Leroy's Art Blog

Friday 29 April
Gotta say, I am feeling a bit better than yesterday. But I still make stupid mistakes. I returned the graded exams to Classes A and B (yesterday) before I had given the test to Classes C, D and E (today). Naturally, the grade average today has jumped up by about 20 points. One paper came in with all the definitions written out on the back, with lots of scratching and correcting. He must have brought in a sheet with the answers already written out, and then turned in that sheet instead of copying it only a new blank one. Probably I was sitting near him during the test and so torpedoed his plans.

Interesting, though. The later classes clearly got the word that they better memorize the definitions. I am getting a lot of very strange only half-memorized definitions today. But still, very few can do any of the application problems in the test. These students just want to memorize and not bother with understanding. I talked to my Kiswahili instructor about it all tonight and he was sympathetic. Says he has similar problems.

Wednesday 28 April
These kids know NOTHING. They are HOPELESS! Surely they can’t be this stupid without actively working at it.

I’m grading papers, and I’ve HAD it up to HERE. I’m now working on a cheap no-name vodka. Neat, with lime juice. At least the lime juice is good. Half the scores range between zero and 10.

They knew a quiz was coming and it would be on the gas laws. Forget that I expected them to know how to APPLY the laws since we went over examples in class and they had homework assignments we also went over. But at least wouldn’t they learn the damn definitions that they so laboriously copied from the blackboard? That was my test – define the laws, and then solve a simple problem using each of them.

Here, Question #6: Half the air escapes from a balloon. Assuming constant pressure, what volume change occurs? You didn’t need to study chemistry to answer that one. Most students left it completely blank. Some arbitrarily assumed an initial volume and then did a bunch of cockamamie calculations to show that it INCREASED. (!) Others said the result was 273 degrees. (?)

A few students did have the definitions down cold. Verbatim. Those are the ones that will succeed in this educational system. But then they had no idea how to solve problems using those definitions - it must just be memorizing jargon to them. A PCV who served in Malawi or somewhere talks about the Muslim students there who memorize the Koran in Arabic that they do not understand.

I’m glad my Kiswahili instructor did not show up tonight. When stuff like this happens, the LAST thing I want to do is think about Kiswahili in any form whatsoever. I want to take Kiswahili and SHOVE it a long long way. My neighbor walked in to my house tonight and we finally communicated that she was saying “I want my bag.” Huh? She wanted a backpack of mine. And she meant it – her daughter needed it for school. Meanwhile her daughter decided that she also wanted a book that happened to be on my desk. When it became clear that I intended to keep both, they left. I wonder what cultural taboo I violated there.

I dunno. The Peace Corps goal seems to be that we learn the language and customs and form strong friendships with the people here. Instead, I feel as though I am retreating into myself with the internet, my garden of western vegetables, and my solitary hikes to the top of the hill to watch the sunset. At least, it is a stunningly beautiful view from there...

Monday was a holiday. Union Day, when Tanzania and Zimbabwe joined. Spent it with other PCVs – I think I wrote about that.

But right now I am upset, big time! I just left my Class D. They remembered nothing from what I presented in the last class. So I summarized it again for them, which means we did little new work. Then I had waited until near the end of the class to collect the assigned homework, knowing that they would not have it in the separate exercise books I have been insisting upon. When I said I wanted the homework, I got only looks of bored incomprehension and a few examples of wide-eyed panic.

I threw a tirade at them. Pounded the desk. Yelled. Told them I am giving them more homework because they have not been learning the material without it. And collecting the homework because they do not do it otherwise. And making them squat on their desks if they have not done it because they still will not do it otherwise. But that it does not make sense to have the whole class squat on desks. Learning occurs between the ears, by doing problems and homework, not from watching the teacher putting on a performance in the front of the room. They will fail and they deserve to fail. Blah blah blah and blah.

Upon reflection, yes I WILL make the entire class squat on their desks. I am going to hunt up a time when they are in a study period and make sure that happens. Ten squat minutes! I will NOT let this drop in the usual Tanzanian way.

