Friday, September 24, 2004
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
Two workers from the electric company Tanesco knocked on my door tonight. They were concerned about the extension cord that extends from my house to my neighbor.
My neighbor and I have an agreement. He uses the extension cord to tap power from my house and pays half my electric bill. His problem is that while the school provides the house for him, it does not pay the utility bill. But, as seems typical in Tz, the previous tenant built up a very substantial bill and then skipped out without paying. Now the electric company won’t turn his power back on until the bill is paid. But the school won’t pay it, and my neighbor can’t afford to and shouldn’t have to anyway.
It was one of those times that I am glad I don’t speak Kiswahili and the Tanesco guys couldn’t speak English. But when one of them began climbing the electric pole with pliers in-hand, I started yelling and jumping up and down. My neighbor came over and things calmed down.
I’m told that borrowing power like this is considered serious – almost as serious as totally stealing power. So I dropped in on my neighbor later to see how things had been resolved. I should have known. When my neighbor explained the situation to the guys and stressed that all the power goes through my meter and the bill gets paid every month, the guys were very understanding and felt that they might be able to help. This “help” cost my neighbor 10,000 shilingi, and sure enough the problem disappeared. The extension cord is still attached.
That amount is pretty substantial. The monthly salary for a secondary school teacher is between 70,000 and 90,000 per month.
But my other neighbor taps the power line directly – his power doesn’t even go through a meter. They did cut off his power. But I see that it is back on again also, so clearly the Tanesco guys found reason to be exceptionally understanding for him too. Turns out that a bunch of other teachers here also tap the power line directly, including the Asst. Headmaster.
The Tanesco guys went home with bulging pockets tonight, and the lights are still burning in the homes of Nsumba Secondary.
Two workers from the electric company Tanesco knocked on my door tonight. They were concerned about the extension cord that extends from my house to my neighbor.
My neighbor and I have an agreement. He uses the extension cord to tap power from my house and pays half my electric bill. His problem is that while the school provides the house for him, it does not pay the utility bill. But, as seems typical in Tz, the previous tenant built up a very substantial bill and then skipped out without paying. Now the electric company won’t turn his power back on until the bill is paid. But the school won’t pay it, and my neighbor can’t afford to and shouldn’t have to anyway.
It was one of those times that I am glad I don’t speak Kiswahili and the Tanesco guys couldn’t speak English. But when one of them began climbing the electric pole with pliers in-hand, I started yelling and jumping up and down. My neighbor came over and things calmed down.
I’m told that borrowing power like this is considered serious – almost as serious as totally stealing power. So I dropped in on my neighbor later to see how things had been resolved. I should have known. When my neighbor explained the situation to the guys and stressed that all the power goes through my meter and the bill gets paid every month, the guys were very understanding and felt that they might be able to help. This “help” cost my neighbor 10,000 shilingi, and sure enough the problem disappeared. The extension cord is still attached.
That amount is pretty substantial. The monthly salary for a secondary school teacher is between 70,000 and 90,000 per month.
But my other neighbor taps the power line directly – his power doesn’t even go through a meter. They did cut off his power. But I see that it is back on again also, so clearly the Tanesco guys found reason to be exceptionally understanding for him too. Turns out that a bunch of other teachers here also tap the power line directly, including the Asst. Headmaster.
The Tanesco guys went home with bulging pockets tonight, and the lights are still burning in the homes of Nsumba Secondary.
Sunday, September 19, 2004
Saturday, 18 September
It was good to be away for two days, and it feels good to be home again. Since the school was closed this week I decided to visit Kim in her new site, outside Bukoba on the other side of the lake. Bukoba is a nice enough town, with a nice restaurant at a hotel on the lakefront and a good cafe for snacks and breakfasts. Then, the usual shops, central market, dusty streets and the everlasting refrain from the residents: “give me money.” The climate is cooler than Mwanza, which feels good, and the dry season has ended there. We had rain for a half hour or so every morning and coming from Mwanza, it looked like Oz with all its lush greenery.
