The One With The Very Happy Birthday (11/27/2012)

Thank you all SO much for the birthday wishes! I LOVED getting to see all of your faces!  I got to show some of the teachers your pictures.  They were so excited to see pictures of people in America and they said to send their greetings to you all.   I cant tell you how blessed I feel to have such amazing family and friends at home praying and supporting me! I love you all!

The One With the Birthday Wishes From Home!

To My Dearest Carly,
We all miss you so much and do not want to let your Special Day go by without celebrating who you are. We are sending you all our love, prayers and best wishes!
May this Birthday be your best yet!!!!
Love, Hugs and Kisses, Mom et al

The One With The Birthday Party (11/24/2012)

Since Grace’s birthday was on Thursday and my birthday is on Monday Dahlia and I decided to have a birthday party today.  So we invited Stela and Grace over and then spent the morning cooking.  We made veggie burgers and chocolate cake! The party was supposed to start at 12.  Four hours later Stela and Grace showed up, but it was totally worth the wait and it gave Dahlia and I a chance to get some laundry done while we were waiting.  Grace wore her party pants (since it was just the girls) and we spent the afternoon laughing, eating, dancing, and playing dress up (Grace taught me how to tie a kanga -fabric that is usually used as kind of a wrap/skirt- as a dress).  I am so thankful to have such good friends here to celebrate my birthday with! 

The One With The Germans in Isoko (11/24/2012)

On Thursday after school I walked to Isoko.  Dahlia and I were almost out of matches and candles so I went down to the shop to pick some up.  As I turned to leave I saw two white men walking up to the store!  I must have had a shocked took on my face because they came up to me and immediately started explaining who they are and why they were in Isoko.  The uncle of one of the men is the doctor who started the hospital in Isoko in the 1960’s.  So the men were here to see the hospital and the community.  They invited me to join them for a soda so we sat and talked for a while.  But then I had to get going, I had to get home to prepare Thanksgiving dinner with Dahlia. Nothing says Thanksgiving like eggs, potatoes, and mangos!  It was a delicious, although atypical, Thanksgiving dinner.  Dahlia and I read some Psalms about giving thanks to God and then spent the evening talking about all of the things that we have to give thanks for here.  It was a unique Thanksgiving for sure, but I had a lot of fun! 

The One With All Of The Maintenance Projects (11/21/2012)

The headmaster at Kafule is incredibly dedicated to the school and the students here.  He is so passionate about this place and wants nothing more than to see the students succeed.  School fees were just due which means that the school has money for some maintenance projects.  All week workers have been here fixing broken doors, putting plumbing in the teacher’s bathrooms (!! I saw an actual sink for the first time in a few months!)  and painting the Form I classes. Form II students (although they have finished classes for the year) have been here every day carry bricks for the construction projects that are beginning.  For students who pass the Form IV exam there are two more forms before university.  Kafule is planning on building Form V and VI classrooms so that the school can begin offering classes for the students who pass the Form IV exam.  So for now the students are busy carrying bricks.  It is so fun to see all of the improvements and projects here and to watch the excitement of the students are faculty as progress is being made.

The One Where They Wanted More Work (11/21/2012)

Today I was teaching in one of my form I classes.  We got to the end of the period and had just finished going over the practice problems that I had given them to work on.  So I started to gather up my things and I was saying that class was over.  “No Madam, no,” came a resounding plea more almost everyone in the class.  So I stopped and asked them why.  “Exercises!” was their reply.  I said we just did all of the exercises.  “No Madam, more exercises” they begged (they literally begged, one girl had her hands folded and everything).  So I quickly made up some more problems and put them on the board.  After we finished going over those problems I started to leave again.  “No Madam,” they said, “homework!” (We can’t give actual homework because the students have too many chores at home to make any extra school work mandatory but sometimes teachers will assign work for the students during their free periods and call it homework.)  Not having more work prepared, I told them that I would give them extra problems tomorrow.  They reluctantly agreed.  I am sure that there are a lot of similarities between teaching here and teaching in the States but every now and then I am reminded that this is definitely not an American classroom.  

