While we could easily have travelled to Dar es Salaam on Saturday with plenty of time to catch my 11:30pm flight, I was happy to drive here with Godfrey (my host father)today. Given my experiences with driving in Tanzania, I figured my anxiety level would be significantly lower if I arrived here with a full day to spare.
That turns out to be a marvelous idea, given how many times my heart almost stopped on my trip down here. Before I begin, I will emphasize that I am perfectly safe, happy, content, and writing this blog post from a nice hotel in town.
The first issue we had was crossing through a small town that requires a significant reduction in speed upon entry. There was a police officer with a radar gun who pulled us over for going 75 in a 50 kph zone. My host father, always ready for a good battle of the wits, managed to talk his way out of it by claiming that he only had as much money as the ticket cost, and would be SOL if he had any real issues between here and Dar es Salaam given that there are no ATMs between the two cities. With a fully elaborated limp from his accident several months back and very erratic outbursts of emotion, he was able to talk his way out of the ticket and was allowed to pass without any trouble.
While getting a good laugh about the story as he retold the whole thing (in English this time), he got distracted from the road with our eye contact and we almost found our way into the grill of an oncoming bus.
Our next close encounter was at the next police stop. We were not required to stop (the checkpoints along the road are usually random) and passed all the cars along the right side of the road. Everyone is usually eager to get waved passed the stops, including this very big bus that didn’t see us as he jutted out to pass the bus in front of him, almost smashing my passenger’s side door and sending us off the road.
I thought I was being a bit dramatic about insisting on driving to Dar es Salaam a day early, but I now feel as though it was a completely reasonable decision.
On a different note, we'll be heading out to a Tanzanian mall soon and then have an early sushi dinner before hitting the hay and resting up for a full day of touring Dar and a late night plane flight tomorrow.
Friday, April 23, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Last Weeks...
It's only been 11 days but it feels like a lifetime ago since I last wrote on my blog. I was hoping to be almost finished before my plane touches down at IAD, but it seems like this will be an ongoing process. Saying goodbye here is a never-ending process and finding any time for rest, let alone writing on my blog, has been almost impossible. Luckily I've been jotting down blog titles over the last week and a half so I won't forget too many funny stories and recent impressions.
A rough sketch of what's been going on:
Since returning from holiday on April 12th I planned an entire trip to Zanzibar using my Lonely Planet guide to Tanzania. I then spent 4 days there, skipping school on Monday, and have returned for just three more days of school before driving down to Dar es Salaam to catch a plane back home (volcano permitting, of course).
Things from last week:
- Last Tuesday students from the 4th grade classes of Key and Chumbageni Skyped. The theme was music, so the kid here shared their national anthem, a patriotic song, ad their school song. The kids at Key played the recorder (how Orff of them!)and asked some really great questions. I have been really improving with my Swahili and was so psyched that I could translate a large part of the conversation.
- My keyboard went haywire and now chooses to skip letters every now and then. This has made for interesting gchats, emails, and now blog posts. Apologies for the many typos.
- I spent all day on Wednesday opening email accounts for every teacher at the school. I made a contact list for every teacher as well as a power point presentation that includes a picture and a brief background on every teacher. Exhausting, but totally worth it.
- Thursday the 1st graders Skyped with Mrs. Waymouth's Kindergarten class. They got to talk about what they do after school and other things about their life. We learned that only one student in the Key School K class has chickens, and almost everyone owns a dog. Here, everyone owns a chicken, but only one person owns a dog.
- Friday is always a half day. I took off for Zanzibar at 3:30 and came back Monday at 2:30. I have copied my itinerary in its original form into a separate post. Pictures have already been posted, but look for more in the future about how the trip actually went. Overall it is a beautiful place and I had a great time....
- Tuesday (Yesterday) after school we Skyped with the 3rd graders. This was very cool since these kids have already exchanged one round of letters with each other with the second round currently in transit. The kids really enjoyed getting to meet their pen friends and learning about the similarities and differences in between our two countries (sports, classes, chores, etc.) The most interesting thing was that the kids here are mostly Muslim, with a few Christians mixed in. At Key it's a mixture of Christians and Jews. The teachers and students don't know anything about the Jewish religion (unless we were having trouble translating, but they seemed to genuinely unaware of what it was). There was also an athiest in the class at Key, but I've had enough of an interesting experience trying to explain that about myself when I am asked so I decided to just stick with Christian for the sake of the short conversation. After that, we moved to my house where the kids got to see my room and my bathroom for a fun compare/contrast exercise. They were in the middle of picking their next room when we got a call from the US Library and skipped up the road to talk to them. It was really cool getting to meet the big kids, but for me the best surprise was getting to see my sister and introduce her to my students at Chumbageni.
- Yesterday also included a trip to a local hostel to take pics and gather information for any group who would potentially like to come visit Chumbageni. We then went to the post office to get a new key (the old one was lost), followed by the internet store. All lines of communication should now be functioning and people should be able to stay in touch even after I leave.
That's the quick version of everthing that's been happening lately. Four more days until I'll be home.....
A rough sketch of what's been going on:
Since returning from holiday on April 12th I planned an entire trip to Zanzibar using my Lonely Planet guide to Tanzania. I then spent 4 days there, skipping school on Monday, and have returned for just three more days of school before driving down to Dar es Salaam to catch a plane back home (volcano permitting, of course).
Things from last week:
- Last Tuesday students from the 4th grade classes of Key and Chumbageni Skyped. The theme was music, so the kid here shared their national anthem, a patriotic song, ad their school song. The kids at Key played the recorder (how Orff of them!)and asked some really great questions. I have been really improving with my Swahili and was so psyched that I could translate a large part of the conversation.
- My keyboard went haywire and now chooses to skip letters every now and then. This has made for interesting gchats, emails, and now blog posts. Apologies for the many typos.
- I spent all day on Wednesday opening email accounts for every teacher at the school. I made a contact list for every teacher as well as a power point presentation that includes a picture and a brief background on every teacher. Exhausting, but totally worth it.
- Thursday the 1st graders Skyped with Mrs. Waymouth's Kindergarten class. They got to talk about what they do after school and other things about their life. We learned that only one student in the Key School K class has chickens, and almost everyone owns a dog. Here, everyone owns a chicken, but only one person owns a dog.
- Friday is always a half day. I took off for Zanzibar at 3:30 and came back Monday at 2:30. I have copied my itinerary in its original form into a separate post. Pictures have already been posted, but look for more in the future about how the trip actually went. Overall it is a beautiful place and I had a great time....
- Tuesday (Yesterday) after school we Skyped with the 3rd graders. This was very cool since these kids have already exchanged one round of letters with each other with the second round currently in transit. The kids really enjoyed getting to meet their pen friends and learning about the similarities and differences in between our two countries (sports, classes, chores, etc.) The most interesting thing was that the kids here are mostly Muslim, with a few Christians mixed in. At Key it's a mixture of Christians and Jews. The teachers and students don't know anything about the Jewish religion (unless we were having trouble translating, but they seemed to genuinely unaware of what it was). There was also an athiest in the class at Key, but I've had enough of an interesting experience trying to explain that about myself when I am asked so I decided to just stick with Christian for the sake of the short conversation. After that, we moved to my house where the kids got to see my room and my bathroom for a fun compare/contrast exercise. They were in the middle of picking their next room when we got a call from the US Library and skipped up the road to talk to them. It was really cool getting to meet the big kids, but for me the best surprise was getting to see my sister and introduce her to my students at Chumbageni.
- Yesterday also included a trip to a local hostel to take pics and gather information for any group who would potentially like to come visit Chumbageni. We then went to the post office to get a new key (the old one was lost), followed by the internet store. All lines of communication should now be functioning and people should be able to stay in touch even after I leave.
That's the quick version of everthing that's been happening lately. Four more days until I'll be home.....
Zanzibar Itinerary
Thursday:
Pick up from Zanzibar airport at 5:30pm and transfer to Clove Hotel in the heart of Stone town,check inn at the hotel and relax, at 7:00pm, our guide will pick you up and walk to Forodhan garden, where you can see the local seafood market,mix with Zanzibaris in this eating place and choose your dinner,you can also have an option to go and see several bars in Stone town,back to the hotel and overnight.
Friday:
After breakfast, you will be picked up for a walking historical Stone town, after Stone town tour then we will drive you to the Spice farms for Spice tour, before the tour you have an opulant lunch of trypical Zanzibar cuisine served in alocal house (to see Zanzibar Culture & tradition), after lunch proceed to the Spice farms to see the reason why Zanzibar is called a Spice Island,back to the Hotel around 4:00pm, free time to explore on your own and overnight Clove Hotel.
