Here I Go Again... (on my own)

Let's see...
Today I bathed with the last of my water in all of my house (the school pump has been broken for three weeks; water has been more precious than cheeseburgers lately). This water smelled like hot dogs, and since I haven't seen a hot dog in months, I'm scared to imagine what could cause a hot dog-like smell. But that is how I smell, right now, and I think the guy next to me here at the cafe assumes I'm wearing hot dog-smelling cologne.

The big news is tomorrow we catch the overnight ferry to Mwanza, and then we start a roughly 30-hour bus trip/epic journey from Mwanza to Dar. The good news is that we get to go through Nairobi, so I will be able to say I've been in almost every country in East Africa now (neglecting Rwanda and Burundi). The bad news is that its 30 hours on a bus. I couldn't get the front seat this time either, which means its 30 cramped, uncomfortable hours. We are supposed to reach Morogoro on Sunday afternoon. After arriving I plan on a) hot shower, b) cold beer, c) getting a mullet. Wish me luck!

"How Many Robocops?"

So the other day one of my students asked me the best question I've gotten in class so far- "Mr. Masanja, how many Robocops does America have?" That is awesome. Apparently this kid had just seen the movie, and he thought it was real. This led to a discussion in which I learned that most Tanzanians think that all American movies are real. Yes, Terminator (that's huge here). Yes, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. They think its all real. Learning this, I regretted my first answer to his question, which was that we had five until three of them were destroyed fighting Arnold Schwarzenegger. They completely believed me, and I think that makes me a very bad teacher. I finally succeeded in teaching them about Hollywood, and that its all made up. Maybe I should have left them thinking it was real....

Saved By the Bell: The African Years

A few people I talked to (just my parents, really...) thought that the most interesting post I have done in a while was where I wrote about my new students. Other than this little bit, I haven't given you an accurate description of the life of a student here in Tanzania, at Ihungo. Everyone has had a different high school experience in the states, especially when you consider generational differences, or those between rural and urban schools (some days I wish I was a Roosevelt 'Rider for life...). Compare your own high school times to what these boys go through, its pretty overwhelming.

I'll start at the primary level. There is universal primary education paid for by the government here, an initiative from the early '70s when President Nyerere (the George Washington of Tanzania) was in power. This lasts for seven years, called standards rather than grades, and is culminated by a general knowledge exam. I wish I had the exact numbers, but I can tell you that no more than 50% of all the kids leaving standard 7 become enrolled in secondary school. This isn't solely due to poor test results, although there are a lot of poor test results. When Nyerere had his master plan, he ignored secondary schools entirely (from what I know) and focused having every child getting at least some education. A few years after his plan came into effect (roughly seven or so), all of a sudden there were too many students, and not enough secondary schools. This is the enduring problem with education here, but now there are schools with no teachers to fill them. The point is, less than half of the entire populace even begins secondary school.

Now, with the secondary schools, they are not paid for by the government. The public schools give subsidizing to a moderate extent, but I would say the primary reason so few students continue their educations is monetary. Once every few weeks, a teacher will come into my class and kick out all the students who haven't paid their fees yet. This is the reason students are always late returning from breaks- they are waiting for their parents to gather enough money to continue their educations. Now, this isn't every student, but I would say an overwhelming majority fall into this category. Every term, a small percentage of students never return from break. There parents couldn't afford to send them back to school.

The public schools are generally boarding schools, allowing a few day scholars to attend. These students who live in our campus dorms are those who I will be describing. The administration has an attitude that they rule these boarders' everlasting souls, and it shows in their daily routines. I suppose the main thing to mention here is the beatings. It is a fact of life, something I can't change. Corporal punishment reigns supreme. I could give you disturbing stories, but let's not do that.

