Friday (Dec. 9) marked the 50th anniversary of Tanzania's independence. This is quite the year for we PCVs because it's also the 50th year for PC Tanzania. Apparently there was a giant celebration in Dar on Saturday with all of the living previous presidents. Congrats to Tanzania! The newspapers pointed to corruption and poverty as being the biggest problems still facing the country today. I don't know too much about the political system here yet, but from what I've heard the current party in power (CCM) has pretty much remained in power since independence. I heard that in the last election there was a record number of votes for alternative parties, so hopefully the peoples' voices can be heard if they are looking for a change.
Like I mentioned last time, we got to meet with a Peace Corps volunteer who served in Tanzania back in 1961, so he was part of the first ever group of Peace Corps. The guy we met was named Tom, and his partner from the same group (named Jerry, coincidentally enough) was supposed to come but couldn't make it. Still it was great to talk with him. He studied civil engineering in school and actually served before his senior year of college. In TZ he was working in Morogoro, making the road that goes to Dar, which has to be one of the most frequently traveled roads in the country today. We watched an NBC video from the 60's that was made of the first class of PCVs. It was kind of funny seeing the training that they went through - it was more of a boot camp than anything else. They did obstacle courses and intense physical training as well as language and culture study. I think it would be cool if we still had some of that today, but things have definitely changed a lot over 50 years. A lot of the rural areas of the country we saw in the video though really didn't look different at all from some of the places I've been. There definitely are plenty of places that are still as poor as they were 50 years ago.
Also last week we got to meet with our new Country Director, Elizabeth, or EB as she likes to be called. She told us about her time in Tanzania (she lived with a group of the famous Maasai tribe around the central part of the country for a few years) and as a Country Director in Uganda. She is very nice and still remembers alot of Kiswahili. Andrea is now gone to Nepal, and was very sad to leave us. She blamed us though for her leaving because she said the Peace Corps Director was very impressed when he came to visit us back in June, and that encouraged him to have her start the new Nepal program.
The rest of training went well - we got a lot of good resources for starting different student clubs at our schools, for education about HIV/AIDS, malaria, and general life skills. I also got a lot of good computer teaching tools like typing practice games and geography puzzles that will be very helpful for my teachers and students back at school. I also got some pointers from another volunteer on new origami things to make with my post-it notes, though the cranes are still my favorite by far. And of course our IST Prom was a huge success. The theme was "socks on hands" (don't ask...) and we had our own 90's music dance party at Dragonaire's, which many locals ended up joining. A few of us had been growing out our beards for IST, and Justin and I decided to get creative with ours. I'll leave it to you all to see the pictures for yourself, but someone suggested that I looked like a long-lost third Mario brother (named Guisseppe, of course), which I was happy to accept. But I couldn't really live with that for more than one day, so now it's back to square one. Maybe we will see who can grow theirs until Mid-service conference next Fall...
After IST I got to spend some time with my host family in Morogoro. They are all doing well, and I told my one host sister that her letter to America was received by Christine and that she would get one back soon, and she was so excited. I'm sure it was in very good English too, all of those kids speak amazingly well for their age. But my baba invited me to go with him to visit his family in Moshi, so we took a trip there for a couple days, and oh man, was it beautiful. They live right at one of the main gates to Kilimanjaro National Park, so you can see the mountain from their yard! We went to the park to look around, and it was great. He also has a lot of friends who are hiking guides, and they offered for me to come back next year and that I could use them to hike the mountain, without getting ripped off like most tourists. So I'm really excited about that and extremely lucky to have such an awesome baba!
It will be nice to have some quiet time back at my site after doing a lot of traveling. Christmas will be fun though, since I'm sure it will be a big group of us getting together. Hope everyone is doing well with their Christmas shopping and enjoying the snow if you have it. I've found some pretty hilarious Christmas decorations at random stores here that should go well with our Charlie Brown tree. My goal now is to translate The Night Before Christmas to read on Christmas Eve. Look for it coming soon and welcome to read both versions yourself if you'd like a little Tanzanian zest added to your holiday celebrations.