Saturday:
After breakfast at 9:00am you will be picked and drive to Jozani forest to see the monkeys,this tour ends around 1:00pm where you will be driven to South east cost for beach leisure,lunch at any restaurant around there, back to Stonetown around 7:00pm and overnight Clove Hotel.
Sunday:
After breakfast, pick up and board a motorised dhow boat and head to Prison Island. Earning its name as a former prison for slaves and a quarantine station for Zanzibar and the mainland nowadays the island gives you the chance to escape for some peace and quiet. The island lies just off the Old Stone Town and is home to giant tortoises that were imported from the Seychelles in the late 19th century. It is fringed with a beautiful coral reef, ideal for snorkelling, and has a lovely white beach for sunbathing,this is a half day trip back to Stone town and drive to Zanzibar airport to catch the Coastal Aviation flight to Tanga.
Pick up from Zanzibar airport at 5:30pm and transfer to Clove Hotel in the heart of Stone town,check inn at the hotel and relax, at 7:00pm, our guide will pick you up and walk to Forodhan garden, where you can see the local seafood market,mix with Zanzibaris in this eating place and choose your dinner,you can also have an option to go and see several bars in Stone town,back to the hotel and overnight.
Friday:
After breakfast, you will be picked up for a walking historical Stone town, after Stone town tour then we will drive you to the Spice farms for Spice tour, before the tour you have an opulant lunch of trypical Zanzibar cuisine served in alocal house (to see Zanzibar Culture & tradition), after lunch proceed to the Spice farms to see the reason why Zanzibar is called a Spice Island,back to the Hotel around 4:00pm, free time to explore on your own and overnight Clove Hotel.
Saturday:
After breakfast at 9:00am you will be picked and drive to Jozani forest to see the monkeys,this tour ends around 1:00pm where you will be driven to South east cost for beach leisure,lunch at any restaurant around there, back to Stonetown around 7:00pm and overnight Clove Hotel.
Sunday:
After breakfast, pick up and board a motorised dhow boat and head to Prison Island. Earning its name as a former prison for slaves and a quarantine station for Zanzibar and the mainland nowadays the island gives you the chance to escape for some peace and quiet. The island lies just off the Old Stone Town and is home to giant tortoises that were imported from the Seychelles in the late 19th century. It is fringed with a beautiful coral reef, ideal for snorkelling, and has a lovely white beach for sunbathing,this is a half day trip back to Stone town and drive to Zanzibar airport to catch the Coastal Aviation flight to Tanga.
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Holy Cow
Once upon a time I went to buy a loaf of bread. The store happened to be right next to the butcher. The butcher happened to have just finished chopping up a cow. The cow happened to be piled in pieces on the porch floor outside his shop. On the top of the pile happened to be a cow’s shnasholy (aka mouth) and a few other readily identifiable pieces. I didn’t throw up, but I am currently reconsidering my omnivorous status.
Visoda Vingapi?
I am currently trying to collect a bunch of soda caps, called visoda in Kiswahili. I want to do a project with the third grade class who uses them as counters when doing addition and subtraction, and also want to cover the front of a scrapbook with them when I come home and make an album of my trip.
I guess Victoria mentioned my treasure hunt to a few people here in Arusha, because a guy who lives on the mountain showed up at 8 o’clock at night to give me an entire grocery bag filled with beer bottle caps. I guess Victoria forgot to tell him that I am only interested in soda caps. The poor guy was so drunk it wasn’t even funny. I should probably thank him for his commendable effort but he didn’t have to drink all of those beers just to help me out.
I guess Victoria mentioned my treasure hunt to a few people here in Arusha, because a guy who lives on the mountain showed up at 8 o’clock at night to give me an entire grocery bag filled with beer bottle caps. I guess Victoria forgot to tell him that I am only interested in soda caps. The poor guy was so drunk it wasn’t even funny. I should probably thank him for his commendable effort but he didn’t have to drink all of those beers just to help me out.
Night Tremors
Our safari driver was quite animated on the drive back home and had the whole car cracking up laughing. It turns out that he was woken up in the middle of the night by an earthquake. That’s right, an earthquake. I guess I really do sleep like a rock because I still don’t believe it. No great shakes, I guess.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010uvc5.php
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010uvc5.php
What's in a Name?
I don’t know why it came up but I got into a discussion with my host family the other day about names. Much like in the States, most people here have three names. However, rather than having a first, middle, and last name they have a given name, father’s name, and surname. Given name and surname are clearly synonymous with first and last name, but the middle names of everyone here are almost always just the name of your father, regardless of whether you are a boy or a girl. I have always felt that I was missing something growing up without a middle name. I guess it never occurred to me to use Chelsea Todd.
Police Encounter
We got pulled over by the police at a road check point on Friday. We had all of the appropriate documents and should have been cleared to go, but the officer asked us to pull further off the road and park. That was about all I understood, but after a bunch of rapid Swahili speak my younger hopped out of the car to go speak privately with the officer. The officer then came up to the window again, this time on the passenger’s side, looked carefully around the inside of the car, had a brief exchange with my host father, and then let us go saying, “Safari Njema!”
It turns out that we were asked to pull off the road so that my host father could speak in private with the officer. Godfrey had told his son Gilbert to tell the cop that his leg was injured and he couldn’t come out to talk to him. The cop then came over the car to check out his leg, and then ask Godfrey for money so that he could go buy sodas for all of the officers. Godfrey told him we have no money, so he was forced to let us go. The cop was pretty disappointed that the old man with the white girl in his car wasn’t feeling in the mood to pay him a bribe, but there wasn’t too much he could do about it. Maybe if he wasn’t so interested in having a private conversation with Godfrey he would have noticed that the driver side mirror was completely smashed off and was probably deserving of a ticket.
It turns out that we were asked to pull off the road so that my host father could speak in private with the officer. Godfrey had told his son Gilbert to tell the cop that his leg was injured and he couldn’t come out to talk to him. The cop then came over the car to check out his leg, and then ask Godfrey for money so that he could go buy sodas for all of the officers. Godfrey told him we have no money, so he was forced to let us go. The cop was pretty disappointed that the old man with the white girl in his car wasn’t feeling in the mood to pay him a bribe, but there wasn’t too much he could do about it. Maybe if he wasn’t so interested in having a private conversation with Godfrey he would have noticed that the driver side mirror was completely smashed off and was probably deserving of a ticket.
Safari, Safari
The word “safari” has two different meanings depending on who you ask. If you ask me, it is a specific reference to a Lion King type of adventure in the national parks and conservation areas of Africa. However, in Kiswahili, safari just means trip or journey. If you want to talk about Land Cruisers, baboons and warthogs you say you’re going to the National Parks. Unfortunately this led to a few things getting lost in translation, as our “safari” ended up just being 2 major travel days and only 1 full day for an animal-kingdom-filled adventure. That’s a 3 day safari, right?
I woke up this morning fully expecting another day of great adventures in the park. We had said we were going to Manyara National Park, but I was told at breakfast that we might just travel down some other roads outside the park boundaries to see if we could track down some giraffes on our own since it is the only big animal (except the rhinoceros) that we haven’t seen. We had to get up early to go giraffe spotting, but it was still going to be another day for safari.
As it turns out, we woke up early in order to go back to our home in Arusha sooner and return the vehicle we were driving. The road that we went “giraffe-searching” on was just the main highway to go home, and we went past the national park we were supposed to visit at around 100 km/h with clearly no intention of entering. My spirits dropped quite a bit when I realized what was going on, but I tried to keep a smile on my face and be positive about our giraffe hunt.
A few people spotted giraffes way off in the distance, but nothing more than small yellow dots on the horizon. I was getting pretty moion sick from watching out the side window so I switched my attention to the horizon out the front window and let everyone else do the spotting.
As I was intently staring at the road, I saw a funny looking tree that I swear had a peculiar angle to its trunk. I thought it slightly resembled a strange long-necked animal and was altogether quite funny looking; not surprising however given the many awesomely awkward baobab trees and other flora here. I saw the tree catch my host brother’s eye too, and before you knew it we were parked on the side of the road within 5 feet of the most enormous, male giraffe I’ve ever seen. He was just chilling, eating a nice road-side breakfast in the tree tops minding his own business. I got to snap some cool pictures of him, and in less than 3 minutes we were on the road again. We could now put a tick in the box for spotting a giraffe and move on with the rest of our day.
As we approached Arusha where we had left our personal truck two days before, my host siblings and I stopped at a snake park to pass the time while Victoria and Godfrey went to go switch out the cars. I was slightly relieved that we had something interesting to do while we waited, and got a kick out of looking at all the snakes in cages, some big alligators with bloodstained teeth, and some very cute baby turtles.
The best part was getting to put a real live snake around my neck and pushing my frightened host siblings to do the same. I don’t know why they weren’t interested in doing the same -- the guard said she only gets hungry once a week.