There was this kid in the class, sitting there with his hands over his face for ten minutes or so. I went over to him to see if he was sick. Yes. Did you see the nurse? Yes. What did she say? Yes. Do–you–under–stand-me? Yes. What. Is. Your. Name? Yes.

I tried my pathetic Kiswahili. Nothing. Finally the other students volunteered that he understands neither! He apparently is Ugandan and only speaks some tribal language or other. So what is he doing in my class? What is he doing in this school? How long has he been here? Is he on my attendance list? ??? No wonder he was having a headache!

** *** **** *** **
On the other hand, last evening I met again with the two University students to talk about starting clubs to teach kids who have left school a “how-to” course on small business opportunities. During the week I had gotten lots of encouragement from the Branch Mgr. of the swank ExIm Bank downtown on this, and his promise of an invitation to present our ideas to the Mwanza Rotary Club.

Samwel had gotten glowing encouragement from the Mwanza City Council Business Manager: Assurance that what we plan would be vital and important, and that nobody else is doing anything like it. And if we get it together, it could serve as a model for all of Tz., he said. Samwel also brought a Kenyan to our meeting who is a business marketing manager downtown, and the guy was sharp – a great addition to our efforts, pushing to have things happen more quickly than we had been thinking and feeding in good ideas about strategy.

We will meet on Thursday to go over a preliminary Proposal that we could present to the Rotary Club and use in describing our intentions to other organizations, complete with the requisite Mission Statement. It would also serve as the core of grant proposals.

It is too early to let myself get VERY excited about this project, but ...

** *** **** *** **
Myrna sent a marvelous email describing the funeral service for Carlos. The funeral was very large – the church was crowded with people to mourn his death, to recognize and celebrate the life of this simple man who did not accomplish great works in the course of human events but who lived honestly and well, and had many friends.

** *** **** *** **
Writing this Journal is cathartic. An opportunity to consider and reflect on what is happening around and to me. Maybe that is what keeps me writing it. I have calmed down a lot from the intense frustration I was feeling when I started writing this Journal entry. Who knows, Class E later this morning may even have done their homework. !

It has been a week of concern. Myrna has always called me more frequently than I called her, but not this week. In the past I always tried to place my international calls from an internet cafe downtown because it is much cheaper than an international cell phone call. So my first problem this week was to find out how to actually place an international phone call. Then when I found out, there wasn’t enough money left on my phone card. Meanwhile, I was not getting email messages from her.

Myrna did call, but the line was scratchy and intermittent. I know she must have a million decisions and things to take care of, all the while dealing with the loss and the concern of a multitude of family and friends. Her Mother is with her too – just everything must be upside down there this week.

Our communications have gotten much better by this weekend. We are back in phone contact again. She got the flowers I sent, and knows that there are lots of my email messages waiting for her when she can get to the internet cafe. Yes, there were huge crowds at the funeral, and have been many friends dropping by all week.

On this side of the world, it is a long weekend here. Monday is Union Day, celebrating the union of Zanzibar and Tanzania into one country. It is relaxing. Kara from Sumve and Emily from Ukerewe Island were here overnight, Joe came over from Buswelu and Ryan from Ngonza down the road were here. We all enjoyed lots more fresh salad and the last of the sweet corn. Emily made pancakes for breakfast this morning. I stand accused of running a B&B. Maybe so, but anyhow it feels good.

Myrna’s father died on Monday.

I did not know him very well, but liked him immediately when we met. He had a smile that broke slowly over his face, and you knew that he was a keen observer of life. Slow to fully trust, but keen in evaluating those he met, and open and funny with his friends. He enjoyed his family, his wife, and his small cramped home, and did not seek more. Language was a problem between us and he enjoyed making fun of my poor Spanish. I wish that I had gotten to know him better, as I know we would have been very good friends.