Kim is really out in the boondocks. Miles and miles of nothing to reach her site. Broad valleys and fantastic vistas, with only occasional houses along the road surrounded by bananas and more bananas. I have never seen such a huge area, green and lush, so devoid of people. How can this country be so poor with all this land just waiting to be used?
I had no trouble taking my bike on the overnight ferry – just locked it onto the rail. A guy at Bukoba said I should have had a consignment sheet for it but he was happy when I gave him 1000 shillings. But my “easy” 40 km bike ride from Bukoba to visit Kim and Becky in Kanyigo was more like the ride from hell. I am glad I did it, but have no interest in doing it again. They said there were hills all around Bukoba.
Hills, shmills, I ride hills every day here on the way to Mwanza. But whoa... This road to Kanyigo was something else. Long, steep, and mostly without the downhill reward because you just don’t want to go very fast on rutted dirt roads. And forty kilometers is only 25 miles – should be an easy 2 hours, maybe 2.5. Well, it was something between 3.5 and 4 hours of hard work. Fortunately I was wearing good quick-dry hiking clothes, because I soaked them and resoaked them on that ride.
But without the bike ride, I wouldn’t have met Charlie. Charlie was this patrician old black guy who, when I stopped for directions, insisted that I join him for a cup of tea and information about the area. Turns out that he wants to turn his flea-bitten poverty stricken community into a tourist attraction. He has visions of giving cooking lessons in “the authentic historic African manner” and displaying the old style of building houses and a nearby waterfall, and he showed me a report that tentatively agreed that maybe there were a few possibilities provided that he had the support of his community.
I agreed to return on Friday before returning to Mwanza for his promised tour and to sample his authentic food, and then I even talked Becky into coming along with me.
The waterfall was actually quite impressive, and would be the good terminus of a 45 minute hike. Everything else was not quite ready for prime time, shall we say. The authentic ancient house was very impressive inside, but had a rusty metal roof. We pointed out that tourists would not accept this as an ancient house with a corrugated iron roof. He assured us that a renovation was “planned,” but later we bumped into the owner who clearly has issues with Charlie, zero interest in spending anything on the house, and wanted only to implore us to give him money. Pretty generally everyone we met seemed to have an issue with Charlie, including the village chairman.
The women had indeed cooked a meal for us while we were at the waterfall. Typical rice and beans with spinach and mashed bananas with Fanta or Coke on the side. Good, but just like you get everywhere else, here. Charlie assured us that they hadn’t followed his instructions, and if we came back tomorrow we could have the real stuff. Sure.
I ended by taking digital photos of everyone, and they were delighted to see themselves in the little monitor. Then, they wanted Becky and me to sit down to listen to them. Which we did, with Charlie translating. Clearly Charlie was not giving a literal translation. He was translating how much they wanted to help to develop the tourist idea, and they were saying “Give us money, give us money now.” (Fortunately I had just taken Charlie aside and given him 6000 shillings for the food and his tour.) I started to reply and wanted to thank them and then give them a supportive business rap, but Charlie was mistranslating only how we thought his tourist idea was the cat’s meow. Fortunately at just about that time the daladala came by and we had to run for it, waving good-by. We rode off to waves and smiles and asante, asante, karibu tena (thank you and come again).
It was good to be away for two days, and it feels good to be home again. Since the school was closed this week I decided to visit Kim in her new site, outside Bukoba on the other side of the lake. Bukoba is a nice enough town, with a nice restaurant at a hotel on the lakefront and a good cafe for snacks and breakfasts. Then, the usual shops, central market, dusty streets and the everlasting refrain from the residents: “give me money.” The climate is cooler than Mwanza, which feels good, and the dry season has ended there. We had rain for a half hour or so every morning and coming from Mwanza, it looked like Oz with all its lush greenery.
Kim is really out in the boondocks. Miles and miles of nothing to reach her site. Broad valleys and fantastic vistas, with only occasional houses along the road surrounded by bananas and more bananas. I have never seen such a huge area, green and lush, so devoid of people. How can this country be so poor with all this land just waiting to be used?
