Letter No: 15, August 5th, 2003

School, Life & Culture.

Well, the news this week is that I've had half of my teaching periods taken away. We've had an addition of two new teachers this term, fresh out of teaching college. One of those teaches physics and had relieved the other two math teachers of many of their physics periods, leaving me to be teaching more periods than any other teacher in the entire school. Personally, I really didn't mind. I actually loved it, and have really grown to care about those girls. But, when the Headmistress returned from her break and saw the way the teaching load had been divided she decided it couldn't stay as it was; if the Ministry of Education ever looked at it and saw that the quest teacher was teaching more periods than anyone else she would get into major trouble. What ended up happening was the other female math teacher is now teaching Form II, which I had been teaching, in addition to Form IV, which she was already teaching. That leaves me with just Form I, and a lot of time on my hands. It wouldn't be all that bad, except she is also the school matron, with a ton of other responsibilities and often misses class. I asked her to tell me anytime she thought she might miss class, even with extremely short notice, and I would go in and teach, but that hasn't happened so far....even though she's already missed four periods. I feel like I've let these girls down, but there's not a lot of arguing that can be done without at least letting some time go by to see how many periods she actually does and doesn't miss.

So..all this extra time on my hands means that I should be able to get more involved in the Peer Leader Group and other health activities. It makes me wish that I had taken more biology in college, as it sure would be helpful now. It also means that I need to build my health vocabulary as far as Kiswahili goes.

The other thing that's been on my mind lately is the way discipline is run in the school. Awhile ago I came to terms with the fact that corporal punishment is the way things are done here. The thing is the law in Tanzania actually tries to limit how and when its done. Supposedly females are only allowed to be struck by female teachers. It is to be no more than 6 strokes, and the headmistress is supposed to give permission in writing for every occurrence. The first and last clauses never happen though. While, I understand that was the norm, and talking with the headmistress hasn't done anything to change this, I feel like the teachers are hitting the girls whenever they want to these days and that's really really frustrating. Today for example, the teacher on duty stopped the girls during morning assembly because they were singing the national anthem VERY poorly. Instead of making the start over again and again until they got it right, he decided he was going to give every girl in the school two strokes. This was his way of trying to show his power over the girls and make them respect him. Obviously it didn't work. The girls laughed as he made his way through 530 girls. He tired himself out, and the girls never did sing the song correctly. The whole process took over 20 minutes, whereas I'm sure the girls would have tired of being made to sing the song over and over again well before that and have finally sung it properly. He most certainly did not gain any respect from them. I talked to him afterwards, and thankfully, he is one of the more approachable teachers (also my counterpart with the Peer Leader Group), and I think he realize his mistake. Most of the other teachers are not that easy to talk to though. I cringe whenever I hear the sound of them being beaten. When the headmistress returns from her journey this week I hope I'll get a chance to talk to her about all of these things.

So that's about all for now...a brief update in to the frustrations I've encountered here. It's a constant roller coaster ride...but the ups far outweigh the downs......

love to you all Jess.

August 14th, 2003

I have just found this letter. I didn't realize I didn't send it last week with the car - that being so, I want to share one of the most priceless moments I've had in the past few months. Let me back up a bit though. In my post Kili realization that I am really not in that great shape, I decided I would make myself start running. For the past weeks since I've been at school again I've been attempting to get out of bed every morning and go running with some teachers before school. Well, anyone who knows me can tell you I'm not a morning person (not much of a night one either - I guess I just like to sleep). The last three days I decided to try running in the evening to escape the morning, and its actually been really nice.

Anyhow, the path I take is out in the bush behind my school, and then it meets up with a road and a village and loops back around to my school. Before three days ago I had only been on this road once, so the first day I was greeted with cry's of "Mzungu! Unafanya nini?" (Hey, look at that white girl!! Hey, what are you doing?) by everyone that I passed. Well Mzunyu is a term that really frustrates those of us who are hardly ever greeted with anything else, so I tend to ignore most anyone who calls out to me using that word. Yesterday things were pretty much the same as before, so,today when I was about to come up to the village, I was prepared to try and block out whatever I heard. But today, I didn't here the word Mzunyu even once, instead everyone called out "Jeska! Jeska - Mambo" (What's up?) As if that didn't make me feel good enough, When I came up to a group of kids, they started running after me. I put my hand out to give them high fives, but apparently they don't do that here. Instead, I look down to find this overly chubby girl of about 8/9 had grabbed my hand and started running with me. She totally stole my heart as she kept up with me for a good 100 metres or so, laughing and smiling the whole way. It was like something out of the movies with the sun setting over the Masasi hills to my right side..................... It was a kind of a combination of one of those "WOW, I'M IN AFRICA MOMENTS" and starting to feel at least a little bit of acceptance from those outside my school......

So that's it for now,

My love to you all,

Jessica