Around Manow

Finished the first week of class! It seems like so much longer that we’ve been here! We’re so busy all the time! Every morning the church bells wake us up at 6:30 am and we have to jump up, eat breakfast, take our doxycycline, and get ready for class, which begins at 7:30 am. The bells ring at 7:00 too, warning us that we better hurry up. There are no available classrooms at Manow Lutheran Junior Seminary so we are teaching in the church which is about 100 feet away from our house. We have 26 girls and 14 boys in our class and they all seem very smart. We are planning on making a few seating changes for Monday though.

It was so exciting to meet all of our students. They’re all so cute and generally well behaved. They all have such distinct personalities. Bliss, one of the smartest students, has the sweetest smile and he comes to class with a briefcase and a ceramic mug for tea time. Yusufu has really big buck teeth and after we taught body parts he kept coming up to me saying “Teacher, teacher, what is this called?” and pointing to his nostril or his bellybutton. Believe and Gloria are twin albino girls and they are by far the smartest in the class. They can’t see very well and Sayuni, the girl that sits in between them, helps them take the correct notes. Frank and Erick are the smallest boys and they both have so much attitude but do pretty well in class. On Fridays we are supposed to have the students help clean up the floors and the area outside the church. This was the hardest concept to explain. They all looked at my like I was a crazy person when I started picking up garbage. We also had Frank help the girls scrub the floors and all the boys laughed at him and called him a woman, so we made a couple more boys help too. It’s hard to understand what is culturally acceptable and how our actions are challenging what they are taught. We want to have Mwakaje help us to explain that we want EVERYONE to help clean up the classroom at the end of the week and that we want to keep our environment clean.

We just finished grading our first exam on colors, opposites, days of the week, months of the year, before vs. after, numbers, family relationships, action words, and have vs. am. There is so much material that we fit in to each week. We’re all still figuring out how repetitive we have to be with everything. It helps to repeat the same thing in the same way multiple times and to have the students repeat it as well. We’re also pushing the students to answer questions in complete sentences. It’s so exciting when you see improvement but also very exhausting. When we come home at the end of the day we all continue repeating our sentences and then asking each other “Do you understand?” It’s also very difficult to teach something when you don’t speak their language. I know the constant exposure to English will help them learn but it can be very frustrating trying to explain a new game or concept using only a language they don’t understand. You definitely learn to be patient and it’s so much more rewarding when you finally see their eyes light up!

Teaching before and after was the most exciting for me. You say it one way and ask if they understand and they say yes…but they clearly don’t. So you say it the same way again, using your whole body and pictures and everything…and they still don’t understand. Then you have to come up with an entirely different way to explain it and the whole time they’re laughing at you for looking silly or making weird sounds or whatever! I started teaching before and after with birth years. Mama Dot was born in 1938. Madame Hannah was born in 1990. Bliss was born in 1998. Madame Hannah was born before Bliss but after Mama Dot. When that didn’t work I just used numbers alone and drew lines and arrows demonstrating before and after. Their exam scores make me feel like they’re finally getting it. I just keep trying to remember what my old Spanish classes were like and what made things easier to understand.

Today we went to the market in Lwangwa, which is about a mile and half away. We went to the market on Wednesday too to pick up bread from Mama Mwasamwaja and we didn’t do very well bargaining. It was too exhausting to go from class to the market. Today we did much better and came home with enough potatoes, tomatoes, flour, and bananas to last us a week. We can get avocados and passion fruit near the dining hall in Manow. We’re not eating as decadently as when Liz was preparing our meals but today we made guacamole for our plantain chips from Lwangwa and roasted some potatoes, onions, and mysterious root vegetables.

So far Manow has been very welcoming. I get nervous sometimes about whether or not I’m being friendly enough or behaving the right way. But when you go out anywhere or walk around the village you make friends all over the place. Katelyn and I went on a walk to the carbon dioxide factory about three miles behind our house and met our student Legina’s father. When we made it to the factory this man asked if we wanted to meet the boss or see inside and the boss turned out to be Erick’s father (also the wife of the woman who makes our chipati). Everyone is connected and you just have to walk around to feel like part of the community. We are so respected as teachers here which is an interesting idea to get used to. We’re slowly settling into our role in the classroom and in the village.

Learn some Swahili and Nykusa

MARKET WORDS:                                                                         NYAKUSA GREETINGS:

peanuts: karanga                                                            Ugonili --> Ndaga

beans: maheraghe                                                          Trombombo --> Tnunu

avocado: parachichi                                                    

banana: ndizi

tomato: nyanya

spinach: mchicha

potato: viazi (sweet potato: viazi vitamu)

wheat flour: unga wa ngano

NUMBERS:

1-moja

2-mbili

3-tatu

4-nne

5-tano

6-sita

7-saba

8-nane

9-tisa

10-kumi

13,000- elfu (1000) kumi (10) na tatu (and 3)

Karibu Tanzania!