I had no trouble taking my bike on the overnight ferry – just locked it onto the rail. A guy at Bukoba said I should have had a consignment sheet for it but he was happy when I gave him 1000 shillings. But my “easy” 40 km bike ride from Bukoba to visit Kim and Becky in Kanyigo was more like the ride from hell. I am glad I did it, but have no interest in doing it again. They said there were hills all around Bukoba.
Hills, shmills, I ride hills every day here on the way to Mwanza. But whoa... This road to Kanyigo was something else. Long, steep, and mostly without the downhill reward because you just don’t want to go very fast on rutted dirt roads. And forty kilometers is only 25 miles – should be an easy 2 hours, maybe 2.5. Well, it was something between 3.5 and 4 hours of hard work. Fortunately I was wearing good quick-dry hiking clothes, because I soaked them and resoaked them on that ride.
But without the bike ride, I wouldn’t have met Charlie. Charlie was this patrician old black guy who, when I stopped for directions, insisted that I join him for a cup of tea and information about the area. Turns out that he wants to turn his flea-bitten poverty stricken community into a tourist attraction. He has visions of giving cooking lessons in “the authentic historic African manner” and displaying the old style of building houses and a nearby waterfall, and he showed me a report that tentatively agreed that maybe there were a few possibilities provided that he had the support of his community.
I agreed to return on Friday before returning to Mwanza for his promised tour and to sample his authentic food, and then I even talked Becky into coming along with me.
The waterfall was actually quite impressive, and would be the good terminus of a 45 minute hike. Everything else was not quite ready for prime time, shall we say. The authentic ancient house was very impressive inside, but had a rusty metal roof. We pointed out that tourists would not accept this as an ancient house with a corrugated iron roof. He assured us that a renovation was “planned,” but later we bumped into the owner who clearly has issues with Charlie, zero interest in spending anything on the house, and wanted only to implore us to give him money. Pretty generally everyone we met seemed to have an issue with Charlie, including the village chairman.
The women had indeed cooked a meal for us while we were at the waterfall. Typical rice and beans with spinach and mashed bananas with Fanta or Coke on the side. Good, but just like you get everywhere else, here. Charlie assured us that they hadn’t followed his instructions, and if we came back tomorrow we could have the real stuff. Sure.
I ended by taking digital photos of everyone, and they were delighted to see themselves in the little monitor. Then, they wanted Becky and me to sit down to listen to them. Which we did, with Charlie translating. Clearly Charlie was not giving a literal translation. He was translating how much they wanted to help to develop the tourist idea, and they were saying “Give us money, give us money now.” (Fortunately I had just taken Charlie aside and given him 6000 shillings for the food and his tour.) I started to reply and wanted to thank them and then give them a supportive business rap, but Charlie was mistranslating only how we thought his tourist idea was the cat’s meow. Fortunately at just about that time the daladala came by and we had to run for it, waving good-by. We rode off to waves and smiles and asante, asante, karibu tena (thank you and come again).
Sunday, September 12, 2004
Sunday morning Sept 12
It is 2:45am and I don't feel like grading any more papers. I went to bed a bit early last night, woke up before midnight very awake and decided that I might as well get up and do something. I rather like working at night. It is mostly quiet, and the night sounds of distant barking or mooing are pleasant to listen to. I can work with only a desk lamp and so stay focused on whatever it is I am doing. So I have graded about 25% of the tests now. There is one kid who scored in the 80s, but most are in the 20-40 range.
My students always want true/false or multiple choice questions, or at least matching. So for this mid-term I gave them a matching section, but made it pretty tough. Twenty terms to match with a mixture of definitions and examples. Then, five calculation problems that should have been pretty easy. It is kind of interesting that by and large the kids who do VERY well on the matching do NOT do well at all on the calculations. It isn't the math, it seems, but rather how they study. The matching-proficient students just have no idea how to set up the problems - knowing what is being asked for. My students love definitions, provided they don't have to understand or use them.
This past week has been entirely devoted to the mid-term tests, so I've had a lot of free time that I used to visit the area organizations that might be working on Youth Economic Empowerment - the euphemism I've picked up for my Small Business Training effort. Of the seven NGOs I visited, Kuleana, Caritas and CARE seem to have effective programs, and CARE is village-oriented rather than working on urban problems. I still have a couple more to go, though - VETA who teach vocational craft skills, SNV who I don't know much about, and the Chamber of Commerce.
