Habari za Muda?

It's been an exciting month. After meeting everyone in town the last weekend of July I was happy to get back to site to start work. I had a lot of plans: start writing a grant to get educational materials for the library, start teaching a peer educator group (which is comprised of several students from each Form and will go teach kids at the two local primary schools about life skills, such as effects of alcohol abuse, sex ed-yikes-, and such) with Geofrey...in Kiswahili-double yikes, and start a permaculture garden as an experiment so Peter and I can teach local farmers about the benefits of permaculture. Of course all of this isn't going to come together quickly and most of it is still in the works. Besides those side projects I had a big plan for teaching...GROUP WORK. These kids rarely see it and so it can be a challenge.

The first week I took 4 of the best kids from each Form I stream and taught them how to construct a Perpendicular Bisector, an Angle of 60?, a Bisector of an Angle, and how to Copy a Given Angle during a super-secret night session. I know, you're now brimming with excitement. The whole week we had class in the library and each student I taught during the night session taught one construction to a group of students. Each day the students rotated. It went real well. I think the students enjoyed learning from a fellow student in their own class. And I have to admit...I stole this idea from another volunteer, Anna. It sounded like a great idea when she told me about it and it worked well for her so I gave it a shot.

At the end of the week I introduced group assignments for Form III. It's no secret, kids work together for homework, you can tell during grading. So I thought why not embrace that and hope some of the struggling students learn from conversation of group work...right. That may have happen anyway but to try and push it here were my conditions: I split each form into 6 groups of 7 and gave each a different problem to work on. I give them one week to work on the problem then one member of the group presents the solution to the class. The catch? I call on a student at random so any member of the group may have to present. AND the presentation is worth 50% of their grade. I hoped this would cause the students who understand the material well to try and teach those struggling. And it did...sort of. The presentations went well and I got to do one of my favorite teaching activities: participate in the class as a student. I knocked on the desk (students do that here to ask questions), began my questions with 'Excuse me, sir,' and other fun stuff. And I asked HARD questions. Once students realized I was pretty serious about this the groups got together during another's presentation to discuss the material in case some students didn't participate in the solution. Not exactly what I wanted. So I made them a deal, they could talk as a group presenting wrote the solution but had to be silent, except for questions, during the presentation. Also, one group tried to send up a student who was NOT the one I called on. I may not be able to put every name to a face but I knew this wasn't the right student. They tried to be sneaky. All in all the presentations went very well and I'm looking forward to the next round. I told them each project will get harder and have more restrictions and I think now that we've done one they'll have a better idea of what to expect.

The thing that broke my heart though was I called on one student who not only can't speak english but doesn't understand it. He's doing average work in the class but I can't imagine attending school and trying to learn in a language I don't know. But I have to treat everyone equally and luckily the groups write the directions down so they can just be read. The students can read english just like if we were given French without knowing it-we could read it with lots of mispronunciations.

The first weekend in August we had our second Deep South Movie Night at Mike's site in Newala. Unfortunately the cameras were not out in full force so I only got a few pictures. Mike made oh-so-delicious stir fry with goat meat I bought from out the side of a bus. Yup, fresh, raw goat meat-only in Africa. The 8th was a national holiday-worker's day-so I managed to get Monday off too-I only teach one class-and went to Marisa's site. She's just a 45 minute ride from Newala. She lives in a small village but it has phone service an electricity so...cold sodas. We had a nice time hanging out and exchanging guitar riffs. The next week of teaching went by quickly and that weekend Peter and I prepared the land for my permaculture garden. Also, this was the first Sunday I was in my village in 3 weeks so I went to church. It was a usual day of singing...at first anyway. This was the first time I had been to church while the students were there. About 8 or so attended and they had a choir of just Chidya students. They stole the show. They were led by one of my Form IIIs, Dinu Zeno, and a Form IV who beat me on the net more than a few times on the volleyball field. They both had solos (no solos in choir prior to this). And the choir...WAS MOVING. Bouncing up and down, clapping, doing these crazy cool Tanzanian moves, etc. Then later two students got up to sing a duet. Well sort of, everyone else was singing the chorus while they traded solos. My first birthday treat...oh yeah, it was my birthday...don't tell anyone. No one here knew so I had a nice relaxing birthday. Not that I don't enjoy birthday parties but this was a unique one in a country of great beauty and I got to spend the day just settled in it all.

I also bought a khanga which is fabric with a Tanzanian saying on it. I picked one out for it's colors and it says, literally, 'Happiness I know it. Leave me with my lover.' The real translation is 'Happiness I know when I am left alone with my lover.' Hmmm...quite suggestive for such a conservative culture. I took it to Fundi Ally, who, if you remember, I am teaching english. The khangas come in twos so I had him cut and sew the edges. When I asked him the price he said, 'Hapana,' which means 'no'. My second birthday treat.

After church I was supposed to teach Geofrey and Peter how to cook the Keki ya Ndizi (check recipe section) but a boy got sick and Geofrey took him to the hospital in town. So we cooked it the next day. So good. The next week was pretty calm. Josh came that weekend and we just relaxed and walked to a nearby mini-rock plateau that offers a beautiful 360 degree view of the surrounding area. The next week was my last at the school for the month. I played a review game with the Form I's with prizes of rulers, compasses, pencils, and candy. Form IA took no candy! I was amazed, I expected the candy to go first. It just shows you how little the students have to work with. One student in Form I Alpha took candy. So now I have lots of candy.

That Wednesday the Form I's played the Form III's in football (aka soccer). I don't know football very well so those of you who are experts please forgive me. It was quite a game. First Form I scored 2 goals. Their fans went nuts. Then Form III scored 2 early in the second half. Then the goalie for Form III made a mistake kicking the ball in and Form I got a goal kick and scored. The goalie took off his shirt and ran to the sidelines for a time out. He got a yellow card for improper procedure or conduct. A Form III got frustrated and purposely used his hand to hit the ball: red card. Form III tied it up and then a Form III tried to kick a Form I instead of the ball; again, purposely: another red card for Form III. Then Form III got a breakaway one on one with the goalie and the goalie came out to meet the player who kicked it just over his reach into the goal. The game ended shortly thereafter. As all this was going on we watched an amazing sunset. No unnatural light (no electricity in the village), no cars passing by, just a beautiful tree line to compliment the sun setting behind thick clouds and throwing beams of light all around them. It slowly washed from yellow to purple, to pink and orange all the while keeping a golden yellow border around the clouds. Simply beautiful.

It's now the last week of the month and I'm way up North in Moshi for a conference to discuss teaching strategies to aid in the language barrier between Kiswahili and English. It's quite different up here. Tell you about it next month.

Justin