"The Staff Meeting" or "The Depth of Human Suffering in Subsaharan Africa"

Warning: This post is not approved for younger viewers, those with heart conditions, or anyone who is or may be a wuss.

Last Monday it happened. I knew it was coming, but that's not to say I was ready. I walked into the staff room at the school on Monday morning as I always do. Even though we're not teaching yet, we have to "report" every day. This time on the announcements board a message was written by the assistant head master. "Staff meeting today." There was no time on the message, and none of the other teachers knew what time it would start, so we just had to wait.

Now, waiting is the national pasttime of Tanzania. Nothing ever starts remotely on time. You rush to catch the bus that ends up leaving an hour late. School years sometimes end up starting a couple of weeks after scheduled, but some of us aren't quite used to this.

So we waited. Eventually the meeting started, and before I get into the description I'll go ahead and say in lasted five hours. FIVE HOURS! The meeting was also in Swahili. Now I can scrape by in Swahili and usually get a message across, but can you imagine trying to pay attention to someone for five hours in your native language? It's impossible, you can't do it! Inevitably you start to drift. You can't focus. You can maybe pay attention for an hour in your native language, but in another you last maybe two minutes. We went through complaints about discipline and who knows what else and then, sometime in hour three the rain started.

Ok, so we were inside, so it's not like I was getting wet, but it sure didn't help the mood. Ok, well maybe I was really excited to see rain because the rainy season was real late to start and Lake Victoria is at record low levels so it actually probably brightened my mood, but remember that the point of this story is my suffering!

As hour five approached we were served tea. This was quite nice but consider that this was just a clever plot to get enough sugar and caffeine in our systems to take more punishment.

Then, after an announcement that we will indeed be getting satellite TV in the staff room which I'm actually quite excited about the meeting ended, OR DID IT? Afterwards we had to have meetings in our academic departments. NOOOOOOOO! THE HORROR! Ok, so we'd already discussed what I would teach so that meeting lasted about ten seconds, but by then it was well passed lunchtime so it seemed a lot longer.

So that's my tale of inhuman suffering. Wait, you ask, "In a country ravaged by poverty and disease how can you in good conscience call a boring meeting suffering?" My response is: if you think you're so tough, you go two months without a cheeseburger. TWO MONTHS! What's that? You're a vegetarian? Well you really should try chicken. It's delicious.