up with an answer. So I walked around to each group as they raised their hands to give me the answer. If they got the correct answer, they got another question to do. I did not give away any prizes and they didn't seem to mind. I think most of the students are getting the idea now that the "prize," or "zawadi" in Kiswahili, is that they get more questions in which to practice and therefore get better at mathematics!

Unfortunately that is not what happened on the second exam. My students completely failed it. I supposed I can be glad that my students showed up to take the exam. A fellow math teacher had his mathematics exam as well, that Friday was for Mathematics and Civics exams, and out of 40 students, only 8 chose (showed up) to take the exam. Students are so scared of mathematics that they don't even show up to take the exam! The average exam mark of my "arts" students was 13% and my "science" students was 34%. I have some ideas of what to do different next term....meanwhile, at IST (In-Service Training) in June I'll talk to my fellow PCV teachers and get more ideas from them.

I have started to promote girls' fitness by getting a soccer ball and netball and going to the girls' dorm to see if any girls wanted to play with me. The first day me and 3 girls just walked around the track and talked. The next time about 6 girls came out to play soccer, or "futball" as it is known here. The next time they played netball by themselves because I got a nastly cold and couldn't play for a few days. Even though there are only a few girls who come out and play, they enjoy getting some exercise, as do I.

One day Russ came out to play with us and we got three different games going. A few girls used the netball to play basketball, some boys wanted to play soccer (I swear to Tanzania boys a soccer ball is a magnet - show it to any boy and all they want to do is play) so I let them use the ball, and Russ and I played frisbee. As some students were passing by watching us play, Russ threw the frisbee at them. They all proceeded to duck or run out of the way. After they realized it wasn't a weapon but a pretty cool piece of plastic that you can play with, they threw it back to us and joined us.

So there is a district council here that had the only receiver in town and therefore controlled the television station for the whole town. It was usually kept on one station but when something went wrong with the satellite receiver and people who had a tv could not watch that one station anymore, they decided to buy their own satellite. So, satellite sales have been going through the roof here! 200,000/=, or $200, for a satellite and the opportunity to watch 9 different tv channels broadcasting from around the African continent. A fellow teacher of mine, with the two two-year old twin girls, just bought and hooked one up. So now we can watch English football matches from his house, rather than go to the local pub and pay 300/= to watch it. Can't wait for June - Kombe la Dunia 2006! (World Cup 2006!) The British have had a lot of influence here. If you ask any Tanzanian male which futball team he likes the most and I'm certain he'll say Arsenal, Chelsea, Man U (that's Manchester United), West Ham, or Liverpool.

Other things...our neighbor has a few cows and ties them outside so they can eat the grass during the day. Usually they're tied up to trees or bushes but one day we found a cow tied up to a water pipe that lead to our house. The pipe was bent and disconnected at the joint. So it broke, ok, but our mzee said that someone would steal the broken pipe if the school didn't put it in storage. In the next few days the pipe disappeared, I think into the school's storage, but I'm not certain. So, not that we'd ever get running water in our house, but if that option ever arises there's no pipe in place!

Speaking of water, however, there is one random pipe in the front of our house that was sticking up when we arrived. Russ swore it was a gas line because we had a propane heater above the bathtub that he removed within the first week of arriving (we'd hit our heads on it). We didn't like that pipe sticking up in our yard so we buried it. One day last week, mzee noticed a certain spot in the yard was quite wet and muddy. There was water coming out of that pipe! So now we stick a bucket underneath to catch the slowly dripping water. It's only turned on early in the morning (around 6 am or so) and sometimes at night (9 pm or so). So we've been watering our "garden" of green pepper, pumpkin, cucumber, potato, and corn plants. It hasn't rained in a month and I've heard it won't rain again until (hopefully) November. I don't count on this water pipe continuing but I'll keep watering the plants as long as there's extra water around that we have no control over whether it comes or goes.

Oh yes...so one day I was talking to some girls in the dorm and I asked them if there was one thing they wanted to change about the school, what would it be? They said they would like the library to be cleaned so that it can be useable. I thought about it for a few days, told Russ, and he agreed that it should be cleaned, and insisted that we do it on Saturday. So I arranged to have some students help us clean the library and set a time - Saturday at 10 am we would start. So Saturday comes and we walk to the library in the mist, or manyunyu in Kiswahili, and wait, and wait, and wait. The key has not shown up yet. So I walk to the girls' dorm where I know one student has the key to the library. Not there. So I walk back up and the library is open. Apparently their breakfast was late - no problem. I hook up my ipod shuffle to the speakers my parents sent me and away we go.

If you can imagine what decades (?) of dust covered books look and smell like then you know what we went through to clean the library. It's just amazing how much dust can pass through the windows. We had set up tables with different subjects for the girls to put the books on but after a while I found they were just throwing the books on the floor, not quite caring what subject they were. Well, they were going to an on-campus disco in the afternoon so Russ and I said thanks for the help and they left to prepare themselves for dancing. It took 4 full days to get the library clean and organized. Four days of wiping the books of dust, sweeping up mounds of rat poop, and moving the shelves into columns to make it look like a library. But we finished and created a nice space for students to study in the back of the library where they can use the chalkboard and a big area in the front. All the dictionaries and encyclopedias and other reference books were reloacted to the front of the library where students can use but not remove them. We noticed right away after we cleaned the library that students were actually using it. Russ took his English classes to learn how to use the library as this topic was actually on the syllabus. Oh yes, Russ taught English for the last two months of school. You can read about this on his blog.

Our bread oven has been pretty successful so far. We'd baked a few loaves of yeast bread and banana bread. The banana bread has been a bit hit among the Tanzanians. It's also great for dry roasting peanuts. Pizza will be a bit difficult as cheese is hard to come by and expensive in Dodoma. I'm sure Russ will explain his frustrations and breakthroughs in his blog.

That's about it for now. During our "winter" break we'll be in Morogoro for training and then to Zanzibar in June, then we're heading to Dar for July 4, then the second term starts in mid-July.