Saturday, November 27, 2004
I haven’t been keeping up this Journal lately – things have been moving too fast. It has been crazy. But I have a little breather over the weekend, so it is a good time to recap events. Just trying to list the major things that are happening, there is:
* Working with Myrna and the travel agency to put her trip together, and mine, in the face and surprise of her daughter’s pregnancy.
* Working with Tanzanians (slow) and TechnoServe to define and lay plans for teaching students about the principles of small business.
* Defining the Essay Scholarship program Shari has been offering.
* Writing the Chemistry Final Exam, getting it printed, and then grading the results.
* Proposing that Family Safari for August
* Recovering my lost computer files and – hopefully, in the future – reorganizing them.
On the back burner, as assurance that things won’t get boring, there is:
* Finding a suitable service organization where Myrna can get involved over the next year.
* Figuring out what I am going to teach next year and formalizing it in a Scheme of Work, as they call it here.
* Helping Myrna learn the lay of the land.
With Myrna, we finally got past the question of whether I would come any farther than London to meet her. (No!) Her plan to visit relatives in Los Angeles had fallen apart a few weeks ago, but I was still struggling to put together her flight from Guatemala to London through LA although it was looking gruesome. These efforts were not helped at all by a long period of horrendous international phone connections.
Then, in a fractured phone call with followup emails, she and Julia dropped the bombshell that Julia was pregnant and going to be married soon so what did I think of that? What I thought of that was that I FREAKED OUT. Wished them congratulations, and said I guessed that we don’t need ANY flight tickets now as Myrna would certainly be staying with Julia. In turn, Myrna freaked out at that and called to assure me that the MARRIAGE was in February not the Baby, and that we do still need to be together. Now. Once we worked that through, I was able to find much better connections for her through Miami, and so everything is looking good, now. I leave on Dec. first for the 36 hr. bus ride to Dar es Salaam through Nairobi, Kenya, and the following day take the 10 hr flight to London to find a place for us to stay and to look for bilingual tours of London. Myrna arrives a day and a half later. Whew!
TechnoServe finally gave me assurance that they would provide the books for the Start Your Small Business program, and on that basis I have now gained the support of the Director of the Lake Zone Vocational Educational and Training Authority (VETA) for two groups of students, my Headmaster at Nsumba Secondary, the Headmaster at Mwanza Secondary, and I have an appointment with the Headmistress of Ngonza Secondary set for Monday afternoon. None of this came easily, but as the details are boring, I will spare you. The chairwoman of our English Dep’t., Mrs. Tayangulwa, will chair the Steering Committee and says she will work to continue the program beyond 2005. Mrs. T and I go to Mwanza Sec. on Tuesday morning to assist the Headmaster in recruiting Instructors for the course. Then we come back and do the same thing at Nsumba. If Ngonza comes on board, I will have the basis for the 150 students and 10 teachers that I was hoping for.
Shari’s offer of scholarships as prizes to the winners in an Essay contest has been easy to arrange, after first finding a time to talk to my Headmaster about it, letting him think awhile about who I should work with, then painfully arranging a time to get together with his nominees. Looks like it should happen early next year.
The Chemistry Exam was pretty good this time, I think. There were enough questions with only two possible answers, choose one, that I cut the number of zeros down to two or three. Only one question was impossible for everyone except three students. The high grade was an 88. Almost all students knew every definition question exactly as it had been presented in class – they excel at memorization. But then they fail my next question asking them to apply the concept they have just defined so well.
I have posted the answer key to the test on the school bulletin board, with a notice I will answer questions and correct my scoring errors – if any - on Monday morning. No other teachers do anything remotely like that. I also gave my students who had received Shari’s textbooks a questionnaire about how they used the books and their critique of the course. Got very interesting responses, but I will spare you the details for now.
Looks like the Family Safari will be a real blast. I’m hearing lots of enthusiasm, and the woman at the Safari Company is great to work with. I’ll see her tonight – there is a Charity Ball downtown. It is the big Mzungu event of the year – there will be a table of nine Peace Corps Volunteers. We get a break on the price in recognition of our economic status. In addition, Maria (Safari Co.), Pete (Mining Co., whose computer I often use), Taha (who fixed my computer) and lots more of the ex-pat community will be there. It will be the first time I have worn my sports jacket since coming to Mwanza. I will even wear my tie if I can find it.
Taha got my computer files back, but the recovery operation loses all the file structure, and the names of the files. So every file has to be individually opened to see whether it is anything of interest, and then renamed – or deleted. This is now my mindless task whenever I have nothing else to do, or need to take a break from whatever.