Now Myrna will have much to do, as one does when a parent dies and decisions must be made by and for the surviving parent. A difficult time, when she is also dealing with her own grief and loss. I am glad she has a strong faith and much support from her friends, family and church. I feel so very far away.

We had planned that she would come to Africa in early June. That is when I have a month’s break between terms and we could spend a lot of time together overcoming our time apart and introducing her to this strange culture and language. But I think those plans must change now. I will suggest to her that she remain in Guatemala only as long as is needed to help her Mother and to arrange her own affairs, but that then she comes to live with me here as soon as possible.

This will certainly change how I approach the Peace Corps about her stay here. I will have to think that through very carefully. The PC policy requires their prior approval for anyone who visits a Volunteer for longer than a month.

So I am teaching my classes about the gas laws these days. Boyle’s Law and Charles’ Law and Avagadro’s Law. Really basic stuff, not difficult to understand at all, worked out ‘way back in the seventeenth century. It is a bit of a diversion as it is not included on the official Syllabus of material that should be taught in Form III Chemistry. But there are questions based on the gas laws in the National Examinations so the material should be covered. And anyway, it is stuff all students should know.

I had intended to spend three classes on this material – one for the relationship of pressure and volume, one for temperature and volume, one for mass and volume. But I am bogged down. I also include some simple relationship problems in my homework assignments. And they can’t do them. We keep coming back to the bare basics that the students cannot seem to understand. What information does a chemical equation give you? It tells you two things and two things only. It tells you what reacts, and how it tells you how many particles of things react together. It does not tell you the weight of the things that react, that you must calculate. Why can’t they grasp this? Why can’t I put this in a form they can understand?

I tell them that they must at least try to do the homework. They don’t. They say it is too difficult. They say they do not understand. Now my classes are full of students squatting on their desks as punishment for not doing homework. Five minutes for the first infraction. Then 10 minutes next time. Then... I tell them I don’t know how to get them to do their homework without punishing them, since yelling at them didn’t make a difference. But also that I want to punish them in a way that does not take them out of the class, that the most important thing for them is to be in the class. There are no permissible absences from my class. Well, OK – certified sickness, your Mother died or blood on the floor are reason enough.

Am I short-changing those few students who do understand, by this concentration on the basics at the expense of other material we should be covering? Many students are hopeless, and I don’t care about them any longer. But the ones who are trying, who ask questions and do want to understand but for whom it doesn’t make sense yet ---

You know, in spite of or because of all this I still feel pride every morning as I slip four or five pieces of chalk into my shirt-pocket protector and head off to school. I am a teacher. Chalk is the tool of my trade. Chalk is smudged all over my shirt and pants, and my right hand is white with powder. With not much more than chalk and a blackboard, I transmit knowledge. These kids, some of them, most of them, do pay attention and do learn more about their world because I am a public performer in front of them. More and more, they are asking questions in class, telling me that I am talking too fast, stopping me on the campus to ask a question about chemistry, coming to my house. A few even got reasonable scores on my mid-term exam.

It is tough. And it is good.

When I visited Matthew in China last July, we spent a good bit of time hanging out with his friends, especially Peter Hessler and Mimi Kuo. Peter had been a Peace Corps Volunteer in China and wrote the book “River Town” about his experiences. He now lives in China as a free-lance writer and China expert, writing for a whole range of heavy-duty magazines. Matt and Peter play basketball together every week at a gym in Beijing along with a passel of other ex-pats, journalists and Chinese nationals. They invited me to join them, but with my ineptitude at team sports I opted out.

But one of my great memories of the China trip was our excursion to this remote Chinese village with Peter and Mimi to the house that Peter uses as a getaway for his writing. It is only a couple of hours from Beijing, but feels like the end of the world – high up in the mountains at the end of a switch-back road, overlooking the orange roofs of a small collection of houses. From the front of the house you can see the Great Wall in the distance running along the very top of the mountain ridges. Mimi led us there, a stiff 45 minute climb up a very seldom-used path.

