The One With More Pictures (12/29/2012)

Here are a few random pictures that I have been meaning to upload for awhile now.

Elizabeth, her two daughters, one of their friends and I cooking Vibama

Learning to carry firewood on my head

Grace and I blowing out our birthday candle 

The One With All The Catching Up (12/18/2012)

The last two days have been spent in sessions, catching up with other volunteers, swapping war stories, and encouraging each other that we can make it through one more semester.  It has been so fun to hear everyone’s stories and to be reminded that we are not in this alone over here.  The conference ended yesterday and we all went for a celebratory sunset swim.  Some people are gone already and some are sticking around so it looks like I am going to have a low key few days just hanging out going to the beach and eating amazing food until my dad gets here.   

The One With The “Conference” (12/15/2012)

Today was the first day of the WorldTeach “conference”.   So we all met on the beach at 11 and piled into a boat that took us out to a sand bank in the middle of the ocean.  We spent the day on the beach swimming, eating, and playing Frisbee.  Work here can be tough sometimes!  

For dinner I got to eat some amazing Ethiopian food and catch up with some more of the volunteers.  Another great day in Zanzibar! 

The One With The Dolphins And The Monkeys (12/15/2012)

Yesterday morning began for me at 5:45 which seems to be the norm these days.  I got ready for the day and headed out with 3 other volunteers who were here early for the conference.  We walked a ways to a tour company office where we got into a cab and headed over to the other side of the island.  From there we got onto a boat and took to the sea.  After driving around for a little while we finally spotted what we came to see, a school of dolphins! We raced over to them (as fast as our 5 horse power engine would take us).  As we got close we put on our goggles and flippers and then jumped in! That’s right, I got to actually swim with the dolphins! It was amazing! We were about am arm’s length away from some of them!  After a few hours of searching for dolphins, getting in and out of the boat every 10 minutes or so and swimming around we were taken over to another part of the island where we got to snorkel.  I felt like I was in an aquarium! There were so many fish swimming around and the coral was stunning!

Finally we got out of the water and into the cab again and headed over to Jozani National Forest where we took a tour of the jungle and got to see the Zanzibar Red Colobus Monkeys!  They are totally wild but really comfortable around people so we were able to get super close to them which, for those of you who know about my love for monkeys, was a dream come true. 

Finally we left the forest and headed home.  After some walking through the beautiful streets of Stone Town for a while a bunch of volunteers and I met up at a local fish market.  Fishermen all come to sell the fish that they caught that day.  They cook it all right there for you and there are great homemade breads too.  I tried the king fish and the barracuda… both amazing! It is hard to believe that I am still in Tanzania sometimes! 

The One Where Break Began (12/13/2012)

My Christmas break has officially begun! After three long days of trucks, busses and a ferry I have finally made it to Zanzibar (an Island off the coast of Tanzania).  I have a conference here for WorldTeach beginning Saturday but Dahlia and I (as well as most other volunteers) decided to come a few days early and soak up the sun and local culture.  We arrived today at about noon on the ferry from Dar Es Salaam and were met by Ashley who took us to drop off our bags.  The place we are staying is great!! It is a house of a woman named Zakia who rents out some of the rooms.  It is great, there is electricity and running water and it is right in the middle of downtown Stone Town! After dropping off our bags Ashley showed us this place around the corner to get some lunch.  The food was incredible!!! I had the best octopus that I have ever had in my life!! After lunch Dahlia and headed down to the beach where we signed up for a tour to Prison Island.  Zanzibar was once a hub for slave trade and when slaves misbehaved they were sent to Prison Island.  Now the island is the home of giant tortoises which are the main attraction.  So we headed out on a boat that was locally carved to the Island where we got to see the turtles.  They are really rare and are only found on this and one other Island.  Unfortunately they were being stolen from the Island for their shells so now they are fenced in with security.  But that meant that we could walk right up to them and touch them and everything.  They were huge!! They got up to maybe 4 feet in length and the oldest one was 189! After seeing the turtles we jumped in to the incredible turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean where we spent the next hour snorkeling! We made it back just in time to meet up with some of the other volunteers who had also come a few days early for the conference and were able to get dinner together.  We spent hours telling stories from our sites, laughing at how far we have come and talking about how ridiculous so many of our initial fears were.  I am really looking forward to catching up with everyone else and I can’t wait for the adventures that we have planned for tomorrow… but for that I am going to keep you in suspense!  