The students wake up around 6am to clean their dormitories and classrooms before the day begins. At 7:30 classes begin, and from what I have seen, anywhere from a third to a half of the scheduled teachers actually show up to teach. But if the students leave, guess what? A beating! So they sit in there classrooms and try to teach themselves, or they stare at the wall. This occurs until 11:30, when they get a cup of hot, unsweetened porridge for breakfast. It is this nutrition that is expected to sustain them for the rest of the class day, until 3pm. The teachers get sweetened tea at this breakfast time, and we have our daily meeting. The breakfast break is 30 minutes, but invariably it lasts an hour or more, so again the students have no teachers. After classes, the students get lunch, which is beans and ugali. Ugali I have already mentioned, that flavorless, nutritionless lump of food. After lunch comes usafi time (when I wrote about the mowers, it was for this). At this time, students are expected to go cut grass for two hours. If the grass is all cut (which it miraculously never is) they have to carry things around and other such inane tasks. This is also the time for sports, but usafi takes precedence and often I find myself with no basketball players. If a students area is not well trimmed, they get a nice, solid smacking. At 6:30pm is dinner, which is... beans and ugali. Same thing for lunch and for dinner, every single day. I would go insane. In the evenings, they are expected to study from 8 to 10:30, and then they are required to return to their dorms. Some go to sleep, others call home, others read or talk. The students I've asked say they get between 3 and 5 hours of sleep per night (which makes me, with my solid 8, feel very lazy). The next day it starts all over again. And then it continues for four years. During this entire time, they are expected to speak only English. They are given a one month training course at the beginning of secondary school, and that's that. If they slip into Swahili and a teacher hears them...bam!

After the second year (form 2) the students have another national exam. Again, few pass. But this time only the result matters, not money. Every year thousands of students repeat form 2 to try the test again. But its two strikes and you're out, there is no third try. Then at form 4 there is the next test. It culminates the 4 years of knowledge, and is analogous to our SAT. Except it is much, much more rigorous than the SAT, and few students pass. Those who don't are called "form 4 leavers" and manage to get jobs barely better than the norm, despite all their efforts. Those who do pass continue on to the advanced level, where its two more years of the same. I think something like 10% of students who start primary school reach advanced level. After advanced level is the fourth and final national exam. If they succeed here, maybe they can go to higher education, but only if they are lucky. The percentage who reach university from primary school? Less than one. The form six leavers usually go to a teachers' training college to become qualified to teach secondary school themselves. That's that. I guess I shouldn't really blame them for throwing rocks, huh...?

I'm not trying to incriminate the system, or the teachers. The problem is too deep-set and pervasive to allow easy criticism. The Ministry of Education tries every year to solve some of the glaring deficiencies, such as corporal punishment, but it will be another generation at the least before things begin to clear up. All I can do is teach as best I can, really. It's just too overwhelming.

Let He Who is Without Sin Rock the Casbah

First off, I should apologize at that attempt of a witty title. Although, not only is it pertinent, but you have to admit that is a nice mix of idiom and metaphor. I mean really, really nice.

To the heart of the matter: A little over a week ago, the equivalent of the athletic director of my school asked me to do him a favor, me being the only other teacher concerned with sports. There would a be a soccer match that evening between our school and another, Kahororo Sec., at the stadium in town. Now, this man is downright lazy, and any time a job has actual work required he manages to shirk it. We all know a person like this, and I'll admit that at times I have been this person.

His problem was this: The stadium in town is a five kilometer walk (Davis - 3 miles) from school. Generally the school lorry drives the players there, but there were two obstacles to this, first the lorry was broken down, second the entire school had been invited. Now, he would have (<- read that with a very sarcastic tone) gone with the students himself, but he had some urgent issue needing his attention elsewhere. So I was awarded, no, hurled the responsibility of escorting about 500 students to the stadium, then back. By myself. Yay!

Shockingly, as this horde of teenage boys worked their way down the small path to town, nothing bad happened. I attribute it to the excitement they had to watch their school team play in the stadium. We arrived without incident and I was chagrined to see that the athletic director was already there (he had taken a taxi). Oh well. The game commenced, it was pretty some sloppy playing, but I imagine either team could hand an American high school team their nether regions (sorry Cal, but its true). These kids live and breathe soccer. Our students had even constructed a big Ihungo flag somehow, and were proudly waving it while never once sitting for the duration of the game. We were down 2-3 when the stoppage time was added at the end of the second half, and miraculously we managed to land a lucky shot just before the whistle blew, making the score tied. Rather than adding more playing time, the referee decided to go straight to penalty shots; the sun was beginning to set already.