On the wall of my house here in Africa I have a photo of Matt and me standing with Peter and Mimi, and staring at the camera in front of us is this active little mischievous-looking kid who laughed easily and stuck to us like glue. He was the son of Peter’s landlord, and there was obvious affection between Peter and the kid. Peter had brought along a Super Soaker gun for him, and he was shooting at everything around him, especially Peter. Bang bang!

Peter told us the story about the kid. He’d had a rare childhood disease, something that could be cured easily and quickly if diagnosed early, but potentially fatal if untreated. Peter had been involved in getting the child diagnosed, incorrectly at first, and then treated at a good facility in Beijing. Without Peter’s intervention, the child would have died.

Peter told us that he had written about this incident and that it would be published in the New Yorker. As anxious as I was to read this story, my chances of catching that issue of the magazine seemed so very remote as I went on to a week of camping in Washington State, then to Guatemala, and then directly to the Peace Corps Training and Tanzania. But yesterday I got my latest prize New Yorker, the April 5 issue, and Wow - there it is!

Page 58: “Letter from China; KINDERGARTEN; A young boy, a foreigner, and a desperate drive to the capital. by Peter Hessler.” The story, in 4-part harmony! There is a even big portrait photo of little Wei Jia, and he looks just like he does in the picture on my wall.

Peter’s story includes a lot of descriptive detail about the town and the surroundings, what it looks like and feels like. It is all very accurate, and brings back such strong memories of having been there in view of the Wall and climbing to it, seeing this playful laughing Chinese kid, and having heard the story directly from Peter and Mimi. What a kick!

Well, that was fun.

On my way to class this morning, one of the Form VI students stopped me to say that he was disappointed that I had never spoken to their class. I replied that I would like to do that, but had been reluctant because I know that they are all studying hard for their National Examinations that will determine whether they can go on to the University. So after my class I stopped by their area and talked with a packed classroom for a little over an hour.

As usual, I started out by saying that “I cannot sponsor any students to study in the US, I don’t know anyone who can, and I don’t have any advice on how they can get to the US.” I’ve learned to do that or I get this whole parade of questions on “How can I study in the US” and “Can you help me.” Answer: “No.”

They wanted mostly to know how I compare things between the US and here – living conditions, the education system, the weather, poverty. Lots of interest in the condition of blacks in America, whether or not they really have equal opportunity. It is nice to be able to spotlight Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, even while admitting that blacks are underrepresented in the upper layers of most corporations.

As much as the students want to come to the US, they are certainly no fans of Bush or American foreign policy. They do not like at all that the US intimidates other countries and has “taken over” the UN. They want to know my opinion about politics, and whether I think that Bush will be re-elected. I respond first by saying that one of the great things about the US is that we are free to criticize and even demonstrate against our leaders without fear when we think they are wrong. Only then do I give my opinion on anything.

I also stress that the US is not important because of its actions or policies at any given time, but that the US is extremely important because of the system of government that a small group of amazing men established when our country began – that the US represents a set of ideals embodied in the Bill of Rights. Even though we don’t always live up to those ideals. From the very first, in spite of our “All men are created equal with certain inalienable rights,” you had to be a property-owning white male in order to even vote. But we keep trying and on the whole we are getting better, and doing pretty well.

The Easter vacation is over, and classes are off and running again. After all the instructions and warnings I gave about homework, only a few students had done the homework. I was not surprised. So today I made most of the class, all those who had not handed in homework, climb up on their desks and squat for five minutes. Except for Rahima, who had to squat for an additional five minutes because she was also late to class for the second time in a row. Grrrrr!

It was hard to concentrate on the lesson, with all those students perched up on their desks like that. They looked like the white cranes here by the lake, roosting. But I did my best to carry on as though nothing strange was happening. Five minutes isn’t a very long time, but when the students who haven’t done homework for the second time have to squat for ten minutes, I think it will get uncomfortable. I am curious to see if this squatting will have a beneficial effect.

