Letter No. 10, February 24, 2003

Dear Fam,

Hey! How's its going? Things are well here. School is just about into full swing, although there are still a few students who have yet to arrive. I spent my first full weekend at home since the school term started. It seems like every weekend since school opened, I've either been at a PCV party in Lindi or Mtwara, going to Masasi to go to market, which, is a full days outing, or riding my bike up to Newala to see Fred, the volunteer there, for one reason or another. So this weekend it was really nice to just relax a little, prepare lessons, organise things in my house, hang out with students, work in the garden.

The weekend of the 14th I was in Mtwara, our locally dubbed " land of technology" where I discovered Hotmail had deleted everything in my account as it hadn't been accessed in 30 days. My mailing list was deleted as well, so I couldn't write a group email. Sorry about that. Oh well, I might as well really get used to the snail mail now, as I don't know if I'll be back there again until June!

Thank you once again to everyone who sent me all of the seeds and other goodies around Christmas time. They are greatly appreciated.

It was such fun to come back from Mtwara to find that my squash, melons and cucumbers had begin to flower!!!! Watching my garden grow is almost as much fun as eating from it will be!

When I talked to Mum the weekend I was in Mtwara she asked me for more ideas as to what I might be needing over here. While I can certainly live without these things and by no means expect people to be continously sending me stuff, if you really get the urge to do so, here are a few more things to choose from: Bike Tires 26x1.95 and tubes(they sell them here, but they seems to blow out as soon as you ride them any further that 10km at one time), cans of tuna fish, AA Bateries, rolls of duck tape, and bulbs for a mini maglite, if you find a way to package them without breaking, perhaps a new mini maglite? I feel kind of bad, as I know these things are a bit on the heavy side, but I was told people were asking what to send, so these are a few more suggestions. Oh yeah! as always I would (love) it if you kept sending me Kool-Aid. I'm somehow convinced that the real reason why this company is successful is because of the thousands of Peace Corps Volunteers in hot climates around the world that grow a dependancy on it!

It's the middle of the rainy season, which seems to mean 3 or 4 days of torrential downpour, with power outages for days at a time, followed by five days or so of absolutely no rain. It amazing how green everthing here has become, or will. Never did I imagine Africa would be so green.

Sometimes I feel like I've really stopped "seeing things" here. It's becoming difficult to find the things that are different or somehow strange to me. I quess that's a sign of my settling in here. Something struck me this last weekend though, I was riding my bike to Nagaga, 7 km down the road. I hadn't ever really given thought as to how one would be transported to the hospital here, if they were really sick and didn't have some connection to the school, therebye allowing the use of the school car. On my way to Nagaga I passed a parade of people, two of them carrying one of the local string beds on there head, with a sick person laying on the bed, They carried her almost 5 miles that way without stopping! It just made me stop and think of some of the things I have begun to take for granted even here.

I think I mentioned in my previous letter the wave of unsettledness that's going through my school right now. About a month back a letter was sent by some of the staff members, accusing our headmistress of embezzling large amounts of money, and treating the students, teachers and other workers badly. Shortly after that she left to speak with some people from the Ministry of Education in Dar es Salaam, and we had a staff meeting. At the staff meeting we found out who had written the letter (it had been signed as if it had been written by all the staff at the school, when actually it had only been written by about three people), and the general consenses was that there wasn't any proof that could be obtained without closely looking at the accounting books. A few days later representives from the Ministry of Education came and did a whole school inspection of everything, accounting, teaching documents, teaching methods, school food, compound and the general welfare of the students. In the meantime, being the newcomer, I was getting bombarded by people from both sides of the issues, and being told all sorts of things. One of which was that the US Ambassador's scholarship funds, which Peace Corps faciltates was not being dealt with properly. Well, after inquiring to PC as to exact ramifications of the scholarship, I found that the money for that scholarship at least was being spent correctly.

Basically what came of the school inspections was they did find that some vouchers has not been done properly, but only very small amounts of money - like gas for the school car for one or two trip to Masasi. They really came down hard on many of the teachers for not filling out all the teaching documents out properly, and said that they really couldn't find anything wrong with the headmistress, just that relations between her and one particular teacher had been rocky for quite sometime. What has resulted is that one teacher is being transferred to another school and the whole school will undergo another inspection sometime in the near future.

The thing is, even though I know I don't have all the facts, I don't really think that the headmistress has done anything wrong. She seems very motivated to make some positives changes in the school. At the same time, I really feel for the teachers that lodged the complaints against her in the first place. Two of them are fairly new teachers, they have been working for 8 months and 5 months respectively and have still not been put on the payroll? But that's not the headmistresses fault, it's simply the way, the goverment system here works I guess. Apparently it's not uncommon for teachers to wait for up to two years to get paid here after they have been transferred, yet they are expected to continue teaching. That being the case, I certainly feel badly for them, but I also think they are looking in the wrong direction to place blame.

The teacher that is being transferred is the teacher that was the co-advisor to the Peer Leader Group with the previous volunteeer Cyndie. Although, I'm going to need to find a replacement for the teacher, I am looking forward onto stepping in Cyndia's role for the club. Cyndie and the other teacher chose 1-6 students from each form to be a part of this group. The focus of the group is Health, and Lifestyle Behaviors (within families as an example) that the girls would benefit from. Some weeks I teach them a lesson out of the PC Health Handbook, other weeks they play games. After they feel they know a topic well enough, two of the students from each form will then teach that topic to the rest of their entire form.

Doing that helps the girls to build confidence and also ensures that they really know the topic while sharing what they've learned with all the girls in the school. They also preformed a skit at graduation last year and did a joint workshop with one of the schools in Masasi. I got to meet with them for the first time last night and am really excited to work with them.

Onto other things...... I've been listening to the BBC most everyday on my radio. The Bush-hag drama seems to be getting bigger everyday. I know I am going to be so upset if we're pulled out of here if (and unfortunately,probably, when), Mr Bush declares war on Iraq. The irony of it is that I'm probalby safer here that anywhere else. People tend to associate causasions as being teachers, not Americans. Hopefully, some sort of resolution can be made to keep it from actually happening.

Love to you all,

Jessica