And now I better go to town before it rains again to pay some outstanding bills before I leave the territory for half a month.
* Working with Myrna and the travel agency to put her trip together, and mine, in the face and surprise of her daughter’s pregnancy.
* Working with Tanzanians (slow) and TechnoServe to define and lay plans for teaching students about the principles of small business.
* Defining the Essay Scholarship program Shari has been offering.
* Writing the Chemistry Final Exam, getting it printed, and then grading the results.
* Proposing that Family Safari for August
* Recovering my lost computer files and – hopefully, in the future – reorganizing them.
On the back burner, as assurance that things won’t get boring, there is:
* Finding a suitable service organization where Myrna can get involved over the next year.
* Figuring out what I am going to teach next year and formalizing it in a Scheme of Work, as they call it here.
* Helping Myrna learn the lay of the land.
With Myrna, we finally got past the question of whether I would come any farther than London to meet her. (No!) Her plan to visit relatives in Los Angeles had fallen apart a few weeks ago, but I was still struggling to put together her flight from Guatemala to London through LA although it was looking gruesome. These efforts were not helped at all by a long period of horrendous international phone connections.
Then, in a fractured phone call with followup emails, she and Julia dropped the bombshell that Julia was pregnant and going to be married soon so what did I think of that? What I thought of that was that I FREAKED OUT. Wished them congratulations, and said I guessed that we don’t need ANY flight tickets now as Myrna would certainly be staying with Julia. In turn, Myrna freaked out at that and called to assure me that the MARRIAGE was in February not the Baby, and that we do still need to be together. Now. Once we worked that through, I was able to find much better connections for her through Miami, and so everything is looking good, now. I leave on Dec. first for the 36 hr. bus ride to Dar es Salaam through Nairobi, Kenya, and the following day take the 10 hr flight to London to find a place for us to stay and to look for bilingual tours of London. Myrna arrives a day and a half later. Whew!
TechnoServe finally gave me assurance that they would provide the books for the Start Your Small Business program, and on that basis I have now gained the support of the Director of the Lake Zone Vocational Educational and Training Authority (VETA) for two groups of students, my Headmaster at Nsumba Secondary, the Headmaster at Mwanza Secondary, and I have an appointment with the Headmistress of Ngonza Secondary set for Monday afternoon. None of this came easily, but as the details are boring, I will spare you. The chairwoman of our English Dep’t., Mrs. Tayangulwa, will chair the Steering Committee and says she will work to continue the program beyond 2005. Mrs. T and I go to Mwanza Sec. on Tuesday morning to assist the Headmaster in recruiting Instructors for the course. Then we come back and do the same thing at Nsumba. If Ngonza comes on board, I will have the basis for the 150 students and 10 teachers that I was hoping for.
Shari’s offer of scholarships as prizes to the winners in an Essay contest has been easy to arrange, after first finding a time to talk to my Headmaster about it, letting him think awhile about who I should work with, then painfully arranging a time to get together with his nominees. Looks like it should happen early next year.
The Chemistry Exam was pretty good this time, I think. There were enough questions with only two possible answers, choose one, that I cut the number of zeros down to two or three. Only one question was impossible for everyone except three students. The high grade was an 88. Almost all students knew every definition question exactly as it had been presented in class – they excel at memorization. But then they fail my next question asking them to apply the concept they have just defined so well.
I have posted the answer key to the test on the school bulletin board, with a notice I will answer questions and correct my scoring errors – if any - on Monday morning. No other teachers do anything remotely like that. I also gave my students who had received Shari’s textbooks a questionnaire about how they used the books and their critique of the course. Got very interesting responses, but I will spare you the details for now.
Looks like the Family Safari will be a real blast. I’m hearing lots of enthusiasm, and the woman at the Safari Company is great to work with. I’ll see her tonight – there is a Charity Ball downtown. It is the big Mzungu event of the year – there will be a table of nine Peace Corps Volunteers. We get a break on the price in recognition of our economic status. In addition, Maria (Safari Co.), Pete (Mining Co., whose computer I often use), Taha (who fixed my computer) and lots more of the ex-pat community will be there. It will be the first time I have worn my sports jacket since coming to Mwanza. I will even wear my tie if I can find it.
Taha got my computer files back, but the recovery operation loses all the file structure, and the names of the files. So every file has to be individually opened to see whether it is anything of interest, and then renamed – or deleted. This is now my mindless task whenever I have nothing else to do, or need to take a break from whatever.
And now I better go to town before it rains again to pay some outstanding bills before I leave the territory for half a month.