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Back to the Drawing Board (or Flip-Chart Paper)
It's now been over 3 months since we got to our sites, which means it is time for our In-Service Training, or IST. It's been going on all this week and will continue half of next week too. So we are back at Morogoro where we did our first 10 weeks of training. It's strange to be back in town and to see everyone again, it's kind of like we never even left. And awesome to all be reunited and talk about our sites and everything. It does also mean going back to the very long days of training sessions, but many of them are more relevant I think, since we now actually know what it's like at our schools and can apply what we're learning to our own communities. Also our counterparts are here with us, which makes it alot more useful. We had to pick a person to be a counterpart who we thought would be a good person to help us transition into our schools and also be able to help with whatever secondary projects we want to do. Mine is another math teacher at my school named Kassian, and he is awesome. He is one of the few people I've met who I would say always seems to say things that make sense, and he was also the counterpart for the volunteer before me, so he knows alot about American Volunteers.
The training has been going well so far. We've learned more about how to write grants, talked about teaching techniques we've been using, and also had a session discussing corporal punishment with the counterparts, which was very interesting. It is legal here to implement, with certain limitations, though unfortunately at alot of schools those limits aren't really enforced. Teachers are allowed to hit students, typically with a long, thin bamboo stick, but it is only supposed to be for severe cases, and it shouldn't be more than 4 times, and they are supposed to keep records of every time they do it, along with a bunch of other things. My school actually does seem to honor the part about not giving out more than 4 at a time, but I've heard of other schools that really get carried away with it. The thing is, most teachers remember getting hit when they were growing up and in school, and so it is the natural tendency to continue it themselves. Some think it is the only way to really get the students to stop misbehaving (even though it doesn't...), and then there are a few who just seem to get enjoyment out of the power it gives them over the students. Like I said, I actually think it is relatively tame at my school compared to others, but it should not be happening at all, I think. So that was a good thing to discuss with the counterparts.
In the meantime, another very important part of IST is a new tradition that was started by last year's group of volunteers, which is the IST prom. There is a really nice restaurant called Dragonaire's right by our training center, and they said we could have it there again this year, so that will be later on tonight. Of course the hope is that it will all be a joke - we drew names out of a shoe for prom dates and the theme is to do all 90's music, so it should be a great hit. And naturally another great opportunity to use my oragne suit, so keep an eye out for more good pictures soon!
Tomorrow we have the day off, and there are some really cool visitors who will be stopping by to talk to us. Apparently some of the volunteers from the first ever education class of PC Tanzania (50 years ago I believe) are back in the country and are coming to our training center to see us, which is awesome! One of them was even the first African American Peace Corps Volunteer ever! We have gotten so lucky, with meeting the Director Aaron Williams during training and now this. It will be really interesting to hear how Peace Corps has changed over the last 50 years. Also on Monday we will meet our new Country Director and say goodbye to Andrea, who is leaving to start up a new Peace Corps program in Nepal.
In other news, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was actually not too far off from what it's like back home - we had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and other Thanksgiving classics like mac and cheese and guacamole. I was in charge of the guac and, since they were so cheap, brought 50 with me to the dinner. We ended up mixing it in a 20 liter bucket, which it filled about half way with guacamole - it was a sight to behold. I decided to use it as the gravy and pour it over everything on my plate. There's a tradition to bring back home!
Looking forward to Christmas, even though it doesn't feel like it should be coming at all. I would appreciate any care packages of snow that anyone might be able to send to get me more in the spirit. But I'm trying to play the same 10 Christmas songs as constantly as possible to imitate listening to the radio stations back home. I'm not completely sure where I'll be for actual Christmas, but hopefully able to get together with other volunteers. I will definitely try to share some international Christmas culture with the locals, though - namely playing Dominic the Donkey for them.
