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.