Newala

Last week, on Wednesday and Thursday, we ran SMILE workshops with Paul, June, Michael, and Jen who were all from different organizations. Paul is a professor at Stanford who I believe is in charge of Seeds of Empowerment, June is a PhD student at Boston University, Michael is a Primary School teacher in Mtwara and may be getting hired at Jiamini, which is an NGO Jen started when she was a PCV 5 years ago in Newala. So a mix of people, but all of us were there to help get the phones situated in the classroom. Basically there are 25 Android phones. The students open SMILE which is basically an app, and connect to a wireless router. There is no internet but it links the phones with the computer. The whole goal of the SMILE is for students to create their own multiple choice quiz. This is done because students never have done such activities. All they do is memorize. This was very clear in the first round of questions/answers they submitted. About 75% of the questions were “What is…?” Most of the other ones were “List” or “Define” certain key words. They loved the phones. Once they submit their question to the server, the program compiles the questions from all 25 phones and then you can send the quiz back out to the students. Then they must answer the 25 question quiz created by their classmates. Some of the questions had horrible spelling mistakes or just did not make sense at all (“Who am I?”, “Born by this, die by this”-answer: salt?) and students would say “Madame, I do not understand.” Well, I don’t understand either! It was cool to see that they were catching other peoples’ mistakes. My headmaster wants to run this program at least 3 times a week. We were successful Monday, but then could not connect to the server on Tuesday. They instead typed their questions as text messages and had to present them orally. Simply using a touch-screen keyboard is mind blowing for them and it takes a lot of practice. Hopefully we can get the workshops up and running again by Monday.

I hitched a ride with the Seeds of Empowerment crew back to Mtwara on Friday. We stopped at a school about 20 minutes away to discuss the possibility of bringing SMILE there. There was a crew outside literally putting up electrical poles right then. Hopefully they will have electricity in 2 months and then it would be possible. Paul mentioned his interest in using me for future projects in Tanzania and also maybe Burundi. That would be so awesome to work with them again! Anyway, it was CRAZY to be in a private car. There was air conditioning, nice soft music, and I was able to talk to June most of the way. I also learned that Jen has supported 6 children since she has been in country. She “adopted” her first child in the middle of her Peace Corps service and has continued to “adopt” kids when there is really no alternative situation for them. Now, most of the kids have sponsors who live internationally and just happened to want to support a child. All of the kids should be able to go onto university with all the support they have received. It was a very inspirational story.

This weekend we enjoyed the beach house in Mtwara with about 20 other volunteers who came to say goodbye to Katie and Kathryn. My highlights of the weekend were: taking a 20 minute hot shower and actually shaving my legs, buying a hot plate, creating a scene at the market when I was looking for honey (honey comes in used alcohol bottles and they thought I was wanting “pombe” at 10am), I found a pair of Jasmine pants at a duka so now I have a Halloween costume, we swam with naked boys again and they enjoyed using my goggles, and then I made a mixture of frozen banana, honey and granola. Delicious.

Traveling back to Newala was not the best. I left the beach house at 7:40am and arrived home at 4:35pm. It is only 142km, but there were delays with the bus leaving, combined with a bumpy road, making lots of stops, etc. I got sunburned, had a sweat rash, and was completely dehydrated. Fun stuff.

This has been a slow academic week at school, but lots of other random stuff happened. The Form 4 students are finishing their NECTAS tomorrow, but that also means that we are missing many teachers who are invigilating at other schools. As punishment (for who knows what) students dug about 10 5-foot-deep holes around campus for rubbish. I really don’t think the holes needed to be that deep-it is basically just a burn pit. Students whose hair was too long had it haphazardly trimmed with a pair of scissors so that they would be embarrassed all day. It is nice that they were using other forms of punishment, but the beatings continue also. This week I have heard 2 students (1 male, 1 female) crying out and begging the teacher to stop beating them. They have also upgraded to thicker bamboo sticks instead of flimsy thin twigs.  

I have started being stricter in my classes. There are just too many students and I feel like I need to put my foot down or else things will get out of control. One girl was sleeping and I woke her up twice and told her to take notes. She just stared at me so I picked up her notebooks and threw them out the door. She finally got up to leave and then all the students started telling me “But Madame, she is sick!” I see at least 3 students every day who come into the office saying they need to go home or to the hospital because they are sick. So, she had the option of leaving school, but she didn’t. It is weird how strict they are about other things and automatically beat students but if a student is sick or even “sick” they are coddled. Other students have been copying notes for other classes during my class, so I just pick up the notebooks and set them at the front of class. They have most of the day with no teacher so they should copy it in their free time, not during my class time. Another boy went to pass a note and then saw that I saw. He pretended to start writing on it. Turns out it was a drawing he had done of his girlfriend who he was passing it to. I took the picture and hung it at the front of the class. The girl seemed to be more embarrassed than the boy, but I think they proved a good example to not mess around during class. I don’t want to be too mean to them, but I feel like making them focus is way better than beating them for doing things wrong.

I found out a Form 3 girl got pregnant and they had to take the “impregnator” to the police. He will be tried and if found guilty of “impregnating a school girl” he can face up to 30 years in jail. I believe he is one of our students also. As for her, she will just be kicked out of school and will not be able to continue her education. Because of this, I told my headmaster that I want to take over the FEMA club here and hopefully can pass out condoms. Another teacher said “they will not use condoms”, but they haven’t tried passing them out before, have they?

After class on Monday, the one student who had asked a thoughtful question in class (A mountain is a noun-is it a thing or a place?) came to my office to “request my friendship”. First he thanked me for teaching him and then asked to be my friend and then told me his whole life story. Both of his parents have died “respectfully” (but I assume from AIDS because that had been our topic in class and I think that triggered him to come to me) so he lives with his sister. He was so sweet. And I told him if he ever needed to study or look at a book to come to my office. My old second master also “requested friendship”…I don’t get it. 

Tetsuko is the Japanese volunteer next door. She invited me over to cook dinner on Monday. She has a fridge! She had bought meat over the weekend. It actually was like steak-no bones! We made meat, tomato, eggplant, green pepper stir-fry over pasta. She even baked a chocolate whiskey cake in her rice cooker! It was awesome to be able to cook with someone. We are planning to make pizza together next week! On Wednesday, I asked her house girl to wash my laundry for me. I had 4 sheets, a bunch of rags and some clothes (and no water-our well has been dry for a week now, so she had to walk about 200 yards to fetch water from my Mkuu’s kasima) and she charged me 3,000/=  ($1.87). Crazy! Tetsuko pays her 30,000/= ($18.75) per month and she comes 3 times a week to sweep, mop, haul water, do dishes, and do laundry. I feel bad paying so little, but that is the going rate. Later that evening a young woman came to my door and requested to work for me. I told her I didn’t need help (which is true most of the time) but I think she knew I had had my laundry done for me.

Today I started passing out stickers in class to the students who were actually on-task. It turned into kids standing on desks, surrounding me, showing their notebooks in my face because they all wanted stickers. Some kids even covered up the sticker with their thumb to try to get another! I think it was a great motivator and I have never seen them work so fast! Thank you all for the stickers and stamps! I collected notebooks for the first time, so this weekend will be full of grading/stamping.

Also, just some other news: My whole family is coming to visit January 1-15! I am so excited they are really coming! Tickets have been bought and all! Now, we need to plan the logistics of the trip.

P.S. Another funny website-it totally relates to my life!
http://whatshouldpcvscallme.tumblr.com/

I also added a link in my pictures section of our SMILE workshops :)