Belated Catch Up of Week 1

(The following was written on Wednesday, but not posted until Saturday due to bad internet availability. Apologies.)

Warning: very long post. Obscenely long. They shouldn’t be this long in the future, but so much has happened over the past three days that this is actually more of a vague outline of the past three days than a detailed account.

As I write this, I have been in Tanzania for three full days. My flight from Dubai to Dar Es Salaam was uneventful—not quite as glorious as the flight from New York to Dubai, but certainly not uncomfortable. The beautiful combination of low sleep and Tylenol PM left me unconscious for half of the five-hour flight, and the rest was spent watching Indian soap operas on my seatback television.

Within thirty minutes of landing, I had passed through security, wrestled my way to the conveyer belt, snatched my luggage, and met with Ross, Lisa, and Omari.

Ross is the Executive Director of the Newton Tanzania Collaborative (NTC), a cultural collaboration between the Newton school district (just west of Boston) and Kwala, where I am now. The organization raises funds, sponsors students, provides teaching aids, teaches English classes, creates literacy projects, builds libraries, creates computer labs, drills wells, and a thousand other projects managed by Ross and Lisa, his second in command. Ross manages everything on the Newton end, Lisa is the Project Director and works on the Tanzania end. Ross is laid-back; Lisa is extremely headstrong and remarkably tenacious.

Ross, Lisa, and their friend Omari and loaded my luggage into Omari’s Toyota Corona (the official Mexican beer of Toyota vehicles), and the four of us drove towards Kwala. For unknown reasons, there was very heavy traffic that day, so going was slow for many miles. Impatient “Dolla Dolla” (because it costs a “dolla” to ride these large vans, each more crowded than a green line train on a Red Sox/Yankees home game) and “Piki-Piki” (the Tanzanian onomatopoeia for the sound these motorcycles’ engines make) drivers battled aggressively around us, zigzagging through opposing lanes of traffic and plowing up the shoulder to gain any ground on the road.

Eventually, we reached a market where Lisa impressed everyone, including herself, with her deft handling of food purchases. “Wazungus” (white people) are often taken advantage of by shopkeepers, but her impressive Swahili and confidant demeanor kept the opportunists at bay. Of course, white people are an extreme rarity, and seeing three of us together was almost unheard of opportunity for the populace. We became the center of attention wherever we met, so I waved at everybody, smiling and laughing with them. The children were adorable—many of their faces lit up at the sight of us, utterly delighted, while others retained a very stern look, watching us skeptically as though we weren’t real. However, the overwhelming percent of people, both adults and children, were delighted to at least wave and sometimes even greet us. A particularly nice pair of shopkeepers invited me to sit next to them. Unfortunately, a bird sitting above my seat decided that he objected to my presence, and crapped on my head.

We finally arrived in Kwala after sunset, so my first drive through the town was too dark to give me any sort of impression. Also, after twenty hours in the air, six hours in airports, and three hours in the car, all I cared about was moving into my new home and changing clothes. I am living in the Kwala Secondary School’s headmaster’s house. He is a wonderful man, very enthusiastic and respectful (though long-winded), and, very importantly to me, he has a very strong understanding of English. I am sharing my room with Ross—as this is the beginning of the new academic year in Tanzania, he will be out here for the next two weeks. The room has one bunk bed and one separate full-sized bed; Ross has the bottom bunk, I have the separate bed, and the top bunk is storage. On Friday, one of the volunteers helping to create our new computer lab will be occupying the top bunk.

So we arrived, unpacked, and went next door to Athuman Masangi’s house, where Lisa is staying. There, I had my first Tanzanian meal: rice, beans, meat (I didn’t ask what, but I’m guessing goat?), pineapple (to be a main staple of my diet here, the best I have ever tasted), and banana. Despite the flavors of the food, the meal felt strangely American, as we at it sitting on couches, watching TV. The food is simple, but pleasant. From what I have gleaned, very little seasoning is added, and they seem to eschew any changes to the established style, so I’m guessing very little has changed in this village in a long time. They cook with little portable charcoal stoves, maybe eight inches wide, which they use for everything. Kwala produces tons of charcoal, so it’s a convenient product.

I then was introduced to the African toilet—a porcelain basin with a hole in it, nested into the concrete ground of a shed. The lucky user stands or squats over the hole. As far as I have been able to tell, Westerners are the only people who use toilet paper, and I will leave to your imagination what everybody else does.