The One With All The Firewood (11/17/2012)

November is apparently the “short rainy season” so we have still had a number of sunny days here in Kafule.  But the “long rainy season” is immanent and so the community is busy making preparations.  In my incredibly privileged life here I get to cook with charcoal.  That means that I don’t have to hike into the forest, chop down trees, cut up the wood, and carry it home to build a fire to cook over.  Instead I ask around to find out if anyone is selling charcoal in the area and then I have it delivered to my house.  I really am amazed at how blessed I am!  But most people here, Elizabeth included, cook over firewood.  Behind Kafule Secondary School there is a small forest.  The school is continually planting new trees and cutting down the bigger ones to sell as timber (which unfortunately means that sometimes classes are canceled so that students can help cut and carry the wood.  Occasionally there is a knock on the doorframe of my classroom- most of the classrooms don’t have actual doors- and I am told that the students are needed for “economic activities”.  The challenges of teaching in Africa…).  Anyway, I am not sure if they do this every year or if there are just more trees than usual this year but the school is allowing people from the community to take some of the trees to use for firewood.  For a few weeks now there has been a pretty consistent stream of women coming to cut and carry (on their heads) all of the wood.  Everyone is stocking up to last through the rainy season.  It seems like all anyone has been doing lately around here is collecting firewood.  Elizabeth, knowing my eagerness to learn to carry things on my head, asked if I wanted to help her.  So this morning I got to learn to carry wood on my head.  For those of you who are wondering, yes it is as hard as it looks.  I am so impressed with all of the women here who do that daily!  But I was able to make it from behind the school the 15 minute walk to Elizabeth’s house without dropping it!  Everyone who saw us could not stop laughing at the sight of the crazy white girl trying to carry wood, but I got a ton of congratulations from everyone for “learning to be an African woman”!

The One With The Walk To Malawi (11/11/2012)

Elizabeth has been telling me about a really big market on Saturdays in Malawi ever since I arrived in Kafule.  She said it is a long walk to get there but I told her that I was up for it.  Unfortunately the rain has thwarted our plans to go for a few weeks now but this weekend we were finally able to go.  Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny day with a cool morning breeze; perfect for the long walk to Malawi.  So just before 6 am Elizabeth and I set out.  We walked, and walked, and walked.  Finally we made it to the River Songwe which divides Tanzania and Malawi. There is a “bridge” to cross the river (I use that term loosely, there is a vine to tight rope walk across and two more vines at waist height to hold for balance).  Anyway the bridge was not secured when we arrived.  I assumed we were going to talk along the river bank until we got to the next bridge.  I need to learn to stop assuming.  The man that arrived at the same time as us (on bike) picked up his bike, put it on his head and waded out into the river.  “That’s how we are doing this?” I asked Elizabeth.  “Of course,” she said, kicking off her shoes.  Hiking up my skirt and stepping into the murky water I tried my best to suppress the fear of being eaten by something in the water.  But we made it safely to the other side and the cool water actually felt really good.  I had made it to Malawi!  Elizabeth and I walked for a ways longer and finally make it to the market.  She was right; it was totally worth the 4 hours that it took us to walk there.  There were tons of bananas and different spinach-like greens, there was fabric and shoes and all kinds of other things to buy!  And there were lots of different fried foods!  After about an hour of wandering around Elizabeth and I set out for home.  The way beck was a lot more uphill so we knew it was going to take longer than the walk there had taken.  On the way, we were walking with some women who were carrying big baskets on their heads.  I had told Elizabeth earlier that I wanted to learn how to carry things like that.  She asked one of the women to borrow their basket, which I think they were happy to give up for a little while) and Elizabeth showed me how to carry it (later last night I got to practice my new skill because the water was out at the tap outside our house.  So Dahlia and I walked to one of the pumps in town and I successfully make two trips home with a bucket of water on my head).  Anyway, Elizabeth and I walked, and walked, and walked, and eventually, a little over 5 hours after leaving Malawi, we made it home, exhausted but so excited from all the day’s adventures! 

The One With The Students Career Goals (11/16/2012)

I am continually impressed with Graces passion for seeing the students here succeed.  She is so invested in their lives.  She knows all 450 students names, what village they live in and often how many siblings they have.  She recently took a class to improve her teaching and she is constantly in the staff room pouring over her notes from that class.  This week she gave an exam in her form I classes.  At Kafule form I is broken up into 3 streams (or classes) and apparently stream A scored much lower than streams B and C did on this exam.  When Grace came back to the staff room after returning the exams her hands were full of little slips of paper.  She told me that she gave the students in stream A a talk about the importance of education to motivate them.  She had them write down what they want to be when they grow up and talking to them about how their hard work now will enable them to reach those goals.  Grace and I went through all the papers reading what each student wants to be.  Interestingly, every student put down one of five careers: doctor, teacher, pilot, soldier, or member of parliament.  One of the  things that encourages me the most here is hearing about the students goals and dreams.  It was such a blessing to get to read a whole class worth of them! 