I had already read them the Riot Act. Told them that learning is done between the ears of the student and not by the teacher in front of the room, all that kind of stuff. Told them that they had better HOPE “God Willing” – a very common phrase here that puts the responsibility on God for anything good or bad that happens - because THEY certainly won’t pass the examination without making more of an effort, but the way I learned it was “God helps those who help themselves.” Blah, blah, blah. Told them about my friend Kim who teaches math at Sumve, and used her as an object lesson.

Kim was preparing her class for the Midterm Exam and gave them exactly the kind of questions that would be on the test, and told them that. “These are the questions that will be on your examination, except that I will just change the numbers. Moreover, question four is EXACTLY the way it will be on the test, I will not even change the numbers.” Her average score was still only 28. (Mine was 31.) Most of her students could not even do the question she had explicitly worked out for them before the test. Gotta say, it is hard to know where to go after that.

Still, this is a great challenge, and a few of the students DO “get it.” I do hope squatting encourages homework and homework encourages learning. Stay tuned.

Paul, my friend with the chickens, is extremely resourceful and is forever looking for ways to make a few extra shillingi. Since Tanzanian families like to serve meat on Easter, he and Asst. Headmaster Zakia teamed up to buy a big bull. Buy in bulk and sell in parts. There was a sign-up list in the Staff Room, and most of the teachers were in for 2-5 kg of meat. Another teacher had raised a hog and he was also taking orders for fresh Easter pork.

I signed up for 1 kg of each.

The time for the kill was early Saturday morning, on the school grounds by the kitchen. I’d intended to go watch the process, but somehow I seem constitutionally opposed to getting up too early on Saturday. So when I got there the bull had already been killed, skinned and partly cut up. The carcass was hanging from the porch roof in several huge pieces, the skinned and bloody severed head was sitting there with eyes locked open in perpetual horror, the teeth grinning wide. The hide was laid out on the concrete like a blanket as the work surface for the continuing surgery. In the middle of the blanket, Paul was going at a large section of ribs with a panga (machete) and an axe while Zakia stood to one side like an accountant, carefully going over the list of who had ordered how many kg of which cut of the meat. A small expectant crowd stood around just far enough away to avoid getting splattered too much with the shrapnel from Paul’s axe, holding plastic bags and supervising.

Meanwhile, the remnants of the hog were being dismembered and distributed from a work table higher up on the hill, by the pig pen. A boy brought me a plastic bag with my kg of pork. I don’t really know much about cuts of meat, but this was good looking pork, a big thick chunk without bone. Ham? I really do like pork, but I’ve always had trouble frying pork chops in the US – I think I cook them too long and they get tough. Besides, the chops from a supermarket are usually these thin little things. But this pork – Mmmmmm. I fried some up with onion and banana that evening to try it, and it was REALLY delicious. Tender, succulent, juicy. I resisted eating all that I had fried, reserving some for my eggs on Sunday morning. That is about as close to bacon as I am likely to get here, without going to a tourist hotel or buying some exorbitantly priced frozen package from the store downtown that caters to foreigners.

Somehow, that pork was right up there with my fresh garden salads as symbolic proof that even here in Africa, some of the wonderful pleasures of home that were taken for granted are still available here in Africa. It is the feeling of suddenly finding something very special that you hadn’t even realized was missing until you found it again. I think that other Peace Corps Volunteers get that feeling when they receive their packages of M&Ms from home. Or Oreos. Or beef jerky. Whatever.

But, 2 kg of fresh meat – four and a half pounds, and me with no refrigerator.

I invited Becky and Steve over to enjoy the pork with me. They are the only other PCVs left in town this Easter weekend. Steve is fighting a cold and decided not to come at the last minute, but Becky came and brought a chocolate cake. We pigged out – excuse the pun – and loved it. Her cake was right up there with chocolate chip cookies in the Oh My God These Are Fantastic department.

