Memories

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Alexander Rolnick

An old black woman sits on a pew in the front of a church. She is alone. Her colorful fabrics stand out in the dim lighting. Everything is covered in a layer of dust. The church is empty, save for her, and the relics of a different time that surround her. Her face betrays a deep sadness, a fundamental sense of loss and grief. Sitting in this church, unmoving, she contemplates something that unites her to something greater than herself while it simultaneously ravages the core of her being. She is lost, looking for salvation and finding only her thoughts.

In the distance she hears voices. She does not understand the words, but she knows what they mean. What has happened to her has not only turned her into an object of interest, but has fundamentally impacted the society in which she lives. She is part of something bigger than herself whether she wants to be or not. She is now something to be wondered about; she is something to be viewed with deep curiosity by ones who do not understand what she has gone through and how it has changed her.

The voices draw closer. They are English, though she does not understand what is being said. No longer does she hear the familiar sounds of French. The French. The Belgians. They are the past now, just like her grief. Yet, her grief is also in the present, and the legacy of the French speakers lives on as well.

Four visitors have entered the church, following a woman who speaks English to these visitors with a familiar lilt. The old woman still does not understand the words, but she knows their content more intimately than the words could ever expect to convey their meaning to these visitors. They stand, looking at the relics of the past. She does not turn around to look at them. She knows who they are and why there are here, and looking at them will not change her understanding of them.

They have disturbed her quiet, but their presence is not unusual. She continues to contemplate. Now the voices draw closer. These visitors – these white visitors – now stand next to where she is sitting. The begin to take furtive glances at her. She does not catch them all, and she does not care to. She understands why they look at her so inquisitively, but she is too caught in her thoughts to care. Yes, they have disturbed her, but she understands why, even if she has not come to terms with it.

The visitors move on, following their guide, and the old woman returns to her thoughts. Unbeknownst to the old woman, the visitors thoughts have turned to her. They wonder what her story is, and why she is sitting quietly in this church full of bones, clothes, and coffins. They think they can imagine how the experience of genocide has impacted her life – maybe her children were killed, or maybe it was her husband? Maybe it was her whole family? Why is she sitting there like that? What is she thinking? How does she feel about us? Have we disturbed her tormented peace?

This post is based on my experience visiting the Ntarama Genocide Memorial site. Obviously it’s mostly conjecture, but I wanted to try to capture what, for me, was the most intense moment of visiting the Ntarama and Nyamata sites.

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Porters

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Alexander Rolnick

I consider myself an able backpacker, comfortable in the woods for a few days at time, and a reasonably strong hiker, so when my guide for climbing Mount Karisimbi (~4500 meters) in Rwanda recommended both Emily and I take a porter, our first reaction was very negative. “We do not need porters!” Eventually, we assented to one ($10 a day), realizing that we probably needed a porter to bring us a pot for cooking and to arrange some kind of fire for cooking on. Our guide, who had considerably less stuff than us (in three separate bags – a small backpack full of food and clothes, a tent, and a sleeping bag), arranged another. And so, we met Francis and Bosco.

At the parking lot for the beginning of every hike or gorilla trek in Parc de Volcans large groups of men in blue coveralls wait in the hopes that tourists will need their help. The day previously we had watched a group of 5 porters assist the 6 other tourists on our gorilla trek. These men carried small bags, and (literally) held the hands of the overweight men and women who didn’t appear to realize that trekking mountain gorillas means a short (for us, about an hour, including about 8 short breaks for a particularly out of shape Australian women) climb up the foothills of a mountain. I felt somewhat bad for these porters, but they seemed to take things in stride, no doubt used to fat white women, and aware that hand holding had the potential to upgrade a very reasonable $10 wage to $20 or $30.

It wasn’t until the next day that I developed a true appreciation for the Rwandan porter, personified in Francis and Bosco. As Emily and I walked at a decent pace under the weight of our bags, struggling in the omnipresent mud and steep slope, Francis and Bosco sped ahead. Francis, a small but well built, younger man carried a large bag on his head which included provisions for him and Bosco as well as a pot for us. In his right hand he held a machete, and in his left he carried a large axe. Bosco, a large, and very strong looking middle aged man carried a backpack on his pack. In his right hand, our guide’s tent, and in his left hand, our guide’s sleeping bag. Of course, neither Francis nor Bosco needed extra clothes, a sleeping bag, or a tent.

Shortly after entering the park Emily sprained her ankle, and we decided it would be best to give her pack to Francis, so he hefted it onto his back and continued to walk at the same impressive pace as before. We walked on. Now, I was setting the pace for our group, which included our guide, two porters, and nine soldiers, all of whom were carrying large packs and assault rifles. About 45 minutes from the camp site I was completely beat, and while I could have made it (admittedly in more like an hour and half), Bosco offered to carry my bag, which he hefted on to his shoulders, adjusting his other items, and speeding ahead. When we arrived at the camp site neither man was anywhere to be seen: they had already gone off to go cut firewood.

