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Fern in Tanzania
I have now survived my first week of school here. I'm fairly exhausted and feel I have a lot to learn but am enjoying it so far.
The school day here is very long and begins with an assembly, flag raising and national anthem at 7.30am and ends at 5.30pm with various sports and activities. In between there is a 20 minute break where we get very, very sugary tea and a slice of bread and a 30 minute break for lunch. Lunch here is one of three things; ugali (known in Uganda as posho) which is made with maize flour and water. It is completely tasteless and has a texture that is likely slightly solid mashed potato. This is my least favourite and is difficult to eat. Something called makonday (not sure how it is actually spelt) is also served. This is maize, chickpeas and lentils and is not too bad, which is good as it seems to be served the most. The best lunch however is rice, which we got one day this week. On top of these three starches every day there is beans and a green vegetable that is known as goats cabbage, that has a very strong flavour.
I am teaching drama at the school at the moment and have also covered some English lessons for a teacher who is off ill with typhoid. The students are very enthusiastic and really want to learn. As there days are so long I have tried to have as much of the class as possible outside and interactive. This luckily has not been too difficult and I've found games like Simon Says can be changed so that instead of simon says something, they only do the action is the sentence was grammatically correct. It seems to work really well to be able to see who is understanding their lessons or not. Many of the students will not say if they do not understand and I discovered many of the younger students will just copy from another students book if they don't know what they are doing. The class sizes make it hard to tell who is doing this so getting them outside into a large space has made this a lot simpler than it otherwise would have been.
As activities coordinator I also have to make sure all the pupils have something to do each day between 2.50 and 4.10, this is often sport activities, singing, dancing or drawing. On Thursdays they have set clubs that last for ten weeks at a time. Every teacher has to run one and currently these clubs include language club, gardening club, art club, build a box car club, accounting club (this one is surprising popular), crochet club, and taxonomy club. Unfortunately I don't get to run one as I have to make sure they all run smoothly and drop in a different one each week to see how it is going. Then between 4.10 and 5.30 I have to help run after school activities. This week I have assisted a Form Four student with a drama club she wants to run. She has written a play for the school and they have just started to rehearse it. Although the play is in Swahili I have been able to follow it quite well as the students are very good at acting! The only thing is they have absolutely no idea about staging, probably because there is nothing like this available. I have also facilitated basketball, although I have no idea of the rules so the students are slowly teaching me.
I also have to come up with a performance for the youngest students for the end of term. They currently have very limited English and their are 43 of them so I shall have to see what I can come up with that they can all join in and enjoy doing.
Alongside activities and teaching I am in the process of setting up Swahili lessons for the volunteers at the school. Currently there is nothing available which seems a shame and so I have been given permission to set up a weekly class. Hopefully it will start this coming Wednesday. I am also this week hoping to start opening up the library on Tuesday and Thursdays between 4.10 and 5.30 so students can go in and read just for the sake of reading. I have created a question box as well so if there is anything they need the answer to, they can leave it in the box, someone with access to internet can look up the answer and get back to them. I can't imagine life without wikipedia personally and this seems to be quite a popular idea.
This upcoming week I begin taking on the responsibility of career guidance staff member. I am not sure how this will work but need to get in contact with the Tanzania n universities and see what they're programmes are and hopefully set up a contact with a member of staff at one of the big private schools here who is keen to share information from their resources.
While school takes up most of the day and with it getting dark everyone goes to bed anywhere between seven and eight thirty at night there has been very little time for anything else this week. However on Monday, we came home to school to discover that one of the volunteers who left this week to return home had made us all a three course dinner! We had guacamole, spaghetti and vegetables and Belgium chocolate (she is from Belgium and had managed to save this the three months she was here). There was a leaving dinner for her on Thursday as well, we all went into the centre of Moduli and had chips in an omelette (very popular here) to say goodbye. Both these evenings has given me good opportunities to get to know the other volunteers fairly well and settle in. Most of the other people here are from the US, although there is also a few from Belgium, someone from Ireland and from England. Quite a few of the volunteers teach at home but there is also a retired professor of education here, a doctor of physics and one other recent graduate like me (only they have already got their masters). Although I am the youngest volunteer with most people being between late twenties to sixties it has seemed to be ok. Lots of people have travelled and lived around the world before and so there are plenty of interesting stories! I am getting quite a few ideas of where I would like to visit next!
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