Wow! So we are finally in Manow! We landed in Dar es Salaamvery late on Monday, September 19^th. Liz, our volunteer coordinator’s daughter, met us at the airport which was very helpful. She is finishing her second year in the Peace Corps and her Swahili is very good. We spent the next day and night in Dar running errands for the phones and exchanging money before heading towards Manow. The first leg of the trip was a very long bus ride from Dar to Tukuyu. We left from the bus station, Ubungu, around6:00 in the morning. When we arrived at Ubungu on Wednesday morning it was still dark and very crowed. Apparently every other set of volunteers has had something stolen while navigating the station which has about 200 buses that all leave at6:00 when the sun comes up! We were proud to have made it the whole way with all of our belongings!

 

The bus ride was very long but a lot of fun. We went through a small part of a national park and saw zebras, baboons, giraffes (twiga), and buffalo. Parts of the landscape looked a lot likeNew Mexico. After about 14 hours we made it to Tukuyu and tried our first chips maiai, which is basically a french fry omelet. The next day was spent running more errands at the market in Tukuyu where we can buy staples like peanut butter, laundry detergent, tomato paste, and pasta. The ride to Manow was about two hours on a bumpy dirt road with a man named Jamhuri who was so much fun! He was so excited and just smiled the whole time while Katelyn and I giggled with excitement in the back. The road to Manow was amazingly beautiful. There are these rolling green hills covered with tea, bananas, sweet potatoes, and avocados. TheLivingstonMountainsare also part of landscape.

 

So on Thursday evening we finally made it to Manow , our home for the next 10 weeks. These past couple of days we have been meeting important members of the community and the school. Manow Junior Lutheran Seminary is the school here. It is essentially a boarding school with about 800 students. Many of the people we see around are teachers or students. We met Joshua Mwalukosya and his wife Hiari who are close friends ofNancy. They showed us video and photographs of their wedding in July. It was interesting to see the different traditions. In a Tanzanian wedding the bride must look down throughout the entire ceremony to appear sad about leaving her family. But they are so happy and seem very much in love. Mwakaje has also been very helpful. He teaches math at the school and spent about 5 years in theUSfor school, so his English is very good. Whew! There are so many things to say and so many people to tell you all about. It is impossible to think of it all! I’m very excited to go to the market in Lwangwa every Saturaday for produce. Mama Hari and Mwaikema, who happen to the parents of one of our students, have offered to show us how to make braided mats out of banana leaves and show us different hikes/shortcuts in the area. I also want to ask Mama Malanga next door to teach me to make mandazi (little fried dough balls). It’s so exciting to meet all the people we’ve heard stories about!

 

There is so much more to say but I need to get off the internet…

Oh! There was one surprise today thatNancysomehow forgot to tell us. Manow does experience earthquakes! This morning before church we felt three small ones. The epicenter is a little further away so they are never very large but it was still surprising. Ok, now we’re headed to our parent-teacher meeting! Class will start tomorrow morning!

Sweet Swahili Rap

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFfxfUXmSG4[/youtube]

Tanzania Teaching Foundation

I also put a link to the Tanzania Teaching Foundation's website at the bottom of my links. Check it out, yo!

Tanzania Preparations

I've decided to continue using this blog to document my next big adventure. In September I will be heading to Manow, Tanzania to teach English for three months with my grandma Dot and my roommate Katelyn. Manow is in South/Central Tanzania, just north of Lake Malawi, kind of near Mbeya. In about two weeks we will fly in to Dar es Salaam and then take a 15 hour bus ride to Manow. Nancy Winters, the woman who wrote the curriculum (which includes some lessons on sustainable farming, nutrition/hygiene, and AIDS prevention in addition to English) and coordinates the trip will be traveling with us and helping us with parent-teacher meetings during our first week in Manow.

But before we can leave there is still a lot to do. I have all of my immunizations: Yellow Fever, Hepatitis A, Typhoid, and a giant bottle of Malaria pills that I will take daily for the three months I am away. There's also some paperwork to finish before Evergreen can give me credit. Initially I was planning on posting to my blog weekly or bi-weekly but Tanzania has been experiencing rolling blackouts due to the extreme drought in Eastern Africa. Nancy talked to the school last week and it sounds like we will have power about once a week. Nancy has suggested sleeping with the light switches on so we will wake up whenever the lights come on. I will write regularly and post whenever possible.

I also just wanted to say thank you one more time to everyone who came to the fundraiser/going away party we had here in New York. It was a really great success, helping us raise the rest of the money the foundation needed to begin building a new school in Manow!

Although it's only two weeks away I still haven't adjusted to the thought that I will be away for three months. Living in Africa isn't what makes me nervous. The most unfamiliar aspect of this trip, and what makes me the most anxious, is teaching. I think teaching will be the greatest challenge, as well as the most valuable learning experience, for me. But until I get there it's just too much thinking. I can't wait to be there and let the adventure begin.

 

Goodbye Radium

I left the cabin last night. It was a great last day; my little cousins came out with my aunt and helped me pack everything up. I'm in El Paso now and I leave tomorrow evening. My grandpa and I are going on a hike today and then going up to Alamogordo to visit with my great-grandparents tonight. I just a have a few more little things to finish up on one of my pieces. I can't believe I fit all the jars into my suitcase!