After finishing up at the snake park we went across the street to the Masai cultural museum. I was very happy to get a tour from a real Masai and get to learn a lot more about their culture. I will include a separate entry for this experience at a later time since I find this tribe to be particularly interesting.
At the end of the tour there are real Masai dwellings with women selling various arts and crafts. I have no money and am desperately in need of an ATM but have unfortunately been SOL for a few days now given either the absence of time or machine along our safari. I was feeling pretty bummed that I couldn’t buy anything directly from the person who made it, but my hopes were raised when I saw that the gift shop in a different part of the museum had small sticker in the window indicating they take Visa card. I found that pretty unusual given that I haven’t been able to pay for anything with credit card since my stay at the Holiday Inn on the first night, so it was more disappointing than surprising when they told me that the machine was broken.
Not wanting to torture myself anymore by staying in the gift shop I went outside to see what everyone else was up to. It turned out they were talking to a Masai that was offering camel rides behind the museum and had just sent someone to retrieve two of them from the field.
When I think camels I think the Sahara desert, but I guess why not have them in Tanzania? In short, these guys were tall and awesome. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, but it was super cool to see them up-close in personal. While waiting for my turn to ride them I was trying to figure out how they ever inspired a brand of cigarettes. It still baffles me but I imagine it probably has to do with their too-cool-for-school facial expression.
The two camels took their good old time coming down from way up in the sky as they took a sitting position on the sky. The process was so labored that I figured it must be hurting them or something. Actually, they were probably just thinking about how stupid the exercise of sitting down, standing up, walking 50 yards in a circle, and sitting back down is again and again.
In any case, Suzie and I got to ride together on the camel with me up in the front and her holding onto me for dear life. The guy told us to hold on tight and lean back. Before we knew it the roller coaster ride had started and there was absoutely no stopping it. I wish I had a video to show you the whole thing but you literally get thrown from front to back, thinking at one moment that you’re going to be flung off his hump onto his neck and the next that you’re going to be flipped off his backside for a 20 foot drop to the ground. The camel also takes his time standing up with a bit of a stutter, giving you enough time to wonder whether he’s about to collapse, buck you off, or continue the labored process of standing up.
Once you’re up on him it resembles something of a horse ride with an exaggeratedly rhythmic, bumpy pace to it. Being on his hump you are quite high in the air, to the point that we had to shout down to the Masai dragging Mr. Camel along by a rope to ask him about our new four-legged friend.
After maybe 3 minutes of walking in a circle we prepared ourselves for the descent. We both had the anticipation of coming up to the edge of a big waterfall as he sat down, this time feeling more like someone forgot to put on the brakes during a climbing belay than anything else. My stomach slowly found its way back into place after a brief visit with my throat as we dismounted and sat down to watch the others take their turn.
Given that there were an odd number of us, I actually got to go twice. The second time I rode on the back with my older brother on the front. The back proved to be a lot tamer than the front, except my little arms were almost ripped out of their sockets while trying to reach around my host brother to grab the hand holds in front.
After the rides I asked if it was okay to go up and pet my camel friends. I was trying to ask if there are any special rules for camels to avoid spooking them or getting hurt, but the guy seemed to indicate that everything was AOK. I guess the camel I chose to pet first was a little jealous that I had taken both of my rides on his sister because as I reached up to pet him he turned at lightning speed to bite me.
I’m glad to say that (1) he missed, and (2) that the misinformation was from the camel’s owner instead of the man at the snake park who put the supposedly harmless snake around my neck. I think that if the camel had actually bitten me (and he opened his mouth enough to show me that he had a very nice set of teeth) I would have preferred that he take his best shot spitting at me, but I think it worked out for the best in the end.
While pulling myself together after the camel ride I felt my money belt strapped to my stomach. I am particularly fond of it since it adds a few extra layers of chubbiness under my shirt, but is definitely worth the extra security. Anyway, I remembered that I had money stuffed in there with my passport for safe-keeping and for potential use on my travel back to the States. The dollars are useless pretty much everywhere I go since I haven’t been to many touristy places, but the gift shop prices were all listed in dollars. I was so excited at the discovery that I almost spent all of my lunch money at the store buying some very cool hand crafted items. Luckily I was able to bargain with the cashier for a $13 dollar discount – just enough for a good snack during my layover in Amsterdam in 2 weeks.
If we hadn’t forgone the day’s safari I wouldn’t have been able to hold the snake, chat with the Masai, ride a camel, or spend too much money on gifts. I did get to see a giraffe up close and personal, more or less completing the checklist of awesome African animals and certainly can’t complain about the incredible experience I had in Ngorongoro crater the day before. While I would love to go back to the national parks some day, ideally during a more active season, I am still very lucky to be on this 3 month safari even if the national park section lasted only one day.
I woke up this morning fully expecting another day of great adventures in the park. We had said we were going to Manyara National Park, but I was told at breakfast that we might just travel down some other roads outside the park boundaries to see if we could track down some giraffes on our own since it is the only big animal (except the rhinoceros) that we haven’t seen. We had to get up early to go giraffe spotting, but it was still going to be another day for safari.
As it turns out, we woke up early in order to go back to our home in Arusha sooner and return the vehicle we were driving. The road that we went “giraffe-searching” on was just the main highway to go home, and we went past the national park we were supposed to visit at around 100 km/h with clearly no intention of entering. My spirits dropped quite a bit when I realized what was going on, but I tried to keep a smile on my face and be positive about our giraffe hunt.
A few people spotted giraffes way off in the distance, but nothing more than small yellow dots on the horizon. I was getting pretty moion sick from watching out the side window so I switched my attention to the horizon out the front window and let everyone else do the spotting.
As I was intently staring at the road, I saw a funny looking tree that I swear had a peculiar angle to its trunk. I thought it slightly resembled a strange long-necked animal and was altogether quite funny looking; not surprising however given the many awesomely awkward baobab trees and other flora here. I saw the tree catch my host brother’s eye too, and before you knew it we were parked on the side of the road within 5 feet of the most enormous, male giraffe I’ve ever seen. He was just chilling, eating a nice road-side breakfast in the tree tops minding his own business. I got to snap some cool pictures of him, and in less than 3 minutes we were on the road again. We could now put a tick in the box for spotting a giraffe and move on with the rest of our day.
As we approached Arusha where we had left our personal truck two days before, my host siblings and I stopped at a snake park to pass the time while Victoria and Godfrey went to go switch out the cars. I was slightly relieved that we had something interesting to do while we waited, and got a kick out of looking at all the snakes in cages, some big alligators with bloodstained teeth, and some very cute baby turtles.
The best part was getting to put a real live snake around my neck and pushing my frightened host siblings to do the same. I don’t know why they weren’t interested in doing the same -- the guard said she only gets hungry once a week.
After finishing up at the snake park we went across the street to the Masai cultural museum. I was very happy to get a tour from a real Masai and get to learn a lot more about their culture. I will include a separate entry for this experience at a later time since I find this tribe to be particularly interesting.
At the end of the tour there are real Masai dwellings with women selling various arts and crafts. I have no money and am desperately in need of an ATM but have unfortunately been SOL for a few days now given either the absence of time or machine along our safari. I was feeling pretty bummed that I couldn’t buy anything directly from the person who made it, but my hopes were raised when I saw that the gift shop in a different part of the museum had small sticker in the window indicating they take Visa card. I found that pretty unusual given that I haven’t been able to pay for anything with credit card since my stay at the Holiday Inn on the first night, so it was more disappointing than surprising when they told me that the machine was broken.
Not wanting to torture myself anymore by staying in the gift shop I went outside to see what everyone else was up to. It turned out they were talking to a Masai that was offering camel rides behind the museum and had just sent someone to retrieve two of them from the field.
When I think camels I think the Sahara desert, but I guess why not have them in Tanzania? In short, these guys were tall and awesome. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, but it was super cool to see them up-close in personal. While waiting for my turn to ride them I was trying to figure out how they ever inspired a brand of cigarettes. It still baffles me but I imagine it probably has to do with their too-cool-for-school facial expression.
The two camels took their good old time coming down from way up in the sky as they took a sitting position on the sky. The process was so labored that I figured it must be hurting them or something. Actually, they were probably just thinking about how stupid the exercise of sitting down, standing up, walking 50 yards in a circle, and sitting back down is again and again.
In any case, Suzie and I got to ride together on the camel with me up in the front and her holding onto me for dear life. The guy told us to hold on tight and lean back. Before we knew it the roller coaster ride had started and there was absoutely no stopping it. I wish I had a video to show you the whole thing but you literally get thrown from front to back, thinking at one moment that you’re going to be flung off his hump onto his neck and the next that you’re going to be flipped off his backside for a 20 foot drop to the ground. The camel also takes his time standing up with a bit of a stutter, giving you enough time to wonder whether he’s about to collapse, buck you off, or continue the labored process of standing up.
