Daily Routine, Year Two

I asked my dad if there was anything he’d like me to write about the other day, expecting a man who tends to read either baseball books or serious philosophy to be interested in something more…profound than my typical posts of what I've been up to. He pulled a fast one and caught me off guard by asking me to say more about exactly that- my day-to-day routine (including all the minor challenges each day presents). It’s true that I haven’t really posted on this for quite some time, and I do tend to gloss over a lot of what makes life difficult here. So what’s in day for African Rob..?

I tend to wake up pretty early (at least by my previous university standards). Usually this is due either to monsoon-strength rains slamming on my metal roof, creating a pleasingly disturbing uproar, or to a Tanzanian’s hand slamming on my wooden door (the infamous “hodi” returns), creating a disturbingly disturbing cacophony. My roof has several leaks, one unfortunately situated directly above my bed, and so the more furious deluges tend to force me out of bed. The school has promised to “eventually” take care of the leaks; I’m not holding my breath.

My first act of the day is typically to immediately place my buckets under the gutter channels around my roof, catching that day’s water (more on water issues to come). This area produces a staggering amount of coffee for export, and as a side-effect, I can get some pretty decent grounds locally. During coffee, I usually write a few text messages to other volunteers and review the lessons I plan on teaching that day. Also, I take stock of my smattering of mosquito bites from the previous evening, the worst tending to be on the knuckles and ankles. Bukoba is also a haven for banana lovers (most Wahaya- members of the local Haya tribe- can name five of six different types of bananas), so my breakfast tends to be a few bananas and a piece of bread. As a side note, for those of you enamored with organic foods, I can get the best organic peanut butter and honey here; it’s awesome.

Following breakfast, I gather up my notes and head to the teachers’ office, which is sadly lacking in the comfort I remember from American schools’ teachers’ lounges. Our office is a big room with a concrete floor, some broken windows, and a saturation of desks. The social nature of Tanzanians is in prime display in the office though, despite the mediocre environment. The first half an hour I spend in the office tends to consist of one prolonged greeting after another, until the rounds have been made and everyone is satisfied. Luckily, the teachers are a lively bunch, more than willing to share in jokes, gossip about students, and ridiculous stories, so the time passes quickly. I listen to their conversations with half an ear, occasionally accommodating requests to compare various facets of the day’s topics to American life and customs. Concurrently, I try to do a bit of work, usually brushing up on some forgotten theorem and its consequences.

The hours of the day I most dread, also being those I most enjoy, are the hours I teach. Teaching hasn’t quite come naturally to me, and I still find it to be an awkward fit at times. Perhaps any of you who teach can relate to the odd feeling of putting on a showman’s persona as you walk through the classroom doors, of becoming an actor as much as a teacher when in front of your students. However, my students and I have established a strong rapport that allows me to spend a fair amount of our time together on random tangents, such as explaining the meaning of sarcasm or regaling them with tales from America and my “previous life”. I feel lucky in this regard; another A-level teacher told me his students are deadly serious, and his attempts to liven up his classroom have fallen flat. On an average day, I spend about two hours or three hours teaching, and about that same amount of time researching and planning lessons. Interwoven into the class hours is a daily break, where teachers take sweetened tea and students take porridge. This corresponds to the daily teachers’ meeting, which is run in a mock-democratic style. To Tanzanians, this tea break is sacred, not as much for the opportunity to voice and debate issues as for the tea itself. The tea was late one day, and a teacher dryly quipped “You see how we fight for survival?” He was serious; I think the tea is too sweet.

Class hours finish at around three pm, and everyone goes home for lunch (one of Tanzania’s customs- lunch at 3-4pm and dinner at 9-10pm). Two days a week, Mama Shukuru comes to help out around the house, and on those days, she’ll prepare lunch for me; the rest of the time, I cook for myself. When she’s here, it’s a minor feast of rice, beans, and some medley of turbo-cooked vegetables. The girl I replaced here at Ihungo, Jessica, was also helped by Mama Shukuru, and Jessica left me a note saying that Mama Shukuru “chooses from the spice rack with clairvoyance”. Replace the word “clairvoyance” with “impunity”, and you’ve got it right. Whatever looks like a spice goes into her vegetable mixture. As a result, my food is very…flavorful. When I cook for myself, lunch tends to be a peanut butter, honey, and banana sandwich. I haven’t gotten tired of them after a year. The perfect food? Yes. After lunch, I relax for half an hour or an hour, reading and listening to music.

