Mwezi, umeendaje?

The month started off well. I continued reviewing with my students and taught a night class to those students I mentioned were having trouble with integers. Before the class I had decided if some students don't understand it's OK. Maybe they're better in other subjects and me pushing them to learn math, which they may find difficult, is hurting their other subjects. So I basically was ready to 'give up' on some students. Then I taught the night class. For the first time I taught in Kiswahili AND wrote the notes in Kiswahili. I told the students they were getting an extra class because while grading I noticed they had trouble with integers. The students reacted so well. While I was waiting for them to finish copying the first set of notes I thought, 'I can't give up on these kids.' So I decided to offer daily integer exercises that I would grade for help only-not for a grade. The students were very responsive. The next day I graded the first daily exercise and 4 students got all the questions right! These were students who were getting less than 50% of the questions right before. I was so proud of them. This further leads me to believe so many kids could do so much better if they were only taught in their native language. And I don't even speak good Swahili. Imagine if they were taught by native speakers...sigh. Can't change that but at least I can try and help some of these kids.

The first weekend of the month Marisa came and we cooked yummy food and exchanged more guitar riffs. On Sunday Steph biked to my site so Marisa and I cooked up a filling lunch and an amazing chocolate cake. It was truly monumental: a mint chocolate cake with Riece's Pieces (brought by Marisa) inside topped with Raspberry Crumble (a delicious raspberry sauce topped with chocolate cookie crumbled pieces sent to me by Anna's parents-thanks guys). It was simply amazing.

On Monday we all traveled to an M&R (monitoring and Reporting) Workshop. Now I know I've complained about Peace Corps timing and organization of workshops before but this one was really set up poorly. First off it was scheduled for Tuesday through Thursday. Although it was for Tuesday afternoon through Thursday morning 3 of the 4 education volunteers cannot make it to the venue, Mtwara, in half a day so we had to travel on Monday and Friday which took us away for the whole week. In addition education volunteers need letters to be sent to our heads of school so that our absence is accounted for. This happened way back in February for the PEPFAR workshop and we expressed the need for letters to arrive at our school well before each workshop. For this workshop we were notified by the PC newsletter only, no formal letter. After 2 inquiries to Peace Corps via SMS I got a call that letters would not be sent for this workshop and, if needed, I had to send a text with my headmaster's title and address. So apparently our request in February was ignored. What made this an even bigger mess is one volunteer DID get a letter and another was told information opposite to mine. Finally, on Tuesday we all awaited the lunch we were to get upon Peace Corps' arrival before the workshop started. We asked the hotel when lunch would be served and they kindly told us there was no lunch scheduled for the day. At 2pm PC showed up surprised to see us. They announced the workshop had been moved to Wednesday and Thursday only. None of us were notified in any way. To make things more bizarre, one of the volunteers had gotten a reminder email to meet at the hotel for lunch before the workshop on that very day. So organization was a bit of a mess. The workshop was actually more useful than I anticipated since a lot of us were unsure how to correctly fill out the rather large forms with rather small amounts of guidance. And our facilitators, who did not organize the event, listened patiently to our many complaints about the timing, organization, and communication for the workshop. Plus it's always good to see the gang down here.

While in Mtwara we did have some fun. We indulged in ice cream served on bikes-we never passed one up-even if they came by one after the other, fresh fish, and a quick dip in the ocean. While wading a local fishing boat sailed by. These boats are quite amazing. They're overcrowded, like any vehicle in Tanzania, and must be constantly bailed out. The sails are made from pieces of plastic taped together and they have no pulley system to let out or pull in the sails. So they must be kept in tight or the passengers won't be able to pull in the sail during a strong wind. And the wind was STRONG. The boats passing by were sailing so fast and the sails were constantly dipping into the water. Quite impressive to watch. Mike and I also joined some kids in doing somersaults off a pier into the water.

On Friday, Steph and I headed back to my site. When we arrived in Masasi we were promptly told there was no car going to Chidya that day. Transportation had been less and less reliable to my site but I thought for sure a car would come to town on Friday. Luckily there were enough people interested in going to Chidya that a small truck was found to go. Steph and I got the front 2 seats and quickly learned our driver had never been to Chidya and this would be his first driving of our treachorous road...um, yikes. Luckily, it wasn't too bad. On Saturday Steph went back to site and I prepared for my last two and half weeks of the school year.

And...they...were...slow. I was waiting for my parents to arrive, had finished all my projects for the term, and had reviewed the syllabus with both my forms. But once my parents got here, chaos ensued. I was surprised at first how differently I was treated by the town folks who knew me when I had my parents with me: all prices went up. However, in my village people were just happy to see us. I had, what I thought was, a few things planned for us to do. Get clothes made, visit people, make them makande, vitumbua, show them how to make corn flour, walk to Ngatala and the Mwiti River, grade tests, show them Mullet-fest pictures, you know: the 'musts' of Tanzania. Well, even with a full week we only got half of it done. But we had a great time. My parents were a bit surprised about travel, especially the road to my site. And they had many 'suggestions' for my house and few complaints about my toilet facilities. They both had clothes made by two of my close friends, Fundi (Taylor) Ally and Adjere. They enjoyed meeting my counterparts and living like a true Tanzanian teacher does. Geofrey was especially helpful and fun to talk to. Since my parents can't speak Swahili he could provide good answers to cultural questions because he knows English so well. It was over all too fast and now we're back in Mtwara before we head off to Arusha and Zambia. I'm sure they'll have much more to post in their online journal when they return (www.cs.odu.edu/~wild/travels) because they experienced so many different things here. I'll be sure to take lots of pictures for next month's posting. Until then,

Justin