Moving...Again

After a great weekend with some Dirty South volunteers, it was time to go home. Nick, Minh and I went to the bus stand around noon expecting to just hop on a bus. They were going to the East, I was going to the West. They only had to wait for an hour and a half. I waited for two and a half hours. Who needs bus schedules, right? So the obvious solution to staying entertained while sitting on an empty bus…lure Tanzanian children over and feed them Pop Rocks! Besides feeling like creepy pedophiles, we got some good laughs in. They just looked so confused and excited at the same time. I mean, what would you think if a stranger offers you candy and it starts crackling in your mouth? Pop Rocks will always be welcomed in packages J

I returned home to find that my maggot farm had taken off. I purposely put out nasty, rotten foods to breed maggots to then throw down my choo. Pretty disgusting, but they took care of my plumbing issues like I had hoped for!

I decided to time myself walking to the sokoni and back: 57 minutes. In that time I walked what I think is about 4km and bought all my groceries for the week. The egg man wasn’t there, but a sweet old man flagged down a teenager to take me to his house to get eggs. I bought tomatoes, potatoes, dagaa, flour, sugar, kerosene, and eggs for less than $5.

I did 5 loads of laundry this week! I washed 3 weeks of clothes, sheets, and my blanket and used a TON of water. I was kind of disgusted at how much water I used, but I justified it with the number of items I washed. That is literally my exercise (along with sweeping). Take bucket inside. Fill with water. Haul outside. Add soap. Add clothes. Stir them around. Let sit. Bend over and scrub. Wring the soap out. Place in empty bucket. When all clothes are in the empty bucket, haul that bucket inside. Add water. Let sit. Stir around. Wring out excess soapy water. Turn inside-out. Hang on clothesline.

I continue to enjoy cooking. This week I made pretzels (cinnamon sugar and plain salt ones), peanut butter brownies, and potato soup. I had spent 2 hours making the potato soup and was adding the finishing touches of salt (from my toothpick container, turned salt shaker) and the lid fell off and the ENTIRE bottle of salt went into my soup. I still ate it and it was pretty good! Salt water is supposed to help with dehydration too, so maybe it helped my health?

I had a great week at school. I got closer with my Form 3 class. We made a circle we played “kitimoto” (hot seat), so I just asked them questions at random to see what they knew. I asked questions like “Who do you live with?” and “What do you do after school?” and then corrected the grammar of their answers. They seemed confused about the circle at first, but I think the fact that I was sitting with them instead of standing over them made them relax. At the end of kitimoto one young man completely shocked me with his amazing English. He wanted to know my opinion about the flaws of the Tanzanian school system, to describe differences between America and Tanzania, and finally he asked me to teach them the different verb tenses. In English we have 16 verb tenses. Native English speakers don’t usually notice the difference between all of them! However, after searching through all the Form 1 and 2 books that I have, I found only 7 verb tenses. I took some notes and created a very systematic, formulaic way to understand how and when to use each tense. On Friday I started with Present Perfect, which is easy to relate to them because in Swahili it is “me”. “NiMEshiba”= "I have just become full.” They really liked the timeline where I showed how all of the tenses relate. I know 5 verb tenses in Swahili (but there may be more), so I compared all of them to Swahili. I thought it went really well.

After teaching that class, I went to teach my Form 2 class. A total of 12 students were there, so I took them to the Form 3 classroom to copy the same notes and then we even had time to play basically “Never Have I Ever”. They each had to look in someone’s eyes and ask “Have you ever…..?” It was awesome! It was also so much easier working with a smaller group of students.

The reason there were so few kids is that everyone else was outside preparing for graduation. The whole week students were randomly given machetes and told to go cut down trees. On Friday, they finally began constructing the graduation stage. I was amazed at how much they accomplished in 3 hours with some knives, sticks, and string. Other students were painting the rocks white and tidying up the campus for graduation. Graduation is on Monday from 9am-4pm and we apparently get to eat the goat that has been living behind my house.

I also opened the library. In total I unpackaged 874 books, organized them by subject, and have them set up on temporary “shelves” made of tables. Only about 30 students have visited the library in the 2 days that it was open, but they all looked so excited. Some Form 2 girls came in specifically wanting Chemistry books. Awesome! Apparently, my Mkuu wants to move the library to a different classroom in November and then the students will be briefed on how to check out books. For now, they really do enjoy just looking at pictures. I don’t even care that they aren’t using the books for educational purposes yet. Just the fact that they can look at pictures and see things that they have never imagined/never knew existed is beyond amazing. I also have a dream to make a book specially formulated for Form 1 and 2 students in Tanzania. I hope to include a dictionary and basic grammatical structure that they can use as an ultimate reference book.

After my wonderful week at school, I got some bittersweet news. I am moving to Newala, Mtwara to replace Katie, who is done with her service on October 11^th. I will be moving on Tuesday! Katie had written a grant to buy computers and start a computer lab, but it got delayed, so I will be taking over that project. Also, I should be able to start a Life Skills club and maybe even start some Girls Empowerment work. I was totally pushing for the site change, but when it became official I realized how much I could have given to the students at Chinongwe. The situation is not my fault: my community was supposed to provide me reliable transportation (not pikipiki) to the main road, but they never followed through with their end of the bargain. If there were ever an emergency it would have been a Safety and Security issue because I would have no way to get out. I will miss Chinongwe, but I think I will be more accepted and better utilized in Newala.

With that news, I decided I would ride my bike to Ndanda so I don’t have to deal with it on moving day. I’m leaving it in Ndanda for the other 2 volunteers to use. Yesterday I left my house at 6am on my bike. It is about 15km to Mikey’s house, so I figured I would make it there by 8am at the latest. WRONG. I got 3 flat tires. I stopped to get the tire fixed at 2 different fundis and they took forever. Thankfully, people noticed that I was walking my bike, saw the flat, and just told me to follow them to the “shop”. It is really nice to have everyone always looking out for you. After the second flat was fixed, I rode for another 15 minutes before I was tired so decided to rest. When I got up to start riding again, I realized I had ANOTHER flat, so just sat down. I finally flagged down a driver and he took me the remaining 5km to Ndanda. So it took me 3 and a half hours to ride 10km, get 2 flats fixed, and be driven 5km. I’m glad I tried the bike ride, but also very happy I don’t have to do it again!

*I updated my “Contact Me” and “Wish List” sections on my actual blog page and added a "Photos" section so they are always accessible. Please notice that all mail should now be sent to:

Sister Alyson Hite

P.O. Box 400

Newala, Mtwara

Tanzania