I then retired to my room for the night. Ross and I pulled down the tubular mosquito nets hanging above our respective beds and tucked the ends under our mattress to create an impenetrable bug shield (again the ants, mosquitoes, wasps/hornets [not sure which], giant cockroaches, spiders, poisonous spiders, and tarantulas abound). Lying face-up in bed with the mosquito net down, it looks like I’m lying in the eye of a tornado. Unfortunately, Ross and I are sharing one oscillating fan in very hot weather with no outside breeze, so it’s a very hot, stuffy, and infrequently windy tornado.

For whatever lucky reason, my small catnaps on the plane perfectly acclimated me to the eight-hour time difference. I slept fairly well, and woke up well-rested and able to work. School starts at 7:15 each day, so at 7:10 Lisa, Ross, and I walked the fifty meters to the school. The headmaster introduced us to the students and we each spoke briefly. It was interesting watching the varied reactions to each of us. I learned very quickly that my fast, rather mumbley speech would not work here. Lisa’s method of calming her speech down so that the students easily understand it is to affect an almost British accent (which Ross and I make fun of). I have started speaking like a news caster, but I’m manipulating my vowel sounds to be more similar to the way that the Tanzanian adults around them speak English, so that it sounds more familiar.

Lisa and I are co-teaching the Form I (high school freshmen) English class. On Monday, there were only around thirty students. Nine more joined the class Tuesday and a few more today. I anticipate this number rising significantly each day—we have been told to expect 120-160 students (to be split into three or four class periods). Lisa is a fabulous co-teacher: having lived here for the past four months, she understands the students and the system, knows which teachers are good or bad and why, she is very strong with Swahili (though she keeps denying it), and she has simply become a very capable educator. The students love her, and she is well established and adored in the community. However, many of the other teachers in the school dislike her—they don’t like assertive women, especially when the women insist that the men be responsible, mature, and actually do the jobs they are paid to do. There seems to be a disappointing rash of laziness amongst many of the teachers—I frequently see teachers leaving the school in the middle of the day, and classes are often left abandoned.

She and I have worked incredibly together the past few lessons. We feed off of each other’s creativity, pull ideas together on the fly, and consistently identify the same students as particularly strong, weak, or needing/deserving special attention for whatever reason. And the students are wonderful. Beyond wonderful. Wonderfuller. They love to greet and joke with us, and are delighted to help teach me Swahili (they are too easily distracted and speak too fast for me to glean much, but the assimilation is definitely helping me assimilate to the sounds and rhythm of their speech).

And I’m learning Swahili. Over the past few days, I have picked up a few small phrases and many words, and am becoming used to the rhythm and sounds of the language. It is an entirely different linguistic structure, they seem to make very different use of intonations, and they love stacking several consonants together. But, under the patient care of Lisa and others, I’m starting to piece together the language. I intend to be conversationally fluent by the time I leave. It should be possible.

Lisa and I are teaching through the Total Physical Response system, which involves, in essence, teaching a second language in the same manner that our parents teach us a first language. The students associate English verbs to actions by performing the actions, and English nouns with the items with which they physically interact. It involves a lot of work, and defies the traditional style of drills and repetition that are conventionally used here. Teachers and parents are becoming used to hearing peals of laughter from our classroom as students dash around following our commands, and often watch amusedly as our students recite ear-shattering renditions of The Hokey Pokey. The students are continually surpassing our expectations, and we are struggling with, on one hand, our desire to more forward, and on the other, our hesitance to do so since we are only working with a half or even a third of our eventual class size.

Ross, Lisa, the headmaster, and I ended Monday night with beers at Hotel California, the local bar and inn (it’s such a lovely place). Forty-someodd people were crowded together under the large outdoor canopy, watching the evening’s soccer match. As we came around the corner of the wall that the television was propped against, I looked at the television sideways and estimated a 37” television. As we walked past it though, what I thought was the television turned out to be a very tall speaker standing next to the 13” television. Around here, beers cost 1000 shillings (less than a dollar), and sodas are half that much and made with real sugar instead of corn syrup (phenomenal taste).

The next day, a student interrupted our class when, returning from the bathroom, he announced that there was a snake on campus. Delighted, the class flooded out of the classroom and students proceeded to pick up large rocks and pelt the snake. By the time the campus security man arrived, the snake’s head was crushed and body was pulsing slightly. The security man (a very nice man) picked it up with a stick, carried it out to the grass, and lit it on fire. Fire solves everything, including trash here. Everything is burned.

