Sunday, May 30, 2004
Frequently some event or situation occurs for which I just don’t have the cultural context to understand. Like when neighbor and her daughter came and asked for my backpack. The daughter, Tumaine, has mentioned it since. They really did think I would give them my backpack. I still don’t quite grasp that – I think there is some kind of sense here that “What’s yours is also mine” and so what we think of as personal property sort of becomes community property here.
Or, at the Form VI graduation ceremony there were these Native Dancers from Bujora who gave a selection of performances. Most of them were various dances – hunting, harvesting, celebrating, warring... Great stuff, cultural, very interesting and entertaining. But one of thier performances was an extended skit of three guys on stage. They were clowns really, but dressed in the Emmet Kelly sense, not the yellow-polka-dot orange-hair floppy-shoe variety. Ragged, torn clothes. Whiteface beards, mustaches and eyebrows. Fake musical instruments that they used in all sorts of nonsensical ways. Blowing the horn from their ears, ass, using it suggestively. Generally acting like fools. Good fun, but I did feel uneasy watching it – it was really a classical old minstrel show just without the one-liners. Their skits could not be performed in the US anywhere without creating a major racial scandal. Here? Apparently just Curly and Moe doing the Three Stooges bit. Who WAS the third guy in the Stooges, anyway?
****
Boy there is a lot happening right now. It feels like a whirlwind:
My First Term Final was given on Thursday and I just finished grading the papers late this evening. What an ordeal. Scores were still way lower than I had hoped – the average score in the mid-twenties. But lots fewer zeros than on my previous tests, and a high-end cohort that extended all the way up to one score in the 90s. Amazing. And two students have stopped me on the school grounds to say that they thought it was a good test. (!)
I am really glad to have all that grading completed before I leave for the Peace Corps In-Service Training (IST) in Morogoro. The Chem exam had originally been scheduled for Monday, the day I leave. I had it moved up specifically so I could do the grading before I left. But they only rescheduled the test, and not teachers to proctor it – on “invigilate,” as they call it here. So there was this last minute scramble to find invigilators for five classes. Fortunately I had prepared the test myself and paid to have it photocopied, so I did not have to deal with the mistakes of the school secretary and the inky botched papers from the school mimeograph on top of it all.
Morogoro is relatively close to Dar es Salaam, less than two hours away by bus. So after the IST I want to spend a week or so in Dar visiting organizations that teach or are involved in entrepreneurship one way or another for guidance in setting up our Life Opportunity Club. I found that there is cheap camping at Kipepeo Beach, which is a beautiful resort on the Indian Ocean only 10 km from the center of Dar. I’m thinking this would be a great place to hang out when I am not “working” if I take my tent and bed roll along with me.
Meanwhile, I am trying to put together the flights to bring Myrna here to live with me. I had hoped she could arrive right after the IST so we could be together around Dar for a few days, leisurely take the train back to Mwanza (a two-day ride) and be together while she settles in during our school break that lasts from Monday until July 12. But there have been all kinds of last-minute snags. We are now in the tourist high season, and flight availability is limited and expensive. Myrna is very anxious about traveling halfway round the world alone. There have also been a lot of loose ends she had to tie up after her Father’s death last month. And we had to again discuss, at length, the nature of her relationship with me when she arrives. This is not easy by email and phone. The phone connection is not the greatest, and my Spanish is barely up to long-distance discussions of deep relationships, especially while sitting in a cramped booth in the internet cafe to avoid the exorbitant land line phone charges. All this has had to be in the context of what the Peace Corps will allow and their policies on visitors – max permitted time is 30 days without special dispensation.
I think it is all coming together. I can return the graded papers to the class monitors tomorrow to distribute to the kids before they leave. Then I can pull together the files and clothes I need for the trip, including visiting Zanzibar for Emily and John’s wedding on the 10th. Myrna confirmed today that yes, she will travel at the end of June if I can get the tickets put together. The travel agent is open from 10 to 12 on Sunday and hopefully has lined up our arrangements that include a one-way ticket Guatemala to NY (Continental) and mandatory round trip since it is tourist season NY to London to Dar (British Air). That leaves Monday morning to work out a financing system since I don’t think the travel agent takes VISA, and be at the airport by 2.
Whew.
I’m feeling pretty ambivalent about the IST. It will be great to see everyone again, but after that... I just don’t think I am up for the mandatory group Kiswahili lessons, more flip-chart group processing of what our experiences in Africa have been so far and yet deeper explorations into the socio-medical aspects of the AIDS epidemic here in Africa. Can’t we just go hang out at a bar and talk about what we have been doing?