Now here's where the excrement hit the air conditioning... As our students watched the penalty kicks, completely engrossed, a few brave idiots from Kahororo amazingly managed to steal the Ihungo flag and safeguard it back to their bleachers. If you have played Halo, imagine going solo on Sidewinder and getting the other team's flag on your first try. Yeah, it was an impressive feat. So what did Ihungo do? They armed themselves, and here is where my witty title comes into play. They armed themselves with stones from around the bleachers, and en masse begin to assault the perpetrators. I say all this in narrative, but at the time I had no idea what was going on, I too was absorbed in the penalty kicks, and at this time we were down by one. Just as the Ihungo students reached the Kahororo bleachers, the last of our players shot and missed. Kahororo had won. This had the unfortunate effect of exponentially increasing the rage of the Ihungo students, who thought perhaps we had only lost on penalty kicks because they had stolen our flag.

This is where I finally looked around and realized that there was massive disturbance occuring. I stood up, confused, to watch hundreds of students running in fear from where the battle had been joined. I didn't know it, but in the middle of this exodus, students from both schools were throwing the largest stones they could find as hard as they could at each other. And because I didn't know this, I decided to go try and figure out what was happening and see if I could put a stop to it. I arrived at the edge of the maelstrom on the Kahororo side, just in time to see one of my physics students across the way catch a stone directly in his face and go down. Up to that point, I was just confused. After seeing my boy take a rock to the face, I was pissed. Scared too, but more pissed.

Later, when my students would regale each other with how brave they had been in a time of danger, they would make sure to mention the actions of their teacher, Mr. Masanja. According to them, he tore into the Kahororo students, picking them up and throwing them just as they were picking up and throwing stones. He was yelling a hybrid of English and Swahili, and the only thing the students could understand was that he was royally pissed. When the students saw this 2 meter monster bearing down on them, they scattered, and the rock-throw melee ended. I think my students exaggerate a little bit, but I damn well did see red after watching that student take one to the grill.

I managed to walk across the now calm battlefield and check to make sure he was not seriously injured. I got him to his knees and looked at his face, it was bloody. But only on the lower half, it looked like the rock had hit him square in the mouth. He had a fiercely split lip which will heal and look like Angelina Jolie's, as well as a chipped tooth, but nothing more. In fact, I was amazed- there were no serious injuries on either side. I would be a liar if I said that the Ihungo students were not to blame, at least equally for this nonsense. When I reprimanded them severely, they were surprised and told me that "it is our culture to throw stones." To which I replied with the first and last curse words I've used in front of students so far. Use your imagination. After it was all over, I suddenly remembered the other teacher who was with me, who likely knew what was happening the whole time and didn't so much as lift a finger. Maybe teachers don't get involved here. That bothered me more than a little bit though. Someone could have easily been crippled, and he didn't even move...

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of the troubles for the day. I now had on my hands 500 male students who had just lost a soccer match and been in a fight. They were a testosteronic mob. As we left the stadium, they wreaked havoc without pause. We decided to return to Ihungo by main roads to prevent problems, but this idea had little effect. A mob is as intelligent as its least intelligent member. Motorcycles and bicycles tried passing through the swarm of students, to be punched at, have their tires kicked, and even to be torn off of their vehicles. When we passed the police station, they threw rocks and taunted the police who came outside. For the first ten minutes, I tried controlling them, but one person cannot stop a 500 man mob. So I gave up. Maybe a better man would have stuck with them and argued for sanity for the entire 3 miles, but I said "the hell with it" and went to get dinner. The next day, the police were at Ihungo. That was no major shock, but I was surprised that they had only come for four students. These four were taken to jail on the count of stealing from various stores on the way home, but I think they were intended as a lesson. Scapegoats, if you will, but they became martyrs. The students protested, skipping classes as well as meals, until the headmaster arranged to free the four. Now they are heroes, and everything is back to normal.

Pretty crazy huh?

I Got Mad at an Old Guy...