Once you’re up on him it resembles something of a horse ride with an exaggeratedly rhythmic, bumpy pace to it. Being on his hump you are quite high in the air, to the point that we had to shout down to the Masai dragging Mr. Camel along by a rope to ask him about our new four-legged friend.
After maybe 3 minutes of walking in a circle we prepared ourselves for the descent. We both had the anticipation of coming up to the edge of a big waterfall as he sat down, this time feeling more like someone forgot to put on the brakes during a climbing belay than anything else. My stomach slowly found its way back into place after a brief visit with my throat as we dismounted and sat down to watch the others take their turn.
Given that there were an odd number of us, I actually got to go twice. The second time I rode on the back with my older brother on the front. The back proved to be a lot tamer than the front, except my little arms were almost ripped out of their sockets while trying to reach around my host brother to grab the hand holds in front.
After the rides I asked if it was okay to go up and pet my camel friends. I was trying to ask if there are any special rules for camels to avoid spooking them or getting hurt, but the guy seemed to indicate that everything was AOK. I guess the camel I chose to pet first was a little jealous that I had taken both of my rides on his sister because as I reached up to pet him he turned at lightning speed to bite me.
I’m glad to say that (1) he missed, and (2) that the misinformation was from the camel’s owner instead of the man at the snake park who put the supposedly harmless snake around my neck. I think that if the camel had actually bitten me (and he opened his mouth enough to show me that he had a very nice set of teeth) I would have preferred that he take his best shot spitting at me, but I think it worked out for the best in the end.
While pulling myself together after the camel ride I felt my money belt strapped to my stomach. I am particularly fond of it since it adds a few extra layers of chubbiness under my shirt, but is definitely worth the extra security. Anyway, I remembered that I had money stuffed in there with my passport for safe-keeping and for potential use on my travel back to the States. The dollars are useless pretty much everywhere I go since I haven’t been to many touristy places, but the gift shop prices were all listed in dollars. I was so excited at the discovery that I almost spent all of my lunch money at the store buying some very cool hand crafted items. Luckily I was able to bargain with the cashier for a $13 dollar discount – just enough for a good snack during my layover in Amsterdam in 2 weeks.
If we hadn’t forgone the day’s safari I wouldn’t have been able to hold the snake, chat with the Masai, ride a camel, or spend too much money on gifts. I did get to see a giraffe up close and personal, more or less completing the checklist of awesome African animals and certainly can’t complain about the incredible experience I had in Ngorongoro crater the day before. While I would love to go back to the national parks some day, ideally during a more active season, I am still very lucky to be on this 3 month safari even if the national park section lasted only one day.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Safari PartI: Ngorongoro Crater, TZ
Allaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh u Akbar!
Groan.
Alaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh u Akbar!
Double Groan.
Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah
What time is it? Where is my phone?
Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah
Seriously?
Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullaah
Okay, fine. I’m up. It’s 5:15, but I’m up.
I’m pretty sure this takes place every morning. 5 times a day in fact. But for some reason today is the day it wakes me up like a rooster crowing in my ear. I guess it’s really just bloggers guilt, so I will spend these early hours telling you about my safari yesterday. I just hope that as I am sitting at this restaurant table in the dark, unable to find the light switch, the night guard won’t come try and kill me and I won’t have a heart attack with all these cats crawling around causing mischief. Anyway, back to yesterday...
Part I: Getting Started
We woke up not-so-bright-and-early at 7am and hit the parks by 8:30. The parks open at 6am, but whatever, we’re going to have a full day of it, right? Wrong.
While Victoria and Godfrey have been extremely generous in taking me into their home and making me a part of their family, and while the sun has given me my fair share of burns and darkened my skin a few shades, I have unfortunately not gotten any closer to looking like an African. Not even an albino African. I have done my best to be a chameleon and fit in with things, but there is no denying my mzungu status.
So, while it is very nice that Godfrey insists I am his daughter, there was just about no way the park guards would let me get through by paying the rates of the locals. Were I to have passed the test (and believe me, I had been fully warned to speak only Swahili and to be charming…) the cost of the trip would have been an entrance fee of 10,000 TZ Shillings. Unsurprisingly, however, we had to pay the white-tax of $250 just for having me in the car. (The psychology of listing local prices in shillings and white prices in dollars I found to be very interesting. I’ll let you convert the different prices for yourself. It’s impressive!)
Anyway, we made the bold move of paying for me as a local at the office and then trying to talk our way through the gates. When we were turned away, we not only had fork up the money, but also go to the back of the ever-building line, wasting even more time. I was very entertained by going into the gift shop and walking through the mini museum reading all about the park and its history, but our car just kept getting more impatient imagining the morning prowlers taking refuge out of sight range as the sun got higher.
By 10:00 am we finally made it through the gates and began our journey into Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It’s actually not a national park because people are allowed to live within its borders if they are able to live in harmony with the ecosystem. This really just means that the Masaai tribe and maybe one or two other nomadic groups is free to continue their lifestyle within the park. As we drove up, up, up to the rim of the crater we passed many Masaai herding their cattle and around their unique homes, just going about their lives. We also got to see a chui (leopard) walking along the road but he jumped out of sight before anyone had a chance to snap a pic.
At the top of the crater we stopped for a bathroom break while 3 Masaai men came over to sell me beautiful handcrafted necklaces. Being white, the price for each was 5,000/= (TZ shillings). I really wanted to buy them, but the disgusted reaction of my Swahili family made me feel far too guilty to cave at the apparently egregious price. I decided to get my Swahili on and use my superb language skills and irresistible charm to bring down the price. Yeah right.
To be honest, I’d be happy paying their asking price and supporting local tribes and art and all that other good stuff. My goal was just to get it down to a level that I wouldn’t look like a total fool to my entire family when I agreed to the price. The only problem was that they told me they could find the necklaces at other places for just 1,000/=. This is highly unlikely and most probably just dramatic banter in an attempt to get me to hike them to hike down the price. But nonetheless, having to talk them down by 4,000/= shillings is no small feat!
In any case, after a sufficient amount of getting hot and cold and chit-chatting about things completely unrelated to the necklaces I finally got them to agree to 2 necklaces for 5,000. Not bad, right? Wrong. Still not good enough. I was all set to give up as our Land Cruiser started back up and everyone started loading back into the vehicle. At the last minute one of the Masaai decided to drop to 4,000/= for two necklaces! This sounded totally reasonable to me and I mentally decided to commit. But just for kicks I looked at him and said, “3,000/=, that’s it. Good-bye!” I walked away as if I was totally serious (which I was not) and low and behold he made the deal!
I had to ask Victoria to spot me the money since I only had larger bills and felt very guilty asking him for change after pretending as if I didn’t have the money to pay for it. She was still disappointed by the extra 500/= per necklace, but I swear I saw a small smile of pride appear at the corner of her mouth that her mzungu daughter was able to talk her way into Swahili prices. I paid the man the money and was very pleased with the necklaces, but still felt very guilty about ripping him off. I wonder how much they cost him to make…
Part II: Into the Crater
By 10:30 am we were finally beginning our steep decent down into the crater. I had to fight my trigger-happy urges with my camera in the interest of preserving the battery for the things to come, but couldn’t help taking a few pictures of the lush, green plains and the amazing cotton-candy clouds that looked like they came straight out of a Philadelphia cream cheese commercial.
When we reached the bottom we lifted up the roof of our vehicle and stood with our heads peaking out the top, taking it all in. First sighting? Zebras! I swear these guys look like painted horses and couldn’t possibly be born like that. As I snapped about a million pics and short video clips of their grass munching I couldn’t help but wonder if their stripes are like fingerprints and snowflakes or if it's possible to have two-of-a-kind or more.
Temporary Wrap Up:
I have to go eat breakfast now and get ready for today’s adventure. The only animals I haven’t seen of note are giraffes and rhinoceros, so we’re off to try and find at least a giraffe or two today.
My summary notes from yesterday:
- It’s the rainy season, so the safari is apparently not as cool as it has the potential of being. This means my host family was a little less than impressed, but I made up for it with my extaticness.
- The driver seemed to be in some sort of rush and had a big case of the impatients. I tried my best to snap bumpy pics and videos when he wouldn't stop and usually only had time just for a shot or two if he did. It was a bit of a bummer because I saw most of the wildlife through the lens of my digital camera, hoping that I’d be able to appreciate it more when I uploaded them onto my computer…..that turned out to be a good call.
- Baboon butts, elephant graveyards, and gazelles teasing lions……that’s it for now….
Groan.
Alaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh u Akbar!
Double Groan.
Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah
What time is it? Where is my phone?
Ash-hadu al-la Ilaha ill Allah
Seriously?
Ash-hadu anna Muhammadan Rasulullaah
Okay, fine. I’m up. It’s 5:15, but I’m up.
I’m pretty sure this takes place every morning. 5 times a day in fact. But for some reason today is the day it wakes me up like a rooster crowing in my ear. I guess it’s really just bloggers guilt, so I will spend these early hours telling you about my safari yesterday. I just hope that as I am sitting at this restaurant table in the dark, unable to find the light switch, the night guard won’t come try and kill me and I won’t have a heart attack with all these cats crawling around causing mischief. Anyway, back to yesterday...
Part I: Getting Started
We woke up not-so-bright-and-early at 7am and hit the parks by 8:30. The parks open at 6am, but whatever, we’re going to have a full day of it, right? Wrong.
While Victoria and Godfrey have been extremely generous in taking me into their home and making me a part of their family, and while the sun has given me my fair share of burns and darkened my skin a few shades, I have unfortunately not gotten any closer to looking like an African. Not even an albino African. I have done my best to be a chameleon and fit in with things, but there is no denying my mzungu status.
So, while it is very nice that Godfrey insists I am his daughter, there was just about no way the park guards would let me get through by paying the rates of the locals. Were I to have passed the test (and believe me, I had been fully warned to speak only Swahili and to be charming…) the cost of the trip would have been an entrance fee of 10,000 TZ Shillings. Unsurprisingly, however, we had to pay the white-tax of $250 just for having me in the car. (The psychology of listing local prices in shillings and white prices in dollars I found to be very interesting. I’ll let you convert the different prices for yourself. It’s impressive!)
Anyway, we made the bold move of paying for me as a local at the office and then trying to talk our way through the gates. When we were turned away, we not only had fork up the money, but also go to the back of the ever-building line, wasting even more time. I was very entertained by going into the gift shop and walking through the mini museum reading all about the park and its history, but our car just kept getting more impatient imagining the morning prowlers taking refuge out of sight range as the sun got higher.
By 10:00 am we finally made it through the gates and began our journey into Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It’s actually not a national park because people are allowed to live within its borders if they are able to live in harmony with the ecosystem. This really just means that the Masaai tribe and maybe one or two other nomadic groups is free to continue their lifestyle within the park. As we drove up, up, up to the rim of the crater we passed many Masaai herding their cattle and around their unique homes, just going about their lives. We also got to see a chui (leopard) walking along the road but he jumped out of sight before anyone had a chance to snap a pic.
At the top of the crater we stopped for a bathroom break while 3 Masaai men came over to sell me beautiful handcrafted necklaces. Being white, the price for each was 5,000/= (TZ shillings). I really wanted to buy them, but the disgusted reaction of my Swahili family made me feel far too guilty to cave at the apparently egregious price. I decided to get my Swahili on and use my superb language skills and irresistible charm to bring down the price. Yeah right.
To be honest, I’d be happy paying their asking price and supporting local tribes and art and all that other good stuff. My goal was just to get it down to a level that I wouldn’t look like a total fool to my entire family when I agreed to the price. The only problem was that they told me they could find the necklaces at other places for just 1,000/=. This is highly unlikely and most probably just dramatic banter in an attempt to get me to hike them to hike down the price. But nonetheless, having to talk them down by 4,000/= shillings is no small feat!
In any case, after a sufficient amount of getting hot and cold and chit-chatting about things completely unrelated to the necklaces I finally got them to agree to 2 necklaces for 5,000. Not bad, right? Wrong. Still not good enough. I was all set to give up as our Land Cruiser started back up and everyone started loading back into the vehicle. At the last minute one of the Masaai decided to drop to 4,000/= for two necklaces! This sounded totally reasonable to me and I mentally decided to commit. But just for kicks I looked at him and said, “3,000/=, that’s it. Good-bye!” I walked away as if I was totally serious (which I was not) and low and behold he made the deal!
I had to ask Victoria to spot me the money since I only had larger bills and felt very guilty asking him for change after pretending as if I didn’t have the money to pay for it. She was still disappointed by the extra 500/= per necklace, but I swear I saw a small smile of pride appear at the corner of her mouth that her mzungu daughter was able to talk her way into Swahili prices. I paid the man the money and was very pleased with the necklaces, but still felt very guilty about ripping him off. I wonder how much they cost him to make…
Part II: Into the Crater
By 10:30 am we were finally beginning our steep decent down into the crater. I had to fight my trigger-happy urges with my camera in the interest of preserving the battery for the things to come, but couldn’t help taking a few pictures of the lush, green plains and the amazing cotton-candy clouds that looked like they came straight out of a Philadelphia cream cheese commercial.
When we reached the bottom we lifted up the roof of our vehicle and stood with our heads peaking out the top, taking it all in. First sighting? Zebras! I swear these guys look like painted horses and couldn’t possibly be born like that. As I snapped about a million pics and short video clips of their grass munching I couldn’t help but wonder if their stripes are like fingerprints and snowflakes or if it's possible to have two-of-a-kind or more.
Temporary Wrap Up:
I have to go eat breakfast now and get ready for today’s adventure. The only animals I haven’t seen of note are giraffes and rhinoceros, so we’re off to try and find at least a giraffe or two today.
My summary notes from yesterday:
- It’s the rainy season, so the safari is apparently not as cool as it has the potential of being. This means my host family was a little less than impressed, but I made up for it with my extaticness.
- The driver seemed to be in some sort of rush and had a big case of the impatients. I tried my best to snap bumpy pics and videos when he wouldn't stop and usually only had time just for a shot or two if he did. It was a bit of a bummer because I saw most of the wildlife through the lens of my digital camera, hoping that I’d be able to appreciate it more when I uploaded them onto my computer…..that turned out to be a good call.
- Baboon butts, elephant graveyards, and gazelles teasing lions……that’s it for now….
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Sneak Peak!
Check out the slideshow!!
Don't worry....words to follow....and more pics....post-SAFARI!
Don't worry....words to follow....and more pics....post-SAFARI!
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Vacation!
Victoria’s family and I are hitting the road today and heading to Moshi. We’ll be there relaxing and visiting with family until Wednesday when we head off to the national parks for a three day safari. We’ll be back sometime on Saturday, spending Sunday resting, and then head back to school for my last two weeks here in TZ.
Before I leave I’m uploading a bunch of new photos. I apologize that they are not labeled or organized at the moment, but I figure it’s better than not posting them at all. I promise to label and organize all of my Picasa web albums when I get home. For now just enjoy all the beautiful colors, people, and places of TZ.......hopefully the currently underrepresented fauna of this country will make an appearance in the blog slideshow next weekend after visiting the national parks!
Before I leave I’m uploading a bunch of new photos. I apologize that they are not labeled or organized at the moment, but I figure it’s better than not posting them at all. I promise to label and organize all of my Picasa web albums when I get home. For now just enjoy all the beautiful colors, people, and places of TZ.......hopefully the currently underrepresented fauna of this country will make an appearance in the blog slideshow next weekend after visiting the national parks!
Simba Cement
Yesterday we didn’t have school because of the holiday. I was very appreciative of having some free time for myself and spent most of the morning catching up on emails, washing my socks and underwear, reviewing materials for my job with Teach For America that I’ll be starting when I get home, and listening to my favorite country music.
After finishing all of those things and taking a nice mid-morning nap, I met up with my host family’s uncle who is the Plant Manager at a very large cement company in Tanga called Simba Cement. Godfrey also used to work there, but is now retired. I got a great tour and was able to see how cement is made from where the raw materials are mined in the quarry all the way up until where it is packed in bags and loaded on the trucks for market. I must have spent 3 hours there driving around in a truck with two engineers who explained the entire process and let me take a million pictures along the way. The whole plant is shut down for annual cleaning so there was minimal noise, dust, and general chaos and we got to go a lot of places that usually would be inaccessible. For example, I got to walk inside a huge tube-like kiln that is 68 meters long and gets up to over 1000 degrees Celsius during normal operations!
After finishing all of those things and taking a nice mid-morning nap, I met up with my host family’s uncle who is the Plant Manager at a very large cement company in Tanga called Simba Cement. Godfrey also used to work there, but is now retired. I got a great tour and was able to see how cement is made from where the raw materials are mined in the quarry all the way up until where it is packed in bags and loaded on the trucks for market. I must have spent 3 hours there driving around in a truck with two engineers who explained the entire process and let me take a million pictures along the way. The whole plant is shut down for annual cleaning so there was minimal noise, dust, and general chaos and we got to go a lot of places that usually would be inaccessible. For example, I got to walk inside a huge tube-like kiln that is 68 meters long and gets up to over 1000 degrees Celsius during normal operations!