Always missing everyone at home, especially around the holidays, but thank you so much to everyone who has been sending letters and other things. I got an amazing package a few weeks ago that pretty much made my life, so for those who were a part of that, THANK YOU! I do have christmas presents to send home, but I'm not sure yet if it will cost hundreds of dollars just to send a package home, so please don't be offended if it is late (a little late, or 2 years late...) but they will make it eventually!
Swahili guacamole recipe:
maparachichi (avocados)
nyanya (tomatoes)
vitunguu (onions)
limau (lemon)
chumvi (salt)
The training has been going well so far. We've learned more about how to write grants, talked about teaching techniques we've been using, and also had a session discussing corporal punishment with the counterparts, which was very interesting. It is legal here to implement, with certain limitations, though unfortunately at alot of schools those limits aren't really enforced. Teachers are allowed to hit students, typically with a long, thin bamboo stick, but it is only supposed to be for severe cases, and it shouldn't be more than 4 times, and they are supposed to keep records of every time they do it, along with a bunch of other things. My school actually does seem to honor the part about not giving out more than 4 at a time, but I've heard of other schools that really get carried away with it. The thing is, most teachers remember getting hit when they were growing up and in school, and so it is the natural tendency to continue it themselves. Some think it is the only way to really get the students to stop misbehaving (even though it doesn't...), and then there are a few who just seem to get enjoyment out of the power it gives them over the students. Like I said, I actually think it is relatively tame at my school compared to others, but it should not be happening at all, I think. So that was a good thing to discuss with the counterparts.
In the meantime, another very important part of IST is a new tradition that was started by last year's group of volunteers, which is the IST prom. There is a really nice restaurant called Dragonaire's right by our training center, and they said we could have it there again this year, so that will be later on tonight. Of course the hope is that it will all be a joke - we drew names out of a shoe for prom dates and the theme is to do all 90's music, so it should be a great hit. And naturally another great opportunity to use my oragne suit, so keep an eye out for more good pictures soon!
Tomorrow we have the day off, and there are some really cool visitors who will be stopping by to talk to us. Apparently some of the volunteers from the first ever education class of PC Tanzania (50 years ago I believe) are back in the country and are coming to our training center to see us, which is awesome! One of them was even the first African American Peace Corps Volunteer ever! We have gotten so lucky, with meeting the Director Aaron Williams during training and now this. It will be really interesting to hear how Peace Corps has changed over the last 50 years. Also on Monday we will meet our new Country Director and say goodbye to Andrea, who is leaving to start up a new Peace Corps program in Nepal.
In other news, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! Ours was actually not too far off from what it's like back home - we had turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and other Thanksgiving classics like mac and cheese and guacamole. I was in charge of the guac and, since they were so cheap, brought 50 with me to the dinner. We ended up mixing it in a 20 liter bucket, which it filled about half way with guacamole - it was a sight to behold. I decided to use it as the gravy and pour it over everything on my plate. There's a tradition to bring back home!
Looking forward to Christmas, even though it doesn't feel like it should be coming at all. I would appreciate any care packages of snow that anyone might be able to send to get me more in the spirit. But I'm trying to play the same 10 Christmas songs as constantly as possible to imitate listening to the radio stations back home. I'm not completely sure where I'll be for actual Christmas, but hopefully able to get together with other volunteers. I will definitely try to share some international Christmas culture with the locals, though - namely playing Dominic the Donkey for them.
Always missing everyone at home, especially around the holidays, but thank you so much to everyone who has been sending letters and other things. I got an amazing package a few weeks ago that pretty much made my life, so for those who were a part of that, THANK YOU! I do have christmas presents to send home, but I'm not sure yet if it will cost hundreds of dollars just to send a package home, so please don't be offended if it is late (a little late, or 2 years late...) but they will make it eventually!
Swahili guacamole recipe:
maparachichi (avocados)
nyanya (tomatoes)
vitunguu (onions)
limau (lemon)
chumvi (salt)
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