So I met with my nemesis yesterday- the bumbling computer fundi. The headmaster arranged it so that he came to the school and I used the headmaster's office to have a little heart to heart with this guy. Now, those of you that know me know that it is very difficult for me to hate people, generally (with the marked exception of Tom Selleck, but that is really just jealousy). But I'll tell you what, I really, really wanted to hate this fellow for erasing my memories. I was psyching myself up, like punching myself in the chest and getting pumped about hating him. And then I saw him, and felt really, really bad for ever wanting to hate him. This computer man was about 60 years old, and was somewhat poorly dressed (by Tanzanian standards, even). As soon as we got down to it, going over the problems, I could tell he was pretty much computer illiterate. It turns out that one of his friends gave him a Windows XP boot cd and a Microsoft Office cd, so he just goes around formatting all the computers he touches into these identical workstations, comprised only of Office products and without whatever programs and files they had before he got his hands on them. He thinks this is how computers are fixed, every time, and no one has told him different. Therefore, he had no idea that what he was doing to the computer could have negative consequences, such as the deletion of 500 pictures. The poor old fella just wanted to make a buck. I stayed mad for a grand total of about two minutes into the meeting, and then I just tried to show him different ways he could go about his business so as to not delete people's files. Due to his lack of any actual proper business, I couldn't very well ask him to fix the monitor he busted either. I told him the damage would cost several hundred dollars to replace (and at first I had been hoping that the he was working for one of the major companies here that has that kind of money) but that I knew it would be ludicrous of me to ask for reimbursement after seeing the situation. So in the end, all that really came of our meeting was that he gave me back two other cds that, in his words, "somehow ended up in my pocket" which contain all the startup programs of the laptop. That has helped a little bit. But really, you can't get mad at a moderately daft old guy just trying to make a buck, can you? Life will go on, with me feeling like a big jerk and him turning computers into Microsoft Office machines, whether with or without their original files.

Arrrgrgghhhh!

I have a frustrating little story. I was loaned a laptop for use by the headmaster. This laptop was given to him by the parents of the previous volunteer at Ihungo. These parents were unaware that the headmaster doesn't know how to open it, turn it on, and also use it. So for the first month I was here, it sat unused in the computer lab, and I sat staring at it wistfully. Finally I got the gumption to ask the headmaster if I could use it until he wanted it, and he gave me full permission. This was in early February. Flash forward about two months. For awhile now I have been using the laptop to do a number of things, such as to store all my pictures and videos, to write, to listen to music, to keep track of my students' grades and my basketball strategies, a lot of uses... Well, before I left for Mwanza, he asked for it back to begin learning on it. "No problem," I thought, because I had installed separate user accounts for both of us. I became concerned when he called me a few days later when I was out of town, to ask for the password to my account. I asked why he needed it, and he said the "fundi" was installing some new programs. As a side note, I should mention that fundi here is applied to everything from auto mechanics to shoe repairmen to tailors to, oh yeah, computer technicians. This shows the amount of technical knowledge these fellows have right away. So last weekend, the headmaster gave me the laptop back, saying he hoped everything was ok. Well, it wasn't. These fundis have pulled the ultimate coup de grace, and deleted my entire user account. Goodbye, pictures of Zanzibar, Kampala, Morogoro, chicken slaughter, and everything else. The only pictures I have now are those which I've posted on my other page. It was all gone. Everything. (And for those of you who are adept at computers, don't trouble yourselves trying to help, I've tried literally every method of restoration. But thank you.) The headmaster says he gave them explicit instructions to leave my stuff alone, and that they said they had an "accident". Accident?? I told my dad that I want to "accidentally" burn down their store. How does one accidentally delete an entire user account, or even the individual 500 pictures?! Arrrrrggghhh! And perhaps the most frustrating thing of all is that beyond all this happy deletion they've done, they also dropped the laptop, or something like that. There is now a big pink line frozen into the monitor, so its not enjoyable to use it to watch movies anymore either. Its like they did everything they could to ruin all of its uses for me. So yeah, I guess you could say I have a bit of frustration. I told the headmaster that he and I need to go talk to them about the pink line, at the least, this Thursday. Wish me luck and I hope I "accidentally" don't bring gasoline and matches...grrrr.