The One With The Election Results (11/7/2012)

I am not typically the most politically aware person but being in Tanzania during the US presidential election has been really interesting.  About two weeks ago the school had a solar panel installed (it had been donated by a British NGO) which meant that we could hook up the school TV in the staff room and watch the election news today.  The news station that we watched went back and forth to all of their international representatives giving the reactions of countries around the world to the Obama victory.  The news reported stressed the importance of the event by saying that, “when America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold.”  Most of the Asian and European representatives said that their respective countries were glad that Obama would be back in office because with Obama they know that to expect.  There are challenging times and the known is better than the unknown.  But the reports on the reactions in Africa were what I found most interesting.  Reporters said that the general public in most of Africa was excited to have an African American in the office but that governments across the continent turned inward today.  They explained that most people here have little hope of an economic upturn in America under Obama so they are not counting on American financial support.  They are looking instead to within their own countries as well as to other African nations.  I think it would be really great to see Africans supporting each other and not looking to America for handouts but it is a little discouraging at the lack of faith they have in our president.

On another note, Dahlia and I were realizing how influenced we have become by the culture here when both of us had the same reaction of horror when we saw Obama’s daughters walk out on stage in skirts that showed their knees.  It will definitely be interesting to get back to America in the middle of bikini season.

The One With The Two Month Celebration (11/6/2012)

I cant believe I have already been in Kafule for two months! Sunday marked Dahlia and my two months in Kafule anniversary so we decided to celebrate with another cake.  One of the teachers had taken a trip and brought us back coconut milk and we had coco powder from Mbeya so we were able to make a chocolate coconut banana cake.  It was incredible!  And, on top of that, the sun is back… which meant that I got to go to a new market, Malengali, with Elizabeth (it was about 2 and a half hours from our house, but totally worth it since I was able to buy a much needed umbrella!)  Things could not get much better here in Kafule.  Apparently during the short rainy season (I think November and December) it will rain for half the week but we will still get some days of sun, which is great news since I was preparing for 7 months of clouds.  But it looks like I still have some sunny days ahead of me! 

The One With All The Rain (11/2/1012)

The rainy season has officially begun here in Kafule.  It rained for about an hour on Tuesday, 5 hours on Wednesday and about 10 hours yesterday.  So the good news is that the rain has made everything a lot less dusty, it is absolutely gorgeous to see the clouds rolling over the mountains, and the smell of the fresh rain is great!  On the down side everything has become very muddy and it has gotten kind of cold.  Last night Dahlia and I went to Elizabeth’s house for dinner.  We were asking how long the rainy season would last.  She began listing months, “November, December, January, February, March, April, May… but then the sun will come back in June.”  The horrified looks on Dahlia and my faces prompted her to encourage us with this, “some days it will rain for 24 hours but then some days it will only rain for 7 so it isn’t that bad!”

The community in our area is made up of almost all farmers (pretty much everyone who doesn’t work at the school farms) and the rain means that the crops will grow which means food and money for the community.  So while the rainy season is going to be challenging it is really fun to see the community excitement that the rains have brought.

The One With The Alcohol Debate (11/2/2012)

School debates here are always interesting! Some of the motions we have had so far are “Men are the cause of separation of families” (opposing side won), “Western culture is better than African culture” (proposing side won), and this week’s motion “Alcohol should be avoided by students”.  It is a Tanzanian national law that no student is allowed to drink so currently drinking can get a student expelled.  But the debate was great! The proposing side had mostly the generic answers that you might expect; alcohol makes it harder for students to focus on their school work, it causes conflict and violence, and some more creative reasons like it is more likely for a girl to get pregnant is the boys have been drinking.  But the opposing side’s arguments were, in my opinion, impressive.  They said drinking provides jobs to those who make the alcohol which is good for the economy, it gives students confidence which will make them do better on the exams, “[it] helps boys avoid shame when approaching girls” (by the way it is against school rules for students to date so I am not really sure how this was in support of the argument) and finally that alcohol kills bacteria which will make students healthier.  The scores for most debates are in the low teens.  The debate this week was heated though, and the proposing side won 29-28.  The chairman of the debate (the schools head prefect) gave a speech after restating the perils of students drinking alcohol.  I guess alcohol is a popular topic for students no matter what country you are in.