Three days a week, at four pm, I go to coach basketball. Yes, I’m still at it, despite all your sarcastic remarks when I first mentioned it. Although to be honest, I use the term “coach” loosely. Initially, I showed up at the court with planned practices, established a varsity team, and really was a coach. However, basketball practice time coincides with school cleanliness time (the infamous grass-cutting again), and so my players would be unable to attend at least half the practices. This hindered my team. Additionally, there are almost no other teams in the area, so my players began to wonder why we were rigorously practicing, if not to show off by owning some other teams. Thus, over time, interest waned, some of my best players graduated, and now the team lies partly derelict. I still show up and give out advice and small exercises, but more than anything my role is now “ball provider”. No jokes, please.

On the days I’m not coaching, I have pseudo-office hours, where students can meet me in the library and I’ll help them with whatever they want. Those hours are some of my favorites, as a teacher. Working with students in small groups is far more rewarding than lecturing, in my experience. I also enjoy the less formal atmosphere, and so do the students, feeling confident to ask me any number of questions (some of which are of too delicate a nature to be written here).

I finish basketball or office hours at six pm, at which time I return home, usually to find some local kids stealing mangoes out of my trees (many Tanzanians prefer the taste of acrid unripe mangoes to that of sweet, delicious ripe ones; by the time I think they are ripe, they have all been eaten by passers-by). On the days I feel industrious, I will go for a run or a walk around this time. The sun stops beating down, people are calm, and I can see some great sunsets. While I go out, I put on a kettle of water to boil. This water will be for my bath, so that I don’t have to use cold water. I’m sad to admit it, but I never have enough water to bathe daily. It will become such a routine to only bathe every other (or even every few) days that when I come home you will all be wondering why I don’t notice the odors I generate. Promise me you’ll tell me to go shower. Water, as I mentioned before, can be a serious issue here. I don’t have running water from my pipes, ever, even though the house is fully plumbed. The rainy season is on and off for about six months, and during this time, if I’m lucky I can stay stocked up by catching rainwater. I use the rainwater for everything- drinking, bathing, cooking, laundry… On the days it doesn’t rain, I have to budget like I am on some lifeboat on the ocean: “OK, I have enough to make two liters to drink, but not enough to flush today. I’ll have to shower tomorrow, and eat only sandwiches and fresh fruit.” This is no exaggeration, even on the flushing, to my eternal sorrow. Some days I can pay random people who do work in the area to fetch water for me from a local river, but I never seem to find someone when I really need him.

After my bath, I start to cook dinner. I’ll have to cook for you all when I get home, because I’ll have cooked every day for two years (this is a lot for a man who cooked once every two years back in the States). I make a lot of stir-fry type dishes, curries (Tanzanian-style, I’m not hardcore enough to try for Indian or Thai curries), and fried rice. My coup-de-grace in the kitchen was these awesome stuffed cabbage leaves. I can also cook a carrot cake over a coil burner. Think about that. Being adjacent to Lake Victoria, I occasionally pick up a tilapia and fry the hell out of it. Whatever I cook, it tends to take me an hour or two.

By the time I’m done eating, the sun’s gone down and all that’s left to do is either study, read, or watch movies. This is assuming the electricity doesn’t go out (over the last month, I would estimate that I’ve had power roughly fifty percent of the time). If the power goes out, I just read by candlelight. I use the laptop quite a bit in the evenings when I do have power, to listen to music, write, or watch old Simpsons episodes. After an hour or two of this, I’m off to read myself to sleep, while trying to ignore the scratching sounds of rats and bats performing their danse macabre in my ceiling. On two evenings per week, I go conduct lab experiments at around eight pm (it’s the only free time the students and I could find) which last for a few hours. Then its off to bed to dream about fast food, washing machines, and running water.

On the weekends, I usually meet up with the “mzungu contingent”. Those times are a great retreat from the general stress that can build up just living here. I am still the reigning Bukoba beer pong champion, until Scott Boyd arrives to challenge my crown. The Peruvian fellow, Manuel, went home for Christmas and left his guitar with me. I haven’t really played since high school, and I’ve enjoyed picking it back up. Kurt, Ben, Scott- are you down for a Hot Carls reunion tour?

That’s the gist of my life here. I think of Bukoba as home now, and when I go to various Peace Corps trainings, I’m always excited to come back. Seriously, life ain’t bad.