The One With Enea (12/9/2012)

Yesterday Dahlia and I were walking to Isoko when we were stopped by a woman named Enea.  She is a nurse and was friends with the two WorldTeach volunteers who were in Kafule before Dahlia and I. She told us to stop by her house on our way back from Isoko.  We got to her house and knocked on the door.  She opened the door and we stepped in and I am pretty sure we were transported into a tropical paradise.  Kafule is amazing, don’t get me wrong.  But Enea has a whole outdoor courtyard with banana trees growing, lattice with ivy covering it, benches and a table, and a chicken coup with 96 week old chicks inside!  So we sat and ate and talked for a while.  Enea is an incredible woman! She works at Isoko hospital running the Isoko Orphan Project (IOP).  She has 3,000 orphans under her care all over the region! There is not an orphanage, the kids either live with extended family or by themselves to Eneas work is mostly doing home visits.  She travels around spending time with the kids, vaccinating them, deworming them, and running programs for their physiological and social health.  She said that sometimes an orphan will show up on her doorstep crying with nowhere to go and she will take them in for a few weeks.  When the organization runs out of money she supplements from her salary (the project is funded by Germans).  She makes sure that all of the children are in school (IOP pays half of the school fees).  She has been running the organization now for 20 years. 

She told us that Kafule Secondary School has 15 double orphans (both parents are dead) and 55 single orphans (one parent dead).  One of the double orphans is the schools head prefect (every year the students and the teachers vote on a head prefect and a head girl who are given a lot of administrative work to help out the teachers).  He is one of the most dedicated boys at the school, always coming to me for extra problems, always staying after school to help other students study.  It is so heartbreaking to really know some of these students and now to be finding out that they are orphaned!

But the craziest part of our conversation with Enea was about Zambia.  Enea was given a scholarship to get a degree in Zambia so a few years ago she went.  I told her that I was in Zambia last summer and we realized that we were actually in the same part.  I asked her if she has ever heard of an organization called Every Orphans Hope (the organization that I worked with while I was there) and she told me that she did her field study there! What a small world we live in! 

The One With The Kisamvu (12/3/2012)

Market day is coming up but for now Dahlia and I are out of vegetables.  We were talking about dinner and decided on rice and beans but we were both really craving something green.  A few weeks ago Grace cooked something called Kisamvu (kind of like spinach that is ground and then cooked) and it was delicious!  She had picked it from a bush in her back yard.  We are getting much more adventurous in our cooking so Dahlia and I decided to try it out.  We asked Grace how to pick and cook the kisamvu and after school we came home to try it out.  We rolled up our sleeves, picked some leaves from our back yard, borrowed a mortar and pestle, and set off to work grinding the leaves.  About three minutes in our arms were ready to fall off and we thought we had done a good enough job.  Twenty minutes of cooking later and the kisamvu was looking nothing like what it did when Grace made it and there was a knock on the door.  Stela and Grace came to check up on us.  We timidly showed them out attempt and Stela literally fell on the ground laughing.  Grace, with a look of pity in her eyes, said, “get a new pot, we will try this again.”  Twenty five minutes of grinding away with the mortar and pestle (I am definitely going to feel that tomorrow) and another 45 minutes of cooking and the kisamvu was ready.  It was totally worth the wait and Dahlia and I got to enjoy out must desired vegetable.  

