Hello friends in the cyberspace. So it’s been awhile. I did some stuff. Here are some of the things I did. I made my house into a home (cute), people visited me and I tried to show off my kite but it wasn’t windy, I met some folks, and I taught some kids, sort of. This is my introduction. Now I will transition.
Right, so I did a bunch of home improvement. Sadly, IKEA hasn’t made it to Tanzania yet so I’ve been going to little dukas (shops) to buy stuff for my house. Mostly cooking and cleaning equipment and buckets. Lots of buckets. My water here is inconsistent so big buckets are good for storing water. I also use buckets to shower and wash clothes (they’re multifunctional!). So to buy stuff I have to go into Tukuyu, about 20km away on a crowded bus/van thing, which is even more fun when you are carting all your home improvement stuff with you. Needless to say, I took many trips. And I bought a bike! It’s way too small and possibly a girls bike, but it works. Oh, I also cleaned a lot. My house was kinda gross. Tangent, speaking of gross. So I got a brand new western style toilet, which is pretty sweet. Except it’s a cheap plastic one and it doesn’t really work. Yesterday I took a nap and woke up to a layer of water covering most of my room and the entire bathroom and a couple other rooms. I spent the next few hours scooping up poopy water with a dustpan. I eventually dumped out 6 buckets of water. It was impressive. Anyway, home improvement. I bought a two burner hot plate, which means I won’t be cooking by charcoal stove, wee! My school is big enough and out-in-the-middle-of-no-where enough that we have our own school fundi or carpenter/handyman/plumber. So, I had him make me a bed, a coffee table and a kitchen counter thing. They’re awesome. Oh and I got a mat. It’s a nice mat, as far as mats go I guess.
Next up: People visited me and I tried to show them my kite but it wasn’t windy. So yeah, a bunch of people from my “class” of education volunteers that live around me came to visit! I got to show them my giant house with electricity and (sometimes) running water and my school’s monkey. Did I tell you about this, dear blog reader? My school has a pet monkey. It’s a mini monkey (scientific name) and we fed it mini bananas. Find something cuter, I DARE YOU. But it is missing a leg cause they used some nasty trap to catch it and it’s in a fairly tiny cage, so its sorta sad. BUT SO CUTE. But yeah, I tried to fly my kite a lot but it didn’t work. It was sad. But I’ve gotten it to work other places and it’s great. Be happy.
So I met lots of folks at my site. I actually sorta became friends with the student teachers who used to live at my house. The first couple times I went to Tukuyu to buy stuff one of them came with me to help, which probably meant I got things for half the price I would have paid if I was by myself. Pretty cool. Now they are back at university but many of them live around here so I we’ll meet up again at some point. I’ve spent the most time with the family of the Secondmaster (like assistant principal) of my school. Before I got a kitchen of sorts set up I ate at their house, and still occasionally piga hodi, which basically means show up at someone’s around the time they usually eat in hopes that they will feed you. I attempt to speak Swahili with the Secondmaster’s wife and kids and they laugh at me and its good times. And I buy eggs and firewood from them. A couple days ago I gave them a watermelon. I felt pretty good about myself.
Last but not least, I taught! So I’m still getting used to the way schools work around here. Everything seems to happen slowly and in a disorganized fashion. School “started” yesterday, Monday. I still didn’t know which classes I’d be teaching, or have the syllabus – the list of topics I need to cover – so I couldn’t start teaching. As it turns out, none of the teachers started teaching and only maybe 15% of the students were at school the first day. Today we had maybe 20% of the students and learned what I’m teaching! I’ll be teaching Form 5 Physics. So there are 4 “streams,” or classes of Form 5 students that take physics and each class has 10 periods per week. Peace Corps says I should start by teaching only around 20 periods per week, so I guess the plan is to combine the streams into two double sized classes. Today there were so little students though that all four streams easily fit into one classroom. We shall see. Anyway, I still don’t have a syllabus but I went ahead and taught anyway! We just did introductions and all that boring stuff you always do on the first day of school. I had the students ask me questions and got quite some interesting ones ranging from intense (“What is different about the people of Tanzania and America that makes America much more rich than Tanzania?”) to way too personal (“If you have no wife here how will you live for two years without being with a woman?”). Those were fun to try to answer! But yeah, the student’s seemed great. They seemed to have a good grasp of English, seemed motivated and interested in physics and most importantly laughed at my stupid jokes. Now these were just the 20% that decided to show up on the second day – they might be the cream of the crop. We shall see.
And that’s it. Time for lesson planning and bed and maybe some Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia. I just started watching that. It’s a good show. I highly recommend it. Over and out.