UPDATE: For those of you who read the story about Joseph last post...that went bad. After I left Jodi, I went home. She called me later, saying he'd come back to her house with a note "from Partage" saying that they would have a place for him in a few days, if she could just stay with him until then. She said ok. The next day, she went and did some work at the school, and when she returned, Joseph was gone. He had broken down her bedroom door (which was locked) and rooted through her stuff, looking for money, she thinks. That's the last we've seen of Joseph. Teaches us a lesson for trying to do a good thing doesn't it? How disgusted am I at the abuse that little kid took of Jodi's good nature? Very, very disgusted.

Gripes and a Story

You’ll have to forgive my infrequent posting, this last month or so. I usually try to write something, even if it’s trivial, every week. I know my family, friends, and perhaps a few others enjoy knowing that I’m still here, safe and sound. These last few weeks I’ve been pretty focused on teaching, and the rare days that I make a trip into Bukoba, the internet tends to be down. Its another of the perils of East Africa- sporadic electricity. But here I am, alive and well. However, it has been a rough couple of weeks for several reasons.

First and foremost, Steph and I split up. I know, I only wrote about us being together a few months ago. Those of you who know me well know that my relationships tend to lack longevity, for whatever reason. Anyway, without going into details, let’s just say having a relationship while living on the opposite corners of Tanzania proved too much for me to handle. It has been a little hard, because we rely on each other’s communications at times when feelings of isolation set in. I still think Steph is a damn cool girl, and I’m hoping that we’ll remain friends. Cross your fingers for me…

Also, over the last week, I have attended two going-away parties for other ex-patriots living in the area. Back to the isolation idea, recall that Bukoba is on the western shore of Lake Victoria, effectively separated from the rest of Tanzania (the roads south around the lake don’t really…exist). We have become a pretty tight bunch here, despite our varying countries of origin, and it hurts to see two of our half-dozen go. Beth is (to use “was” would feel like I’m writing a eulogy) a twenty-something teacher from New York, who I once described as a “party animal”. We relied on her to provide fun ideas for get-togethers and such; she fueled our social machine. Beth flew out on Monday. Matt is a British fellow in his 30s with a doctorate in biology, and he was working in an advisory role for the Tanzanian government. His house is the one with the big fridge, a water heater, an oven, and a panoramic view of Bukoba and the lake. Matt made sure that none of us forgot exactly what sarcasm is (its easy to forget here, Tanzanians are completely baffled by it and so we tend to stop using it, all of us except Matt). With the two of them gone, the much-needed social aspect of our lives is going to be pretty different. Jodi (the other Peace Corps volunteer), Manuel (a rambunctious Peruvian), Gayle (Beth’s former housemate, a music buff) and I are the remnants of our little network. We’ll still figure out ways to have a good time, but Beth and Matt will be missed.

Lastly, I was teacher-on-duty at my school this last week. This is the third time I’ve had this responsibility, but also the most difficult. Let me explain… Tanzanian government schools don’t have the luxury of being able to hire staff to perform a good number of the routine duties the schools need to operate (as an example, two students are serving as librarians in our slowly budding library). Therefore, these duties largely fall upon the teaching staff. We are assigned this task by what ought to be a rotating basis, but fails to exhibit any true rhyme or reason. Teachers-on-duty are given manifold tasks, from making sure students are up and in class on time, to supervising afternoon work hours (remember the grass slashing?), to making sure the staff room has hot tea at break time, to a number of other minute but time-consuming duties. Other teachers-on-duty have the responsibility of punishing (read: beating) students, but that is one task that most, if not all, volunteers shun. Here at Ihungo, the shifts are usually assigned so that there are three teachers-on-duty for a week, and then another three take over. Unfortunately, one of my fellow teachers just happened to be out of town for exactly the week we were on duty, creating more work for we who remained (this is a common occurrence, Jodi and Steph have both given me horror stories about being the only teacher-on-duty because the others have just up and left their duties, leaving behind weak excuses and nightmare weeks for the volunteers). Additionally, my previous two experiences as teacher-on-duty were during my vacations, so I could concentrate on that and not worry about actual teacher; not so this time. Trying to both plan and attend all my lessons while facing the unceasing teacher-on-duty responsibilities was a bit much. I finished up my duties on Monday, frazzled and in need of a break. I’m lucky there were no serious incidents (such as our riot, imagine being the one in charge of trying to stop that…), but it was taxing nonetheless. Especially considering what was going on outside of the school setting, with Steph, Beth, and Matt.