The Director of Kuleana was hard to catch up with, but my meeting with him yesterday was the best of the lot. Alfonse is a big guy who has an easy take-charge manner, and somehow just his presence is imposing. A natural leader. You get the impression that although his schedule is very full he is relaxed and is taking as much time as is useful to meet with you - but no time is wasted. He was the only person I've talked to who has done more than describe programs but who also talks about possibilities, and the only person who ended the meeting with "Well, what are our next steps here." And, we agreed that our next steps are to (1) review the program materials and training resources that are available to us, (2) decide what other partners we would want to work with, and (3) plan a meeting with them to establish working relationships, jointly set objectives and define a target group. Sounds like a plan to me!
This coming week is our mid-term break. School is closed. I hope to finish visiting Mwanza organizations in time to catch the Tuesday overnight ferry to Bukoba on the other side of the lake. I want to take my bike along. Kim is teaching at Kanyigo, about 40 km from Bukoba up near the border with Uganda and I thought that sounds like a great bike ride. The country is supposed to be beautiful around there. Bukoba is a little cooler than Mwanza too, and that will also be welcome for the ride. So... Wednesday to ride out there, Thursday to recover, and Friday to ride back to Bukoba and the ferry. The terrain is a bit hilly, and the region is noted for production of bananas. I used to get wheels of good cheese from Bukoba too, but they haven't been available for the past few weeks. I'm told it is because cows are giving less milk now in the dry season.
I've now been in Africa for a year. Arrived last year after dark on 9/11 - excited, wide-eyed, wet behind the ears...
It is 2:45am and I don't feel like grading any more papers. I went to bed a bit early last night, woke up before midnight very awake and decided that I might as well get up and do something. I rather like working at night. It is mostly quiet, and the night sounds of distant barking or mooing are pleasant to listen to. I can work with only a desk lamp and so stay focused on whatever it is I am doing. So I have graded about 25% of the tests now. There is one kid who scored in the 80s, but most are in the 20-40 range.
My students always want true/false or multiple choice questions, or at least matching. So for this mid-term I gave them a matching section, but made it pretty tough. Twenty terms to match with a mixture of definitions and examples. Then, five calculation problems that should have been pretty easy. It is kind of interesting that by and large the kids who do VERY well on the matching do NOT do well at all on the calculations. It isn't the math, it seems, but rather how they study. The matching-proficient students just have no idea how to set up the problems - knowing what is being asked for. My students love definitions, provided they don't have to understand or use them.
This past week has been entirely devoted to the mid-term tests, so I've had a lot of free time that I used to visit the area organizations that might be working on Youth Economic Empowerment - the euphemism I've picked up for my Small Business Training effort. Of the seven NGOs I visited, Kuleana, Caritas and CARE seem to have effective programs, and CARE is village-oriented rather than working on urban problems. I still have a couple more to go, though - VETA who teach vocational craft skills, SNV who I don't know much about, and the Chamber of Commerce.
The Director of Kuleana was hard to catch up with, but my meeting with him yesterday was the best of the lot. Alfonse is a big guy who has an easy take-charge manner, and somehow just his presence is imposing. A natural leader. You get the impression that although his schedule is very full he is relaxed and is taking as much time as is useful to meet with you - but no time is wasted. He was the only person I've talked to who has done more than describe programs but who also talks about possibilities, and the only person who ended the meeting with "Well, what are our next steps here." And, we agreed that our next steps are to (1) review the program materials and training resources that are available to us, (2) decide what other partners we would want to work with, and (3) plan a meeting with them to establish working relationships, jointly set objectives and define a target group. Sounds like a plan to me!