And I invited over two of the University students from across the street that I have met at the computer/internet facility there, for grilled steak. There was no question that they would come – the University food is a relentless repetition of beans with rice or ugali, a thick, tasteless corn mush. So they were here and I had a good piece of steak, while they continued to grill theirs into blackened shoe leather. They treated my garden salad about the way I respond to the Tanzanian treat of fried grasshoppers. Yes, interesting, but...

Still, it was good politics. These guys pretty much control the internet access, and so it is important to be on good terms with them. They let me use my own laptop for direct access now and then, and free use of the printer. The printer is a big deal. Using a printer at a downtown internet cafe costs 50 shillingi a page, which is equal to 30 minutes of access time. Just for one page! At the University, they haven’t been able to hook up their own networked computer system to the printer. As a result I am the only person who can access it, by using my laptop. My own private printer!

Now if I can just get my neighbor to kill his goats for Easter...

SATURDAY 10 April
Goats! Teachers must do something to supplement their meager salaries, and my neighbor keeps four goats that his son tends, more or less. Three of them are staked out somewhere every day to forage, and the fourth usually hangs around the other three. Except that it doesn’t, always. And since the others are usually only tied to clumps of weeds, they break free pretty often.

The goats have discovered that they like my American sweet corn, although they ignore the African high-starch variety. The delicious Silver Queen variety I have been growing is now in tassel, the ears are just now beginning to fill out. Or at least they were until the goats discovered them. After their first raid, I complained. My neighbor came and looked, hung his head and made what seemed to be appropriate noises. A couple more times I was not there for the continuing goat raids, but I went to his house later and complained as best I could to his wife. She cowered, and now tries to avoid me.

The usual Tanzanian greeting is “How is your home? Family? Day? Life? ...?” The reply is a mandatory “Mzuri” - the equivalent of our “How are you? OK.” even if the world is collapsing around you. So I began to reply to the “Habari za nyumbani? – How is your home?” with “Baya – bad” and proceed to complain about my garden. I have been told that my neighbor has heard about my complaining, as I hoped, and has said he is sorry although I have not seen him to confront him directly again. He doesn’t seem to be around an awful lot.

But yesterday I bicycled back from Mwanza, hot and sweaty, to find even more of my crop destroyed – only an ear or two of corn remain now, here and there – and the goats were in front of my house. I was so angry that I was even able to go to their house and yell at them in Kiswahili! I took along several stumps of corn and threw them into their house, and insisted that their boy come and look at what used to be my corn, then told him to keep their xxxx goats far away from my garden. “Busi yako mbele kwa bustani yangu!!!” Horrid grammar, but shouted with lots of hand waving, the point gets across clearly enough.

Ten minutes later I looked out, and the boy had simply moved the goats to the other side of their house, and one was still roaming free. So I went back and yelled some more. Quite a bit more. With emphasis. Actually, it felt GOOD to let loose – to hell with propriety and trying to make friends with everybody and walking carefully to avoid confrontation and trying to use Kiswahili. This was some good American swearing, and I don’t think you need to understand the words to get the point! Even people walking by over on the road stopped to see what was going on.

After that the goats were gone.

Now we will see what happens next. But my corn is destroyed anyway.

SATURDAY 3 April
What a delicious Saturday. I am physically tired, but a quick nap, cold shower and a huge fresh garden salad with my homemade honey mustard dressing and a beer is the ideal antidote, and I am in the middle of that, right now.

I woke up this morning at 5:30 to a pounding rain that chewed up the courtyard morning glory flowers before they even had a chance to open. Flashes of lightning and grumbling thunder explained the lack of electricity as I lay there, pulling the sheet a little higher and listening to the sound of it. I thought that the rain would cancel the bike ride Zakia, Paul and I had planned for today, but Zakia was at my front door at about 9:30 – Paul had remembered a meeting and couldn’t ride with us, but Zakia was still up for it if I was.