I would write more complaints and difficulties, but I feel like I have been bordering on ranting (or whining, as my brother would say). To be honest, I’m floating along pretty much steady by now, after the turbulence of those weeks passed me by. As I said, I’ve been losing myself in the class room lately. It has been a relief to forget myself in that routine, and also in the mental challenge of preparing lessons on digital electronics to students who live without electricity fifty-percent of the time. There is some irony to be enjoyed there, but the seriousness of my students sometimes turns it ashen. Considering the resources available to most American students, if they were as earnestly devoted to their studies as are a large number of my kids here, America would be producing an awe-striking force of intelligentsia. But at the same time, I think some of these students are sacrificing their enjoyment of life with their furious pursuit of academia…

One last story to leave you with-
Monday night was the date of Matt’s goodbye party. He lives very near to Jodi, so I stopped in to say hello. She looked flustered, and I heard the sounds of dishes being washed in her kitchen. I was immediately confused, as the woman who helps her with laundry and dishes is never around in the evenings. She sat me down in her living room and told me about Joseph. Joseph is a young lad, maybe twelve years old or so. Apparently, for the last three years, he’d been living with a Swedish couple who were doing work in some religious capacity here. Well, they left. He said they tried adopting him, but his grandfather wouldn’t allow it (even though his grandfather is unemployed and has no way to care for Joseph; Joseph’s parents have both passed away). So basically, he was kicked to the curb when they left. I guess this was a few weeks ago, and since then he has been looking around town for work to do, relying on acquaintances and strangers to house him for a night before moving along to look for more work and another place to stay. He came to Jodi’s school looking to do work for the teachers living on campus, of which Jodi is one. She agreed that he could cut her grass, and went to teach or some such. When she returned, he was finished, but was sitting on her steps crying. That’s when he told her his story, which she then related to me as we listened to him wash her dishes. What do you do when you find a kid like that who has no place else to go? Could you be just another person who tells him no? She couldn’t, and she’s got a big heart because of that. So she agreed to help him out. With our connections to the ex-pat and NGO community, we could find him opportunities that he would miss on his own. He told us he had already been turned away by the orphanages and churches, so she asked around at Matt’s party for other ideas. The next morning, we set out bright and early to follow up on the leads we were given. The first was a Belgian or French (I’m not sure which) organization called Partage, which deals exclusively with orphans and is well funded. We were given the name of the director, and so we sought him out. As we left Jodi’s, we agreed that Joseph should come with us, to tell his story first-hand if it was needed. Now here is what floored me… I should have realized it sooner, but not until we set out the door and began our way to Partage did the epiphany strike me. All this kid has are the clothes on his back. When he went to get ready to go, all he did was put on his coat. This triggered me to think about what we were doing, and how overwhelming it must be for him. This kid was a leaf on the wind, I can’t think of a better analogy. When we walked out that door, he had no idea where he might end up. Wherever we took him, whoever accepted him and helped him, they would become his future. Just that simple. The weight of that idea staggered me. Here was this boy, bravely headed with two complete strangers to an unsure and certainly capricious fate. That someone’s life, their destiny could be so…transitory, I still can’t really comprehend it. I think myself and a large number of citizens of Western nations have become used to the idea that we make our destinies, that our efforts will reward us by allowing us to achieve our goals. Goals which tend to be stable, rooted in desires from seeds we planted in childhood and which blossomed in our early adulthood. At least for myself, in one way or another I imagine that I’m always working for some bright future. And here was Joseph’s unreliable future, waiting for him as he walked toward it with only the clothes on his back. The feeling that these ideas gave me as we were en route to Partage was pretty overwhelming. Maybe I’m making something out of nothing, but I still can’t fully comprehend how it would feel to have your fate lay so much in the hands of others that you calmly follow them to meet it. (I imagine some of you might be thinking that this is all our lives, and God is controlling all our fates in that way; perhaps…). In any case, we met the director of Partage, an old French fellow named Phillipe, who told us we’d done a great job bringing Joseph to their organization, and that they would take care of everything and find him a home. The last word from Jodi was that he will be moving into his new home tomorrow. Before you think “What a noble thing they did!” you should know that all I did was to go with Jodi as moral support. She showed herself to be a benevolent soul in taking the responsibility and well-being of Joseph onto her shoulders, and I have been duly impressed by someone I thought I knew well.