The One With All The Finals (12/3/2012)

Finals began today and the first final on the schedule was mathematics which means that I am currently writing this blog mainly in order to avoid all of the grading that I have to do.  Here is how finals go in Kafule.  Two weeks before the exams are given a copy of the test is due from the teachers to Neema, the school secretary.  Over the next week Neema types up all of the exams on the school typewriter.  They are then returned to the teachers for editing.  After the teachers have read through their exams, Neema gets to work on the schools prized copy machine.  And I really do mean she gets to work; the copier has a hand crank and a foot peddle and everything.  Then the students take the exams, the teachers grade the exams and then we fill out (by hand) report cards (or parent’s reports as they are called here).  It is quite a process and I think it is about time I get back to work.  

The One With The Umbrella At All The Wrong Times (12/3/2012)

The rain, in my opinion, is extremely unpredictable but everyone else here in Kafule seems to think that there is nothing mysterious about it.  Elizabeth was able to predict two weeks out the exact day that the rain would start!  Last week on Wednesday it was cloudy when I woke up.  It had poured all night so the morning was cool and dark.  But as the day went on the clouds cleared and by the time I got home from school the sun was shining.  So when I set out for the market I didn’t think to grab my umbrella… big mistake!  I got about half way there, sun still shining, and I saw Mr. Kamwela, a friend who lives in Isoko.  He looked at me and asked where my umbrella was.  I looked up at the blue sky and then back at him, a little confused.  He laughed and said it would be raining in 10 minutes.  Sure enough about 5 minutes later the clouds began rolling over the mountains.  And I got wet, I mean soaked, as the rain began to pour down… lesson learned.

So Friday morning I woke up to a grey sky and dark clouds.  I got ready, grabbed my umbrella and set out for school.  On the way I saw Elizabeth.  She looked at me and asked why I had my umbrella.  I looked up at the clouds and then looked back at her, a little confused.  She laughed and said it wasn’t going to rain that day. When I got to school I had almost the exact same conversation with both Stela and Mr. Mwalongu, the headmaster.  They both laughed hysterically at my ignorance but at least Mr. Mwalongu consoled me by saying, “well, prevention is better than cure.”  And sure enough within about half an hour the sky cleared and it was a beautiful sunny day.

The One Where Class Time Became A Commodity (12/1/2012)

Yesterday was the last day of classes for the semester here in Kafule.  Monday begins finals week and the students will spend the following week cleaning and preparing the school for the month long Christmas break. Typically the students have a lot of downtime during the day because meetings or other administrative work keeps the teachers from making it to all of their classes.  But this is definitely not the case around finals time.  All of the teachers are so eager to complete the syllabus to get one more review lesson in that time in the classroom is at a premium.  During morning assembly this past week all of the teachers stood around and argue and barter for each other’s class time.  Life here is all about the community so personal pronouns don’t always have a place. “My” class means nothing.  So even though the schedule might say that the students have math class I still had to defend why I in fact should be the one to teach during that period.  This made the week fairly unpredictable and lesson planning was a bit of a challenge.  But it is great to see the teachers desire to work with the students and I think the students really benefited from all of the work that the teachers put into their planning this past week. 

The One With The Stickers (12/1/2012)

I recently received a package from some of my amazing friends back home that had a bunch of stickers in it.  I gave the November exam to my students this past week and so I brought the stickers to school to put on the exams of the students who scored well.  I brought them out while I was sitting at my desk in the staff room and immediately all of the teachers were swarmed around my desk.  They looked through the stickers for forever, each picking out one to put on their phones and proudly parading around their choice in front of each other.  Eventually Makala put a stop to things by reminding everyone that the stickers are for the students and everyone went back to their work. 

I share a desk with Grace and she was watching me as I started to put stickers on the exams.  I asked if she wanted to put out the stickers and her face lit up!  She spent the next hour and a half pensively flipping through the sticker book, picking out just the right one for each exam.  Eventually she looked up and me and asked for the exam with the lowest score.  I handed it to her but told her she couldn’t put stickers on the low scoring exams.  She told me she had just the right one picked out and she held up the sticker that said “far out”…