After class on Tuesday, we went back to the market we stopped at on Sunday to purchase groceries and supplies for the computer lab we are building at the school. As we drove there and walked through the market, I waved and smiled at every person who stared at us. White people are so rare that we will closely observed wherever we go (especially when three of us are walking together), but I chose to distinguish myself as someone nice and sociable, even if I couldn’t speak Swahili. However, several people took the opportunity to practice their English, and I had several wonderful conversations with people along the streets of the market.

Speaking of which, Tanzanian women are gorgeous. Absolutely stunning features, and I can easily say that the overwhelming majority are startlingly beautiful. I want to ask how they view white people, with regard to beauty. Lisa has mentioned that they adore her long hair, that she is frequently asked to bring back hair straighteners for the women of the community, and that it was once mentioned to her that she was more beautiful before she became tanned.

Anyways, having some time to kill, I decided to do something social with the community—I saw a 6’ pool table out in front of a small shop, and coerced Lisa into helping me communicate that I wanted to play. It cost me 200 Tanzanian shillings (less than twenty cents), and I ended up playing against Lisa, but we drew a crowd of thirty amused Tanzanians watching us play. That place is going to become my Swahili challenge point—it will be hard to judge my language gains on a day to day basis, but my ability to converse with the people at this pool table will change significantly between each opportunity I have to visit the market (maybe once a week or every other week), allowing me to track my progression with the language. Plus, I can’t resist a pool table.

Today, Lisa and I led an amazing lesson, probably our best so far. However, returning later that day to wander the school and observe other teachers, I found my Form I students teacherless. Lisa warned me that this was commonplace, so I went into the classroom and proceeded to teach another lesson. The students were delighted. I reviewed the material from earlier in the day, added some new vocabulary, sang some songs, and played some games. Sixty minutes later, with still no teacher, having brought nothing with me to class, I ran out of activities for them, so I had the students begin bossing me around, giving me commands in Swahili. It gave me a chance to further accustom myself to Swahili, and it gave them a chance to joke around and make me act silly. The students were delighted, and I intend to do it again.

Lisa and I just finished introducing Athuman’s family to mashed potatoes. Our neighbors Mama Anu, her husband, their children, and every member of Athuman’s family enjoyed it. Athuman refused to try it.

Take care.

Update from Dubai

First of all, I want to thank you all for the wave of unprecedented encouragement. It was phenomenally reassuring and comforting to have your collective support. I'm currently sitting in the airport terminal in Dubai, waiting for the third and final leg of my flight to Tanzania. This airport is quite a unique experience. Not only is this my first time out of the US (with the exception of a visit to Canada while I was still in a stroller) but this airport is unlike any other airport ever visited. It feels actually more like a cross between a shopping mall and a bazaar in many respects. There are some small, cute shops selling nuts and hookahs and genie-esque lamps; next to these will be massive, department store sized behemoths catering a variety of consumer needs. The most common stores were sold duty-free cigarettes and alcohol (usually with a small candy selection as well), and would have at least eight available checkout lines.

However, reminding me that I'm not completely isolated from the American lifestyle, I found two Starbuckses, a McDonalds, and a Burger King. The Starbuckses and Burger King seemed fairly ordinary (no surprises on the menu), though the McDonalds had a few new options including a “McArabic Chicken.” I decided that this was one of those things better left un-tasted. I have, so far, been very pleasantly surprised by the food provided to me on Emirates Airlines. On the 12-hour flight from New York to Dubai, I received a surprisingly good Indian lamb dish, which, because of crossing nine time zones, was followed by breakfast (another nice Indian dish, which included potatoes in a curry sauce and a variation on scrambled eggs). Not thinking about how the time zones were changing, I ordered a martini at 10:30 p.m. EST, moments before the breakfast was served at 7:30 a.m. Dubai time. And so, breakfast became brinner, and the world was good.

My flight to Tanzania is boarding, so I must go. Best wishes to all of you.

Welcome

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my blog. Here I will be chronicling my various adventures and misadventures over my next four and a half months in Tanzania. I will be working as an English teacher in a small town called Kwala, teaching an ESL course to high school freshmen. I hope to update this blog a at least twice each week, and to post pictures every other week. If you would like to, feel free to e-mail me at adriancoyne@gmail.com. I would love to hear about all of you.

All the best, I shall see you when I return. Take care.