The End of Year One

My first school year as a teacher is over. It’s been quite a time and I’ve learned a lot from the experience. I’m really glad to have time off, but I’m certainly not dreading the start of another year. For the next month or so I’ll be meeting new volunteers in the Lushoto area and showing them around and I’ll be traveling around a bit. It should be a real good time. I’ll do my best to fill you in on what’s going on.

First off, I was really pleased with how my Form Ones performed. About a month before the final exams I gave them a tough math test that they really bombed. I was pretty angry with them for not preparing and in one class I was yelling at the students. Finally a tiny 12-year-old girl named Theresia put her slightly trembling hand up, her eyes big as saucers and asked, “Sir, will you cane us?” Well, that was too cute so it softened me up a bit. I also thought it was funny that they thought I might hit them. As I’ve mentioned before, corporal punishment is quite common in the schools here, but fortunately at my school now it’s quite uncommon because the administration doesn’t allow it. I guess my students figured that like some of the other teachers, every now and then I would resort to hitting them. So anyway, apparently this test really scared them and they studied really hard for my final. The grades were really good. I’m real glad about that because after they had done so poorly in the previous test I had doubts about how well I had gotten through to them. It’s an interesting kind of pride a teacher has when his students perform well.

Now the school is closed and the students have all gone home, and almost all the teachers have left as well. It’s now really quiet since almost all my neighbors are other teachers. Since there’s so little going on there I probably won’t be at home too much, though I will likely be in the area a lot because I think I’ll want to go around the area and visit the new ones in their sites. A lot of them are in new sites that I’d like to check out and if their settling in time is anything like mine they’ll be real glad to have visitors. The first few months at site was the most difficult time of my life. That’s not to say it was bad, it was just really, really hard. Every day I considered going home for awhile. Once you get four to six months in, for most people, you can make it the whole way and now I’m really glad I didn’t leave. In fact in the last several months any ideas of leaving early seem pretty crazy. Of course the Charlotte 49ers in the Final Four would be a perfectly logical reason, unlikely as it is, but as often happens I digress. The point is I know that these kids are going to be going through a tough time and I hope I’ll be able to help.

Speaking of the new group I got to meet most of them, though they don’t move in until the first week of December. I’m here in the Tanga region, which is divided into two parts. There’s Tanga Juu, the Lushoto area, where I live. Juu is Swahili for “up” or “above” because we’re up in the mountains. Then there’s Tanga Chini. As you may have guessed, chini is “down” or “below.” This is the area near Tanga town on the coast. The two areas are physically close together, but the roads winding their way around the mountains make travel between them somewhat difficult. They also have very different climates because of altitude differences. So in the two areas we have four in Tanga Juu and one in Tanga Chini starting their second year. We’re getting loaded up with new ones. If I’m counting correctly we have a total of nine coming to Tanga region, six Juu, three Chini. I guess I may as well mention that of the nine, seven are girls, which led to my rather ridiculous happy dance on the streets of Dar es Salaam. When I told Josh (my good buddy and fellow Lushoto volunteer, and only other available guy in the area) the news he bellowed a celebratory “Sweet Fancy Moses!” It’s lucky for all involved that they sent more than one girl to the area so that Josh and I won’t necessarily be engaged in an epic battle for some poor girl’s attention. By “epic” I of course mean pathetic.

Besides closing the school it’s been interesting couple of weeks. Right when we were closing the school I had two trainees come visit for a few ideas so they can see what Peace Corps is like once you get to site. We had a real good time. One of the ones who visited will be in Tanga Chini, not too far away. After a hanging out at my place we went up to Josh’s and met up with all the trainee shadowers who came up to the area, seven in all. We had a good party and hiked around a bit. Josh lives next to a big mountain that has a great view of the Kenyan plains from the summit. Unfortunately when we got up there it was so foggy we couldn’t see much, but it was still a good hike.

After the trainees left I went down to Dar for the Thanksgiving celebration at the Ambassador’s house. It was a great party. Over 100 PCVs showed and he was ready for us. Apparently he imported 20 turkeys from Brazil and had a well-stocked bar. There was even cold draft beer which quite frankly was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. It’s kind of odd how much you miss the little things. We had a good time down there and even went to the movie theater. I emphasize “the” since it’s the only one in the country. Now I’m up in the Kilimanjaro region visiting some people in the area before heading home.

I’m updating this later on. I’m back in Lushoto awaiting the arrival of the new volunteers in two days. Several of the current volunteers will be here in town to welcome them. It’s been a bit strange being at the house with none of the other teachers around. The first day was good because I wanted to just have some quiet time, but I may get bored before too long. Fortunately, there will more travel, people to visit, and I just got a lot of great reading material and puzzle books in the mail (thanks to mom and Aunt Becky). As for now, I hope that I can recharge and hopefully begin to write some more detailed things about my experience so far. I hope I’ll have time to go to the school and use the computer a lot and prepare some long posts during the break. No promises though. I’ve learned not to put too much stock in planning over here.