Friday, April 2, 2010
Pilot Project
I had this great idea today to take the exercise books that all of the kids use for school in Tanzania and have each class fill the blank pages with letters and drawings from each of the students. I could then bring back 16 small books back with the work of all the students in Tanga and give them to their corresponding classes at Key School.
The 7th graders have been particularly rowdy this week since there is usually no teacher around to teach them in the afternoon. I have not yet heard of such a thing as a substitute, nor do the kids go home if the teacher is absent or doesn’t come to class. If I have the time I go to their class to play Sudoku puzzles or do some other activity with them before going back to teach my other English classes.
All three sections of the 7th grade class didn’t have teachers again today, which must add up to something over 120 students. I thought they might make good guinea pigs for my new project idea since they are the oldest students with presumably the best English. I explained the project in Kiswinglish and they said that they were on board with the idea. First they would write a letter, then I would correct it, then I would go buy an exercise book for them to fill with their work tomorrow or after Easter break.
The result was somewhat of a mini disaster. The kids must have examples of letters in their books because I got several of the same letters from different students that made absolutely no sense. My favorite looked roughly like this:
Dear Chelsea,
My teacher told me about you and I am very excited to have you as my pen friend. She also told us that you are the first woman pilot. That is very interesting! What is it like to be the first person to accomplish something like that? I look forward to hearing more about you and what you do. Please write back soon.
Your Friend,
xxx
The 7th graders have been particularly rowdy this week since there is usually no teacher around to teach them in the afternoon. I have not yet heard of such a thing as a substitute, nor do the kids go home if the teacher is absent or doesn’t come to class. If I have the time I go to their class to play Sudoku puzzles or do some other activity with them before going back to teach my other English classes.
All three sections of the 7th grade class didn’t have teachers again today, which must add up to something over 120 students. I thought they might make good guinea pigs for my new project idea since they are the oldest students with presumably the best English. I explained the project in Kiswinglish and they said that they were on board with the idea. First they would write a letter, then I would correct it, then I would go buy an exercise book for them to fill with their work tomorrow or after Easter break.
The result was somewhat of a mini disaster. The kids must have examples of letters in their books because I got several of the same letters from different students that made absolutely no sense. My favorite looked roughly like this:
Dear Chelsea,
My teacher told me about you and I am very excited to have you as my pen friend. She also told us that you are the first woman pilot. That is very interesting! What is it like to be the first person to accomplish something like that? I look forward to hearing more about you and what you do. Please write back soon.
Your Friend,
xxx
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
In Order To Learn
This morning in 6th grade English the students were learning about how to rewrite sentences using “in order to” and “so that.”
The teacher began by walking the students through a few examples:
Farmers use manure to grow good crops.
Farmers use manure IN ORDER TO grow good crops.
Farmers use manure SO THAT they can grow good crops.
She asked a few students to come up to the blackboard and rewrite a few more example sentences, and then wrote a list of five new sentences on the board.
Most classes at Chumbageni consist of an example problem, a class work-through problem, and then ten exercises. Since the five sentences need to be written out in two different ways, that is 10 exercises. No big deal.
So when the teacher walked up to me and handed me a piece of chalk after she had finished writing the exercises out on the board, I had absolutely no clue what she wanted me to do. I had been drifting off in to lala land (probably like most of the students in the class) and just looked at her like…..huh?
I asked her: Do you want me to ask the children to do the exercises in their workbooks? Do you want me to ask them to come up to the board and do them? Do you want me to do them? Her response with all the kids watching us? “Please…teach us.”
Well great. What the heck am I supposed to do now? I don’t have a book to work with, just 5 very easy sentences on the board that require a slight tweaking.
Having graded many exercise books at Chumbageni, I know that it is very rare for a group of students to get most of their exercises correct. And given that this was probably the easiest exercise ever, I got it in my head that I would attempt to explain it so well that no student in the class would get the answers wrong.
I started by showing them that you just have to add “in order” in front of the word “to” when you want to rewrite the sentence using “in order to.”
Students go to school to learn.
Students go to school IN ORDER TO learn.
After reading all of the sentences on the board out loud using “in order to” we switched to “so that.” I asked the students to change the sentence to get a sense of how well they knew it and where they would mess up. The first student took the sentence: We boil drinking water to kill germs, and turned it into:
We boil drinking water SO THAT to kill germs.
I wrote his answer on the board, asked the class if it was correct, and let another student help him:
We boil drinking water SO THAT we can to kill germs.
And finally:
We boil drinking water SO THAT we can kill germs.
After letting them work through one on their own, I showed them how to go about it more methodically.
I explained: “So that” does not have the word “to” in it the same way that “in order to” does, so every time we came across “to” in the sentence, we must cross it out and replace it with “so that.” After that we have to add: Pronoun ¬+ Can. And then, Voila! You’ve done it!
The kids struggled a bit to select the correct pronoun when the sentence wasn’t in the “we” form, but we talked it through and they figured it out.
After that, we let them take those same sentences and write them out as complete sentences (rather than my chicken scratch slash marks and carrots for inserting new words) and then went to teach the same lecture to the second 6th grade class in the room next door.
While the teacher tried to have me teach the lesson entirely from the beginning, I told her it would be better if she started and then I would pitch in again. We went through the whole routine again, but a little better since I knew what I was doing this time.
Since we finished early I thought I’d give them a few curve balls for practice. Rather than giving them the sentence and asking them to modify it, I just asked them a question: Why do we use a ruler?
The students have seen the example sentence, “We use a ruler to draw straight lines” about a thousand times since it is a readily available prop in the class. However, no one was able to answer my question. Knowing that the example answer “We go to school (to/so that we can/in order to) learn” was written on the board behind me I then asked them, “Why do we go to school?” They had no problem finding this one on the board and reading it to me making me wonder how much just showing them the methodical way to rewrite sentences using “in order to” and “so that” is actually helping them.
In any case, when I was given the exercise books to grade later in the day about 80% of the kids got the answers correct. The remaining 20% forgot to write in pronoun + can after “so that” or just chose not to write the “so that” form of the sentence at all. But by far my favorite was the one kid who just wrote the sentence out once and put hash marks and carrots on the page in exactly the way I had explained to them how to reconstruct the sentence. Oh well.
The teacher began by walking the students through a few examples:
Farmers use manure to grow good crops.
Farmers use manure IN ORDER TO grow good crops.
Farmers use manure SO THAT they can grow good crops.
She asked a few students to come up to the blackboard and rewrite a few more example sentences, and then wrote a list of five new sentences on the board.
Most classes at Chumbageni consist of an example problem, a class work-through problem, and then ten exercises. Since the five sentences need to be written out in two different ways, that is 10 exercises. No big deal.
So when the teacher walked up to me and handed me a piece of chalk after she had finished writing the exercises out on the board, I had absolutely no clue what she wanted me to do. I had been drifting off in to lala land (probably like most of the students in the class) and just looked at her like…..huh?
I asked her: Do you want me to ask the children to do the exercises in their workbooks? Do you want me to ask them to come up to the board and do them? Do you want me to do them? Her response with all the kids watching us? “Please…teach us.”
Well great. What the heck am I supposed to do now? I don’t have a book to work with, just 5 very easy sentences on the board that require a slight tweaking.
Having graded many exercise books at Chumbageni, I know that it is very rare for a group of students to get most of their exercises correct. And given that this was probably the easiest exercise ever, I got it in my head that I would attempt to explain it so well that no student in the class would get the answers wrong.
I started by showing them that you just have to add “in order” in front of the word “to” when you want to rewrite the sentence using “in order to.”
Students go to school to learn.
Students go to school IN ORDER TO learn.
After reading all of the sentences on the board out loud using “in order to” we switched to “so that.” I asked the students to change the sentence to get a sense of how well they knew it and where they would mess up. The first student took the sentence: We boil drinking water to kill germs, and turned it into:
We boil drinking water SO THAT to kill germs.
I wrote his answer on the board, asked the class if it was correct, and let another student help him:
We boil drinking water SO THAT we can to kill germs.
And finally:
We boil drinking water SO THAT we can kill germs.
After letting them work through one on their own, I showed them how to go about it more methodically.
I explained: “So that” does not have the word “to” in it the same way that “in order to” does, so every time we came across “to” in the sentence, we must cross it out and replace it with “so that.” After that we have to add: Pronoun ¬+ Can. And then, Voila! You’ve done it!
The kids struggled a bit to select the correct pronoun when the sentence wasn’t in the “we” form, but we talked it through and they figured it out.
After that, we let them take those same sentences and write them out as complete sentences (rather than my chicken scratch slash marks and carrots for inserting new words) and then went to teach the same lecture to the second 6th grade class in the room next door.