Oh it will probably be wonderful once it gets going.
Or, at the Form VI graduation ceremony there were these Native Dancers from Bujora who gave a selection of performances. Most of them were various dances – hunting, harvesting, celebrating, warring... Great stuff, cultural, very interesting and entertaining. But one of thier performances was an extended skit of three guys on stage. They were clowns really, but dressed in the Emmet Kelly sense, not the yellow-polka-dot orange-hair floppy-shoe variety. Ragged, torn clothes. Whiteface beards, mustaches and eyebrows. Fake musical instruments that they used in all sorts of nonsensical ways. Blowing the horn from their ears, ass, using it suggestively. Generally acting like fools. Good fun, but I did feel uneasy watching it – it was really a classical old minstrel show just without the one-liners. Their skits could not be performed in the US anywhere without creating a major racial scandal. Here? Apparently just Curly and Moe doing the Three Stooges bit. Who WAS the third guy in the Stooges, anyway?
****
Boy there is a lot happening right now. It feels like a whirlwind:
My First Term Final was given on Thursday and I just finished grading the papers late this evening. What an ordeal. Scores were still way lower than I had hoped – the average score in the mid-twenties. But lots fewer zeros than on my previous tests, and a high-end cohort that extended all the way up to one score in the 90s. Amazing. And two students have stopped me on the school grounds to say that they thought it was a good test. (!)
I am really glad to have all that grading completed before I leave for the Peace Corps In-Service Training (IST) in Morogoro. The Chem exam had originally been scheduled for Monday, the day I leave. I had it moved up specifically so I could do the grading before I left. But they only rescheduled the test, and not teachers to proctor it – on “invigilate,” as they call it here. So there was this last minute scramble to find invigilators for five classes. Fortunately I had prepared the test myself and paid to have it photocopied, so I did not have to deal with the mistakes of the school secretary and the inky botched papers from the school mimeograph on top of it all.
Morogoro is relatively close to Dar es Salaam, less than two hours away by bus. So after the IST I want to spend a week or so in Dar visiting organizations that teach or are involved in entrepreneurship one way or another for guidance in setting up our Life Opportunity Club. I found that there is cheap camping at Kipepeo Beach, which is a beautiful resort on the Indian Ocean only 10 km from the center of Dar. I’m thinking this would be a great place to hang out when I am not “working” if I take my tent and bed roll along with me.
Meanwhile, I am trying to put together the flights to bring Myrna here to live with me. I had hoped she could arrive right after the IST so we could be together around Dar for a few days, leisurely take the train back to Mwanza (a two-day ride) and be together while she settles in during our school break that lasts from Monday until July 12. But there have been all kinds of last-minute snags. We are now in the tourist high season, and flight availability is limited and expensive. Myrna is very anxious about traveling halfway round the world alone. There have also been a lot of loose ends she had to tie up after her Father’s death last month. And we had to again discuss, at length, the nature of her relationship with me when she arrives. This is not easy by email and phone. The phone connection is not the greatest, and my Spanish is barely up to long-distance discussions of deep relationships, especially while sitting in a cramped booth in the internet cafe to avoid the exorbitant land line phone charges. All this has had to be in the context of what the Peace Corps will allow and their policies on visitors – max permitted time is 30 days without special dispensation.
I think it is all coming together. I can return the graded papers to the class monitors tomorrow to distribute to the kids before they leave. Then I can pull together the files and clothes I need for the trip, including visiting Zanzibar for Emily and John’s wedding on the 10th. Myrna confirmed today that yes, she will travel at the end of June if I can get the tickets put together. The travel agent is open from 10 to 12 on Sunday and hopefully has lined up our arrangements that include a one-way ticket Guatemala to NY (Continental) and mandatory round trip since it is tourist season NY to London to Dar (British Air). That leaves Monday morning to work out a financing system since I don’t think the travel agent takes VISA, and be at the airport by 2.
Whew.
I’m feeling pretty ambivalent about the IST. It will be great to see everyone again, but after that... I just don’t think I am up for the mandatory group Kiswahili lessons, more flip-chart group processing of what our experiences in Africa have been so far and yet deeper explorations into the socio-medical aspects of the AIDS epidemic here in Africa. Can’t we just go hang out at a bar and talk about what we have been doing?
Oh it will probably be wonderful once it gets going.