Within a couple hours they had started a large fire from a very large pile of very wet wood, stacking the wood impressively so that the wood on top would begin to dry as wood on the bottom caught fire. Freezing, Emily and I went to sit by the fire. I began to take off my shoes, trying to dry them by the fire and scraping them with wood in attempt to remove the mud that had formed an outside layer. Francis took my shoes and using a bit of wood proceeded to do a far better job on the shoes than I was. Of course, neither man wore shoes as flawed as hiking boots, instead opting for simple rubber rain boots. Did I mention that all the soldiers and our guide also wore these rubber rain boots?

Bosco and Francis ate some fried bread they brought with them and roasted corn, and ate some things we gave them as well. Then, they probably slept even less than Emily and I, as the two of them shared a large tin shelter near the fire with no blankets, and only a jacket apiece. The next morning, after I failed to summit because of a splitting altitude headache, Bosco comforted me by the fire, using his machete to clean the mud from my shoes, and cooking me roasted corn and potatoes. Over the course of the trip the machete served as a brush clearer, wood chopper, fire poker, potato peeler, and, of course, mud scraper.

On the descent, at a breakneck pace, both porters carried our packs, and could probably have beaten us to the bottom by a good 30 minutes. This is very impressive given that the descent from the campsite took only about two hours, and if I had been carrying my pack it probably would have taken me at least three hours. The climb was full of deep mud and steep wet rocks, requiring great care in order not to fall. I slipped a number of times, and managed small half-falls as well. As far as I can tell, neither porter even so much as lost their balance.

Porters have been used by white men in Africa to carry their things since the first overland explorers began trekking across the continent. It wasn’t until this experience that I began to develop a true appreciate for just how amazing these porters are. White people (myself included) think that they need all kinds of gear and tools to survive outdoors (and, in Africa, people to carry all this stuff). Rwandan porters prove that all you really need are a pair of rubber boots, a jumpsuit, and a machete. Oh, and maybe a jacket and a poncho for staying warm at night. Truly badass.

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When the salesman comes to school

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Alexander Rolnick

It is quite a regular occurrence for salesman of one type or another to come visit my school. They come selling books, household wares, and even fish. And almost always, their visits are met with great excitement by the teachers.

Frequently, men with backpacks will drop by school in the afternoon, when presumably they are fairly certain that most teachers will not be in class. After a long round of greetings with the teachers, they set down their backpacks, and like Marry Poppins’ magical bag, more things than one would think possible are suddenly being pulled out. First, some shiny silver, lacy, table settings (which Tanzanians use to decorate the backs of their chairs) , and a tablecloth pop out. Then come some books, some fabric, a Masai blanket, and cups. All these products are passed around the teachers, who seriously consider each object as though it will be purchased. Books are opened and inspected, fabric is investigated, and prices are asked. Occasionally a teacher will find something of interest, but largely this is a fruitless visit for the salesman.

One salesman in specific brings a large variety of nice household wares seldom seen in Tanzania, and always shows up in a taxi (an old Toyota hatchback). A couple months ago, he showed up and made quite a killing off the teachers. They bought some knives (which were actually fantastic quality, given they were being sold in rural Tanzania), stainless steel pots (also of impressive quality), and glass pyrex-style glasses and plates. As a demonstration, the salesman banged the plates, quite hard, on the concrete floor. Needless to say, my Tanzanian colleagues were quite impressed, and this salesman had a good day.

He returned the other day with some new wares, including some large stainless steel pots that the teachers excitedly explained could be used for cooking and serving food. The set retailed for 160,000 Tanzanian shillings (about a $100 USD), so while these were inspected in great detail by everyone, in the end the salesman packed them back up (along with some other things) in the original packing. This actually might be the most impressive element of this particular salesman. Everything he sells arrives packed up in the original battered box, with all the assorted plastic and styrofoam packaging, which he expertly unpacks for inspection and repacks for transport.

Another exciting day for the teachers is when the fish man on the motorcycle comes. Sometimes this is every week, but sometimes the wait is much longer. Sometimes he brings river fish (catfish, mostly), and on other days he brings fish from Bukoba, which is a good 4 hours of driving, assuming no delays, so realistically the fish have been in transport for at least 5 hours. Since there is no refrigeration, mostly the fish are transported alive (though occasionally they die in transport). When the fish man arrives, the teachers head down to his motorcycle to peer into the wooden box the fish are transported in. Occasionally, one of the fish jerks around (presumably in a kind of fish agony), and the closest teacher jumps back in horror and amusement (if you can imagine the combination).

