Happy Halloween everyone! I haven’t had much success trying to explain the concept to people here. Somehow the notion of dressing up like weird-o’s, knocking on people’s doors and getting candy misses something in translation. But at least they’re kind enough not to laugh in my face about it. I’m celebrating today by watching the Simpsons Halloween specials that I have on my computer. We did have a Halloween party in town this weekend, which was a lot of fun. I love that all the big towns are essentially giant thrift stores. I found a pretty amazing (albeit very small sized) burgundy suit, so I couldn’t resist the temptation to go as Ron Burgundy, even though it was my costume last year as well. Though technically because of the beard, I was the “Milk was a bad choice” version, so there was a distinction. And the milk carton was indeed part of the costume. Hope everyone’s enjoying the holiday back home!
I’ve begun teaching computers in the evenings with the few laptops that the school has. They need electricity since the batteries are pretty crummy, so it’s usually from 7 to about 830. Trying to do Mondays and Tuesdays with the older students and Wednesdays and Thursdays with the teachers. Hopefully a good number of the teachers can get competent enough to continue teaching students after I leave. Some of them are actually pretty good already and have computers of their own. Then there are others who don’t know how to turn them on, so it’s a wide range of abilities. I’m trying to leave it up to them in terms of choosing what to learn. Word and Excel are the most commonly used, and web browsers, even though there is no internet for them to use here. Soon I’d like to have some of the students maybe write emails that I can send to some of Sarah’s students in San Fran. We are doing a snail-mail correspondence thing too, but that could give them more practice with their typing and English skills. Or if anyone else wants to start exchanging emails with Tanzanian students, let me know! They all seem very excited about communicating with Americans.
We had our monthly tests last week for October. Every month there is either a monthly test, midterm, or annual test. These ones are shorter though (about an hour long). I made mine on Accounts, which is the subject I’ve been teaching since starting. It was the first real good feedback I’ve gotten on how well the students are understanding me. Of my two classes, one seems to be catching on a lot quicker, so I know that I need to have slightly different paces for each class. Overall they were better scores than my first test, so that was encouraging. I’m going to have to miss the end of the school year to go to my IST Peace Corps training at the end of November, so I’m also trying to prepare notes for the topics that I won’t be able to teach them.
Starting to get warmer here, my site is still cooler since it is up in the mountains, but definitely still hot in the afternoons. It’s only going to get warmer though, especially back in Morogoro where our training is. I’m dreaming of a sweaty Christmas… I heard there has already been some major snow around the East coast. Ridiculous. I will miss snow for sure, but not as much as I saw last winter, and not the whole digging the car out every morning business. The rains that were here a few weeks ago were apparently short-lived. It has been pretty dry for a while now, but the real rainy season will start up within a month or so I believe.
I just found out today that we will be getting a new Country Director for Peace Corps Tanzania in December. The current CD, Andrea, is taking a new Peace Corps position, though can’t say what it is quite yet (must be pretty important). From what I got to know of her in the few months I’ve been here, she has been extremely nice, and I’ve heard very good things from the other volunteers, so I’m sure she will be greatly missed. But the new woman has apparently done a lot of service in Tanzania and several other countries around Africa, and was actually the Country Director in Uganda for 5 years, so I’m sure she is a good replacement.
And now here’s some fun Halloween Kiswahili vocab:
Ghost: pepo
Witch: mchawi
Candy: pipi (Longstocking)
Pumpkin: boga
Bat: popo*
*interesting side note- there is a legitimate legend in Tanzania of a giant bat/person/thing (I guess it makes sense to call him batman) who goes around sexually assaulting men, and the only way to keep him away is to pass on the story about him to someone else. So here’s to me dodging that bullet!
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