We headed out on the dirt road past the seminary at Melimbe, winding through open countryside avoiding the larger puddles and the fresh gullies carved out by the morning rain. The temperature was ideal and the left-over clouds protected us from the heat of the sun. At Mkolani we came out on the tarmac and followed that for another 10 km or so through Butimbe and other small settlements with African names, all of them consisting of a small collection of round mud huts with thatched roofs looking like just so many bran muffins scattered about. We were now in the middle of the grand basin that I look out over from the Retreat where I walk many evenings to watch the sunset reflecting on the distant lake. Not many trees here, but fertile, still a luxurious green and now with patches of yellow-brown where the corn remains after the harvest, dark green in the shadows of the clouds. Now and then we passed the long low buildings of a primary school with a neat entrance drive invariably bordered with rows of white-painted rocks.

After all my problems with the last bike, this one was a dream. Solid, secure. Balanced well, so that I could take my hands off the handlebars for long periods and extend my arms to let the breeze cool my shirt and body. The bike felt like an extension of me, controlled simply by thinking about where I wanted it to go, without having to push it along.

We found the sign to the Kigoma Ferry with its connections to Bissesa and Sangerema and on to Bukoba, and took the right turn onto the dirt road. Fewer huts now, but still an intermittent parade of women walking along with packages on their heads, and the occasional bicycle. Rice paddy country in the valleys. A CocaCola truck went by us, then a Pepsi truck that we kept passing until it caught up to us again on the next downgrade. We arrived at the ferry landing just as the ferry was pulling in, so stayed to watch the sudden activity. Boys selling karanga (peanuts), fishermen with their fresh catch, the bandas selling soda and nyama choma (skewers of roasted meat), people arriving and leaving pushing bicycles loaded with chairs, bags of vegetables, fruit, and charcoal. A bus arrived after the gate was closed. After a heated discussion, the ferry pulled out to turn around, the trucks already on the boat were moved even closer together, and the bus was added at the back end, now the front.

The sun had broken through by now, and we were sweating on the return. Shirt sweat-soaked going up hills, cooling and drying out on the downgrades. The back of my hands glistened in the hot sun, and the hair on my arms was salt-caked white. Eyes burning with sweat-salt until wiped with fingers and the end of a sleeve. We drank the last of the bottle of water I carried in the canteen basket of my bicycle, and I was thinking that I might finally use the hydration tablets in the Peace Corps medical kit after we got back to Nsumba. Stopped at a roadside banda for soda and a rest, then on home via a side-road that Zakia knew, a small dirt road through cool trees and vegetation.

We have cricket and locust sounds outside now, as the darkness takes over from the day. That is new. I suppose all this would seem routine in time, but for now it all comes as a surprise and a treat. Africa may truly have problems that seem intractable, but it is surely a magnificent and beautiful land.

THURSDAY 1 April
This is vacation week for our students after completion of their week of mid-term tests. So we teachers get to rest as well. I had to stay around for a few days because the APCDE (Asst. Peace Corps Director for Education – this IS a gov’t organization) is visiting the Lake Region here this week, and hadn’t firmed up his schedule. Late last week I heard from him that he would visit on Friday. That initiated a frantic flurry of cellphone text messaging to arrange a visit to Bukoba on the other side of the lake. Jessica and Janna are PCVs over there, and friends who have visited them say the area is beautiful. It is also on the way to Kampala, Uganda, which is on my list for a later trip some time in the future.

So Saturday afternoon I went to the dock to buy tickets for PCVs Kathleen from Bunda and Nick from Musoma and myself. But the ticket office was closed – come back tomorrow. I was back at 8:00 in the morning, but the office wouldn’t open until 10. The office finally opened about 10:30 and we were assured of our 2nd class berths on the overnight boat to Bukoba. Six bunks to a room, but no sexual mixing so Kathleen had to sleep with five strangers – fortunately with only one baby that stayed quiet, she said. The boat left at about 10:30pm. I was tired and had no trouble sleeping until 7:00am, only an hour and a half before docking.