This coming week is our mid-term break. School is closed. I hope to finish visiting Mwanza organizations in time to catch the Tuesday overnight ferry to Bukoba on the other side of the lake. I want to take my bike along. Kim is teaching at Kanyigo, about 40 km from Bukoba up near the border with Uganda and I thought that sounds like a great bike ride. The country is supposed to be beautiful around there. Bukoba is a little cooler than Mwanza too, and that will also be welcome for the ride. So... Wednesday to ride out there, Thursday to recover, and Friday to ride back to Bukoba and the ferry. The terrain is a bit hilly, and the region is noted for production of bananas. I used to get wheels of good cheese from Bukoba too, but they haven't been available for the past few weeks. I'm told it is because cows are giving less milk now in the dry season.
I've now been in Africa for a year. Arrived last year after dark on 9/11 - excited, wide-eyed, wet behind the ears...
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Can this be true? Is it Africa?
Yesterday when I went to my favorite internet cafe, they were passing out flyers saying INTRODUCING SOON (that "soon" is a weasel word here, never to be trusted but...) Cable TV and Internet Service Using State Of Art Fibre Optic Technology. High speed internet access, etc etc blah blah. But Fiber Optics in dusty Mwanza? Unless they had really hit the pombe bottle hard, strange things are happening. I guess it really is a global village.
Yesterday when I went to my favorite internet cafe, they were passing out flyers saying INTRODUCING SOON (that "soon" is a weasel word here, never to be trusted but...) Cable TV and Internet Service Using State Of Art Fibre Optic Technology. High speed internet access, etc etc blah blah. But Fiber Optics in dusty Mwanza? Unless they had really hit the pombe bottle hard, strange things are happening. I guess it really is a global village.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
I spent yesterday evening cleaning fish. Nsumba is right next to Lake Victoria, which is the second biggest fresh water lake in the world and is the start of the Nile river. The Tz Gov’t has a big Fisheries Research Center nearby, and every now and then they give the school oodles of fresh fish. So this afternoon a guy showed up at my house and said “There are fish for you over at the school.” So I walked over there with a plastic shopping bag and sure enough, there on the concrete patio of the dining hall was a pile of at least a hundred big fish, surrounded by all kinds of people with buckets already full of fish. A woman grabbed my bag and started stuffing fish into it until I shouted “Enough, enough already!”
So I brought home seven beautiful fish, every one about 14” long – no fish story! I was glad my house boy Hasson wasn’t here. He would have taken over the fish preparation. He does his fish the African way which is good, but always the same – deep fried.
While I was scaling and cleaning them I called all my PCV friends to come over for fresh fish, but on such short notice everybody was busy. What to do with such a surplus of fish and only one mouth to stuff them into? Ryan teaches at Ngonza, only a mile away, and he has a refrigerator. So I took four of the fish over to him to stuff in his refrigerator. Then I fired up my charcoal burner and got two of the remaining fish ready to grill, wrapped in tinfoil with vegetables and scallions, some salt, pepper, and Cajon spices that a departing PCV gave me, with a glob of what passes for butter here. Figured I would have to eat one right away, hungry or not, since I just had fish and rice for lunch at a cafe on the way home from town, and store the other for tomorrow.
Hasson appeared while this preparation was in progress, and just kind of shook his head. I think he doesn’t believe that an American actually knows how to take care of himself, or prepare a fish. He put the last fish on a rack to drain overnight so he can do his thing with it tomorrow. OK by me.
Right now I really feel stuffed, but that grilled fish was fabulous. Spicy, not greasy, flaky and tender.
So I brought home seven beautiful fish, every one about 14” long – no fish story! I was glad my house boy Hasson wasn’t here. He would have taken over the fish preparation. He does his fish the African way which is good, but always the same – deep fried.
While I was scaling and cleaning them I called all my PCV friends to come over for fresh fish, but on such short notice everybody was busy. What to do with such a surplus of fish and only one mouth to stuff them into? Ryan teaches at Ngonza, only a mile away, and he has a refrigerator. So I took four of the fish over to him to stuff in his refrigerator. Then I fired up my charcoal burner and got two of the remaining fish ready to grill, wrapped in tinfoil with vegetables and scallions, some salt, pepper, and Cajon spices that a departing PCV gave me, with a glob of what passes for butter here. Figured I would have to eat one right away, hungry or not, since I just had fish and rice for lunch at a cafe on the way home from town, and store the other for tomorrow.