While the teacher tried to have me teach the lesson entirely from the beginning, I told her it would be better if she started and then I would pitch in again. We went through the whole routine again, but a little better since I knew what I was doing this time.
Since we finished early I thought I’d give them a few curve balls for practice. Rather than giving them the sentence and asking them to modify it, I just asked them a question: Why do we use a ruler?
The students have seen the example sentence, “We use a ruler to draw straight lines” about a thousand times since it is a readily available prop in the class. However, no one was able to answer my question. Knowing that the example answer “We go to school (to/so that we can/in order to) learn” was written on the board behind me I then asked them, “Why do we go to school?” They had no problem finding this one on the board and reading it to me making me wonder how much just showing them the methodical way to rewrite sentences using “in order to” and “so that” is actually helping them.
In any case, when I was given the exercise books to grade later in the day about 80% of the kids got the answers correct. The remaining 20% forgot to write in pronoun + can after “so that” or just chose not to write the “so that” form of the sentence at all. But by far my favorite was the one kid who just wrote the sentence out once and put hash marks and carrots on the page in exactly the way I had explained to them how to reconstruct the sentence. Oh well.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Jenga!
Did you know that in Kiswahili kujenga means “to build?” If you just say jenga it is the command form of the verb, so you are saying “Build!” If that’s true, why do we say it when the tower is falling over? I guess we’re just anticipating having to start all over again.
Pole Samaki
Women in Tanzania like to wear two types of fabric: Kanga and Vitenge. If the large piece of cloth is simply a large sheet of patterned fabric it is called a kitenge (vitenge is plural). However, if the pattern of the fabric is meant to be a rectangular sheet and has a small fortune-cookie style saying on the bottom, it is a kanga. When I first went to the market to purchase kangas as gifts for friends and family, I was attracted to their beautiful colors. Unfortunately, Victoria told me that you are supposed to buy kangas for what they say and not what the pattern is, and all of the ones I liked had bad sayings written on them.
For a few examples, the kanga that I wear says that “God won’t stand in the way of what you are trying to achieve.” My sister’s says “Kiss Me.” My mom’s says, “Mama is mama until the end of time.” My friend’s says “The secret of live is love.” And my favorite is a blue kanga I saw yesterday at a store that says “Pole Samaki” with a picture of a big fish on it, which means “Sorry Fish.” Victoria and I got a good laugh out of that one but thought it looked a lot better on display than to actually be worn by anyone. Although I do have some vegetarian friends at home….
Many women of Tanzania wear kangas and vitenges. Kangas are extremely versatile because they can be wrapped around your waste as a skirt, they can be used to hold babies on your back, they can be wrapped around your head if you are Muslim or want protection from the sun, or they can serve as a towel or a blanket.
Vitenges can be used for all of the same purposes, but are also used by tailors to be made into clothes: skirts, dresses, and shirts for men and women. The cost of the fabric is usually 5 or 6 dollars and the cost of tailoring ranges between 7 and 20 dollars depending on how fancy you want your item to be made.
I was at first hesitant to wear the kanga that Victoria gave me upon my arrival to Tanzania because I wasn’t exactly clear what its function was. Tanga is a very hot place, and yet everyone seems to wear pants or skirts underneath their kanga or kitenge. Victoria mainly wears them in the kitchen to keep her clothes clean or uses them as a picnic blanket when she takes an afternoon snooze on the living room floor. The house girl uses them to tie her baby to her back so she can do work around the house and have both of her hands free and as a dress for her daughter when she gets out of the bath. The Muslim women in the community wear them for religious purposes. For myself, I just wear them whenI don’t get my clothes dirty in the kitchen or to cover my legs around the house when I am wearing pajama shorts for bed.
I finally asked Victoria about it, and it turns out most of my observations are correct. The only thing I missed is that if a Tanzanian women passes in front of her relatives, especially male relatives, she should be wearing either a kanga or kitenge. She would never pass in front of them wearing only trousers.
As for working women, many of them wear suits and other more Western style clothes. This is acceptable because if you see a woman wearing them you know that she is coming from work. However, once she gets home, I am told that she will most likely change immediately into her traditional clothes. Some women, however, will wear the traditional clothes to their work, or at least wear only skirts and dresses since their husbands do not like it when their wives wear pants.
I have not spent a lot of time in the Muslim community here, although it is very large. The attire of Muslim women ranges from complete covering from head to toe, sometimes without even a slit for the eye, to no special attire at all.
As for men, there is no special attire that they wear with the exception of a hat, which they call a head square. This is mainly worn by Muslim men, but can apparently be worn by anyone who wants to wear a hat. T-shirts, pants, suits, and everything else looks very similar to Western-style clothing, with the exception of some Muslim men who wear long, white dress-like outfits called a kanzu, especially when they go to pray.
As far as what I’ve been wearing goes, I prefer to wear clothes that cover at least my knees, but tend to feel more comfortable the longer the item. I can wear pants to school if I wish, although female teachers working there are not allowed to do so. I would have thought that covering up so much of my body in this heat would be a problem, but I appreciate the sun protection and feeling covered up when all eyes are on me.
For a few examples, the kanga that I wear says that “God won’t stand in the way of what you are trying to achieve.” My sister’s says “Kiss Me.” My mom’s says, “Mama is mama until the end of time.” My friend’s says “The secret of live is love.” And my favorite is a blue kanga I saw yesterday at a store that says “Pole Samaki” with a picture of a big fish on it, which means “Sorry Fish.” Victoria and I got a good laugh out of that one but thought it looked a lot better on display than to actually be worn by anyone. Although I do have some vegetarian friends at home….
Many women of Tanzania wear kangas and vitenges. Kangas are extremely versatile because they can be wrapped around your waste as a skirt, they can be used to hold babies on your back, they can be wrapped around your head if you are Muslim or want protection from the sun, or they can serve as a towel or a blanket.
Vitenges can be used for all of the same purposes, but are also used by tailors to be made into clothes: skirts, dresses, and shirts for men and women. The cost of the fabric is usually 5 or 6 dollars and the cost of tailoring ranges between 7 and 20 dollars depending on how fancy you want your item to be made.
I was at first hesitant to wear the kanga that Victoria gave me upon my arrival to Tanzania because I wasn’t exactly clear what its function was. Tanga is a very hot place, and yet everyone seems to wear pants or skirts underneath their kanga or kitenge. Victoria mainly wears them in the kitchen to keep her clothes clean or uses them as a picnic blanket when she takes an afternoon snooze on the living room floor. The house girl uses them to tie her baby to her back so she can do work around the house and have both of her hands free and as a dress for her daughter when she gets out of the bath. The Muslim women in the community wear them for religious purposes. For myself, I just wear them whenI don’t get my clothes dirty in the kitchen or to cover my legs around the house when I am wearing pajama shorts for bed.
I finally asked Victoria about it, and it turns out most of my observations are correct. The only thing I missed is that if a Tanzanian women passes in front of her relatives, especially male relatives, she should be wearing either a kanga or kitenge. She would never pass in front of them wearing only trousers.
As for working women, many of them wear suits and other more Western style clothes. This is acceptable because if you see a woman wearing them you know that she is coming from work. However, once she gets home, I am told that she will most likely change immediately into her traditional clothes. Some women, however, will wear the traditional clothes to their work, or at least wear only skirts and dresses since their husbands do not like it when their wives wear pants.
I have not spent a lot of time in the Muslim community here, although it is very large. The attire of Muslim women ranges from complete covering from head to toe, sometimes without even a slit for the eye, to no special attire at all.
As for men, there is no special attire that they wear with the exception of a hat, which they call a head square. This is mainly worn by Muslim men, but can apparently be worn by anyone who wants to wear a hat. T-shirts, pants, suits, and everything else looks very similar to Western-style clothing, with the exception of some Muslim men who wear long, white dress-like outfits called a kanzu, especially when they go to pray.
As far as what I’ve been wearing goes, I prefer to wear clothes that cover at least my knees, but tend to feel more comfortable the longer the item. I can wear pants to school if I wish, although female teachers working there are not allowed to do so. I would have thought that covering up so much of my body in this heat would be a problem, but I appreciate the sun protection and feeling covered up when all eyes are on me.
White Palace
When I went to Lushoto this past weekend we stopped by my friend’s uncle’s new hotel to say hello. It is still under construction, but should be ready to open next month. It is a beautiful white building with Greek-style columns, self-contained rooms, heated water, and a full restaurant area.
After the tour the uncle asked me if I would give his hotel a name. He wanted an English name so that tourists would be attracted to it, and no amount of protesting or delaying allowed me to get out of coming up with a name for him. By the end of the weekend I had come up with “The White Palace,” “The Pegasus Hotel” (to be accompanied by a drawing of a flying horse, of course) and “The Hillside Hotel.”