Bukoba is smaller than Mwanza. The city center is less crowded and people seem friendlier, less hurried. The weather was decidedly cool, and Bukoba seemed emerald green after the increasingly drier browns of Mwanza. Bukoba is a center for bananas, and the proliferation of bananas give it a tropical feel, despite the incongruous presence of both palm trees and pine trees.

Mwanza has its huge standing rocks, and Bukoba has its steep hills in every direction that give stunning views of the lake and the countryside. Jessica (Jesca in kiswahili) lives and works at Ihungo Secondary, ‘way up the hill on the left. Janna lives and works at Rugumbwa Secondary, ‘way up the hill on the right.

Ihungo is old, built around a spacious quadrangle that any small liberal arts college would recognize immediately, with beautiful, strong brick buildings dating back to a time when Ihungo was the seat of African education, until colonial power decreed otherwise. A huge decrepit Spanish-ish gingerbread house stands smack at the end of the entrance drive and is still used by some priests who rattle around in there, although it just cries out to be named Founder’s Hall and used for all the administrative stuff.

Rugumbwa is modern, all solid red brick and industrial windows, very businesslike bordering on oppressive at THREE stories with outside passage and stairs - sort of in the style of an inexpensive US motel but done well, with some style. Maybe then it shouldn’t be a surprise that the design and construction was done by a USA organization. Seems that some catholic group spent a small treasury on construction of a fancy church, only to find themselves castigated for having spent so much on the church when the crying need was for educational facilities. So Rugumbwa resulted so that their consciences could be clear. Unfortunately, this was in the early 60s and in the middle 60s the Father of modern Tanzania Josef Nyerere (who called himself Mwalimu kwanza – first teacher) nationalized all the catholic schools, and Rugumbwa has been a government school ever since. And J.F.Kennedy liked the guy anyway.

We had shopping and swimming plans for Tuesday, but the day started with rain. Janna doesn’t have running water, so we were scrambling to fill all her buckets with rain water from the roof gutters. But this rain gave the lie to the truism that rain never lasts more than an hour and a half in Tanzania. It was an all day drencher that quickly filled all Janna’s containers to the brim. Kathleen and Nick tried to head downtown in one of the few breaks in the rain, only to come back soaked to the skin when the clouds broke open again. I stayed dry in the house and used the time to read and to make a great sketch of the wet scenery outside.

We took the Wednesday night boat back to Mwanza, coming back first class. It didn’t cost much more, and at two to a cabin, we snuck Kathleen in to sleep on the floor on my air mattress so we would all be together in the same room. But I couldn’t sleep in these slightly more posh quarters. It felt as though the twin engines on the boat were out of synch, and my bed would begin vibrating and bouncing every other minute or so in time with the engines. I finally gave up at about 2:00am and went to the bar to spend the rest of the night reading Hemingway’s Green Hills of Africa, recognizing many of the places he wrote about.

And now I am back, feeling refreshed – mentally but not physically just yet – and ready to think about the next half-term. Even spent some of today composing a set of rules of the road, aka Classroom Rules and Expectations, that I will post in all five of my classrooms. NO permitted absences UNLESS I SAY SO! Exceptions: CERTIFIED illness, death in the family, or blood on the floor.

I’ll also give them all a critique on the results of the mid-term exam. Overall, they did more poorly than I had hoped but there were, in retrospect, a couple of questions that nobody understood and I will take the blame for those. The average score was 30, and the high score was a 66. There were generally bell-shaped curves, but in three classes there were abnormally high groups of students that scored less than 10. I think this identifies a group of students that have given up and didn’t even try. I plan to initiate a Saturday Morning Review Session (so as not to call it a Remedial Class) and put this group under some pressure to attend. And for them all, I now know that I cannot stop emphasizing the core basics whether they think they need it or not.

I will also admit my embarrassment that I do not know the names of my students at this late date, and I hereby do resolve to work on this issue -- If God Willing, as so many of my students would say.

Hmmmm. It is April 1st, and I have not heard any April Fool’s jokes today!