Hasson appeared while this preparation was in progress, and just kind of shook his head. I think he doesn’t believe that an American actually knows how to take care of himself, or prepare a fish. He put the last fish on a rack to drain overnight so he can do his thing with it tomorrow. OK by me.
Right now I really feel stuffed, but that grilled fish was fabulous. Spicy, not greasy, flaky and tender.
Wednesday, September 08, 2004
Tuesday September 7
I spent yesterday evening cleaning fish. Nsumba is right next to Lake Victoria, which is the second biggest fresh water lake in the world and is the start of the Nile river. The Tz Gov’t has a big Fisheries Research Center nearby, and every now and then they give the school oodles of fresh fish. So this afternoon a guy showed up at my house and said “There are fish for you over at the school.” So I walked over there with a plastic shopping bag and sure enough, there on the concrete patio of the dining hall was a pile of at least a hundred big fish, surrounded by all kinds of people with buckets already full of fish. A woman grabbed my bag and started stuffing fish into it until I shouted “Enough, enough already!”
So I brought home seven beautiful fish, every one about 14” long – no fish story! I was glad my house boy Hasson wasn’t here. He would have taken over the fish preparation. He does his fish the African way which is good, but always the same – deep fried to a crisp.
While I was scaling and cleaning them I called all my PCV friends to come over for fresh fish, but on such short notice everybody was busy. What to do with such a surplus of fish and only one mouth to stuff them into? Ryan teaches at Ngonza, only a mile away, and he has a refrigerator. So I took four of the fish over to him to stuff in his refrigerator. Then I fired up my charcoal burner and got two of the remaining fish ready to grill, wrapped in tinfoil with vegetables and scallions, some salt, pepper, and Cajon spices that a departing PCV gave me, with a glob of what passes for butter here. Figured I would have to eat one right away, hungry or not, since I just had fish and rice for lunch at a cafe on the way home from town, and store the other for tomorrow.
Hasson appeared while this preparation was in progress, and just kind of shook his head. I think he doesn’t believe that an American actually knows how to take care of himself, or prepare a fish. He put the last fish on a rack to drain overnight so he can do his thing with it tomorrow. OK by me.
Right now I really feel stuffed, but that grilled fish was fabulous. Spicy, not greasy, flaky and tender.
I spent yesterday evening cleaning fish. Nsumba is right next to Lake Victoria, which is the second biggest fresh water lake in the world and is the start of the Nile river. The Tz Gov’t has a big Fisheries Research Center nearby, and every now and then they give the school oodles of fresh fish. So this afternoon a guy showed up at my house and said “There are fish for you over at the school.” So I walked over there with a plastic shopping bag and sure enough, there on the concrete patio of the dining hall was a pile of at least a hundred big fish, surrounded by all kinds of people with buckets already full of fish. A woman grabbed my bag and started stuffing fish into it until I shouted “Enough, enough already!”
So I brought home seven beautiful fish, every one about 14” long – no fish story! I was glad my house boy Hasson wasn’t here. He would have taken over the fish preparation. He does his fish the African way which is good, but always the same – deep fried to a crisp.
While I was scaling and cleaning them I called all my PCV friends to come over for fresh fish, but on such short notice everybody was busy. What to do with such a surplus of fish and only one mouth to stuff them into? Ryan teaches at Ngonza, only a mile away, and he has a refrigerator. So I took four of the fish over to him to stuff in his refrigerator. Then I fired up my charcoal burner and got two of the remaining fish ready to grill, wrapped in tinfoil with vegetables and scallions, some salt, pepper, and Cajon spices that a departing PCV gave me, with a glob of what passes for butter here. Figured I would have to eat one right away, hungry or not, since I just had fish and rice for lunch at a cafe on the way home from town, and store the other for tomorrow.
Hasson appeared while this preparation was in progress, and just kind of shook his head. I think he doesn’t believe that an American actually knows how to take care of himself, or prepare a fish. He put the last fish on a rack to drain overnight so he can do his thing with it tomorrow. OK by me.
Right now I really feel stuffed, but that grilled fish was fabulous. Spicy, not greasy, flaky and tender.