From my own experience, remembering names is highly dependent on cultural relevance. I am about ten times more likely to memorize the name of a student who has a western style name, or at least one I can pronounce, no matter how hard I try. It is also hard for me to learn words that have strange associations with English words. For example, if you want to say “I am tired” in Kiswahili, you say “Nimechoka.” “Nimelala,” or “I am sleeping” is a lot easier since “Lala” sounds a lot more like a lullaby, whereas being tired sounds a lot more like choking someone. (I ended up memorizing the word by imaging wrestlers choking each other out until they go unconscious.)
In any case, I asked Victoria to evaluate my name selections to see if (1) they could be pronounced, (2) they weren’t associated with anything negative, and (3) they would be easy to remember.
It turns out that Pegasus is a bad choice since the beginning of the word sounds like “pig” and the owner is Muslim. The owner actually wanted to name it after me, but I told him that would be a terrible idea since all of the Manchester United and Arsenal fans here would go looking elsewhere for a place to sleep. The White Palace ended up being the selection, so if you ever go to Soni, Tanzania make sure you stop by!
After the tour the uncle asked me if I would give his hotel a name. He wanted an English name so that tourists would be attracted to it, and no amount of protesting or delaying allowed me to get out of coming up with a name for him. By the end of the weekend I had come up with “The White Palace,” “The Pegasus Hotel” (to be accompanied by a drawing of a flying horse, of course) and “The Hillside Hotel.”
From my own experience, remembering names is highly dependent on cultural relevance. I am about ten times more likely to memorize the name of a student who has a western style name, or at least one I can pronounce, no matter how hard I try. It is also hard for me to learn words that have strange associations with English words. For example, if you want to say “I am tired” in Kiswahili, you say “Nimechoka.” “Nimelala,” or “I am sleeping” is a lot easier since “Lala” sounds a lot more like a lullaby, whereas being tired sounds a lot more like choking someone. (I ended up memorizing the word by imaging wrestlers choking each other out until they go unconscious.)
In any case, I asked Victoria to evaluate my name selections to see if (1) they could be pronounced, (2) they weren’t associated with anything negative, and (3) they would be easy to remember.
It turns out that Pegasus is a bad choice since the beginning of the word sounds like “pig” and the owner is Muslim. The owner actually wanted to name it after me, but I told him that would be a terrible idea since all of the Manchester United and Arsenal fans here would go looking elsewhere for a place to sleep. The White Palace ended up being the selection, so if you ever go to Soni, Tanzania make sure you stop by!
An Unexpected Peer
When I went to Lushoto two weeks ago with the Kindergarten teacher we took along her 2.5 year old son, Tino. Mr. Tiny Tino wasn’t quite sure what to make of me at first, but we quickly became friends when his mom decided it would be better if he sat in my lap for the entire ride. After bonding over a few games and some food, Tino finally fell asleep in my lap…..much to the disappointment of my bladder. The trip was expected to be about 6 hours, and it was only hour 2 by the time I had to go.
We finally arrived in a town called Soni at the fork between touristy Lushoto and the rural mountain area of Bumbuli, where we had a 30 minute break before pressing further into the hills. I threw Tino over my shoulders and piggy-backed him off the bus with my hair all disheveled and my shirt completely messed up from being tugged on all morning.
When we stopped to buy some pears and potatoes at the local market, I put Tino down to take a second a readjust my clothes and fix my hair. I’m used to all eyes being on me, especially when I fiddle with my hair, so I thought the men chattering next to me were talking about just making comments about me. But when I looked down I saw that my little friend had decided that the ground right next to all the food was a great place to put some extra water. I didn’t know whether or not this was normal, or what exactly I was supposed to do, so I quickly got distracted looking off at something else and let his mom decide how to deal with it. She just laughed and we moved to another area where we could sit and rest for awhile.
At the new area Tino and I played a game about eating pieces of candy. He took an old plastic bag and started putting in all sorts of unwanted goodies lying in the street to use for his pretend game….which looked a lot more like Mr. Garbage Man to me than anything else. Anyway, it wasn’t even 5 more minutes before he was again peeing in the streets, this time in front of both his mother and me with absolutely no way to ignore him. Based on her reaction I guess it’s totally acceptable, but I haven’t seen too many boys peeing in the streets around Tanga.
The story gets more exciting, but part number two will have to remain unpublished.
We finally arrived in a town called Soni at the fork between touristy Lushoto and the rural mountain area of Bumbuli, where we had a 30 minute break before pressing further into the hills. I threw Tino over my shoulders and piggy-backed him off the bus with my hair all disheveled and my shirt completely messed up from being tugged on all morning.
When we stopped to buy some pears and potatoes at the local market, I put Tino down to take a second a readjust my clothes and fix my hair. I’m used to all eyes being on me, especially when I fiddle with my hair, so I thought the men chattering next to me were talking about just making comments about me. But when I looked down I saw that my little friend had decided that the ground right next to all the food was a great place to put some extra water. I didn’t know whether or not this was normal, or what exactly I was supposed to do, so I quickly got distracted looking off at something else and let his mom decide how to deal with it. She just laughed and we moved to another area where we could sit and rest for awhile.
At the new area Tino and I played a game about eating pieces of candy. He took an old plastic bag and started putting in all sorts of unwanted goodies lying in the street to use for his pretend game….which looked a lot more like Mr. Garbage Man to me than anything else. Anyway, it wasn’t even 5 more minutes before he was again peeing in the streets, this time in front of both his mother and me with absolutely no way to ignore him. Based on her reaction I guess it’s totally acceptable, but I haven’t seen too many boys peeing in the streets around Tanga.
The story gets more exciting, but part number two will have to remain unpublished.
Monday, March 29, 2010
100th Post
I’ve finally reached 100 posts and I can’t believe I have less than a month left. I guess if I look back on everything that’s happened since I’ve been here it has been quite a journey, but it seems to be flying by way too fast.
At this point I am feeling very settled in Victoria’s home and now feel like a part of the family. At school I am now enjoying teaching English class and stepping in when teachers are absent or don’t go to class. I almost never get a chance to devise a lesson plan, but making things up on the spot has been really fun and I think successful overall. We’ve done everything from mini skits based off of our readings to group Sudoku puzzles and I’ve only ever once been able to repeat a lesson to another section after teaching it the first time, keeping me always on my toes.
After school I come home and rest for a bit before heading out to tutor my friend Emmanuel in English. He’s rather proficient in the language so we usually just teach each other new card games or read short stories together. After coming home I help Victoria cook dinner and chat about life up until Teacher Eva comes to tutor me in Kiswahili late in the evening and ends up telling me about her rich history instead of making any sort of progress in our book. After that it’s dinner, shower, Skyping, and bed. There is not a dull moment, but the more full my days get, the faster they fly by.
School lets out this Thursday, April 1st for Easter Break and doesn’t start up again until Monday, March 12th, during which time I’ll hopefully get to see a Tanzanian wedding and go on a safari to three different national parks with the whole family.
When I return I’ll have 10 more school days and one full weekend before returning to the US. I’m hoping to have some more Skype conferences, do a few more CHUMS projects, visit a few more local landmarks including Amboni Caves, and hit the markets to buy some gifts before returning home.
Many thanks to all my followers back at home. I can’t wait to see you and share even more pictures, videos and stories when I return.
At this point I am feeling very settled in Victoria’s home and now feel like a part of the family. At school I am now enjoying teaching English class and stepping in when teachers are absent or don’t go to class. I almost never get a chance to devise a lesson plan, but making things up on the spot has been really fun and I think successful overall. We’ve done everything from mini skits based off of our readings to group Sudoku puzzles and I’ve only ever once been able to repeat a lesson to another section after teaching it the first time, keeping me always on my toes.
After school I come home and rest for a bit before heading out to tutor my friend Emmanuel in English. He’s rather proficient in the language so we usually just teach each other new card games or read short stories together. After coming home I help Victoria cook dinner and chat about life up until Teacher Eva comes to tutor me in Kiswahili late in the evening and ends up telling me about her rich history instead of making any sort of progress in our book. After that it’s dinner, shower, Skyping, and bed. There is not a dull moment, but the more full my days get, the faster they fly by.
School lets out this Thursday, April 1st for Easter Break and doesn’t start up again until Monday, March 12th, during which time I’ll hopefully get to see a Tanzanian wedding and go on a safari to three different national parks with the whole family.
When I return I’ll have 10 more school days and one full weekend before returning to the US. I’m hoping to have some more Skype conferences, do a few more CHUMS projects, visit a few more local landmarks including Amboni Caves, and hit the markets to buy some gifts before returning home.
Many thanks to all my followers back at home. I can’t wait to see you and share even more pictures, videos and stories when I return.
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