The fish man always sells at least one fish. The teachers always ask me if I will buy the fish, to which I always respond, “no.” First, because I don’t trust how long the fish has been out of the water for, and second because I have discovered that I don’t really know how to cook fish without an oven. On purchase, the fish man will either kill and gut the fish for you, or he will tie it to a tree alive so that you (if you are female), or your wife (if you are male) can kill and gut it for you later. These fish hang from the trees for a couple hours, and as they jerk around they are an almost endless source of amusement for the teachers, who enjoy seeing other teachers and students jump away from a jerking fish they thought was dead in momentary terror. Indeed, there is endless amusement and entertainment to be had from the many random visitors of Ngara Secondary.

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My school through my eyes

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Alexander Rolnick

Something I am always very aware of at school is not only my position as a year long volunteer (teaching with career teachers), but that I am an American experiencing a different culture through American eyes. That in mind, I do a lot of self censoring, though at times it is very difficult to not speak out on what amounts, in my eyes, to abuse, corruption, and laziness. Those are some big words, so I will do my best to explicate my internal conflict with these ideas, and how I deal with this conflict.

Previously, I have discussed some of the “big picture” issues that Tanzanian schools face, but here I want to discuss more specifically my position as a teacher in a failing school. I have discussed some of the structural reasons for this failure, but my experience is largely personal, and thus quite different from these “big picture” issues, though my personal experience is indirectly impacted by these structural issues, and speaking with other volunteers my personal experience as a volunteer mirrors the experiences of other volunteers across Tanzania. So, while I will specifically discuss my experience with abuse, corruption, and laziness at the school I am teaching at, be aware that these issues are present at schools across the country.

To begin: abuse. While most of the teachers at my school seem to care about their students, in one way or another, this caring sometimes manifests itself in what most Americans would, no doubt, see as abuse. Tanzanian teachers have the tendency to see themselves in a variety of roles. I have mentioned previously, how one teacher specifically laid out to me that he felt he was a teacher, a counselor, an advisor, and a policeman, all in one. Some teachers do embody those all these roles, but many end up more abusive policemen than sympathetic counselor. Students are slapped in the face, beat on the back, and beaten with excessively large sticks. While this seems to be an acceptable norm – talking with other volunteers, there are teachers at most schools who engage in these more abusive kinds of punishment – most teachers stick to the legally allowed three hits to the butt or hand.

For all the talk about corruption as a problem in Tanzanian government and society, many teachers are corrupt in less glaringly obvious ways. This corruption takes the form of laziness as well. They arrive late, leave early, fail to teach their classes (some actually sit in the staff room most of the day talking), and treat the students like servants, sending them on errands and then yelling at them when they have have misunderstood the orders. Some of this is cultural – the young are expected to do what their elders tell them – but to me it feels like laziness. There is also an expectation that teachers should not have to pay for school events. So, when an event like graduation takes place, teachers eat and drink off of money paid by the students or money from the school’s discretionary fund, which one would think should be directed towards funding academics.

As you might expect, it is difficult to see these things and not say anything. Aware, not only of the Western tendency to see the world through a very specific, judgmental, lens, but also of the fact that my speaking out about these issues will not accomplish anything, I do not. Instead, I try to develop conversations about these issues. Some of these conversations have some out in past posts (for example, why students are beaten, the roles of teachers, or why students do so badly in school), but sometimes I feel unable to even raise a topic for discussion, aware that I am the outsider. For instance, I would love to ask another teacher about the teacher who consistently grabs the face of a student with one hand and slaps it with the other, but my feeling is that even in asking this question I am passing judgement about the practice. You might ask, “What’s so bad about passing judgement over an awful practice like that?” And, you may even be right.

But, I also feel like it is not my place to pass public judgement, when none of the other (to my mind) more reasonable teachers have, and there is not a single teacher on staff who I think would be sympathetic to my perspective. Public judgement is a form of cultural imperialism, a kind of colonialism that does nothing to actually change the root of the problem, unless, maybe, you are speaking with a sympathetic party. While I may see these practices as fundamentally awful, I think I have a responsibility to let Tanzanians work these issues out on their own. While I will be giving the District Education Officer a letter with some of my observations at the end of my term of service, I think it is his responsibility – and the responsibility of his fellow Tanzanians – to affect change in their society. To directly confront teachers about these issues, in my position, is a badly formed challenge their way of doing things: I will not need to live with the consequences of such a confrontation because I am a temporary volunteer teacher with no real stake in the system: I am someone to be ignored. I am the outsider.

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A brief (secondhand) history of Tanzanian education

Posted on March 18, 2013 by Alexander Rolnick

This post will join some of the disparate ideas I have been blogging about into something resembling context for thinking about the failures of the Tanzanian school system. Most of the following is based on my personal experiences and what I have gleaned from conversations with Tanzanians, so it may not be entirely true, but even if it isn’t it represents – to an extent – the views of Tanzanian teachers. And when it doesn’t represent the view of Tanzanian teachers, it is based on my own observations or knowledge.

Most educated Tanzanians that I have talked to seem to think there was a time when the education system was much better than it is now. While I have no way to judge whether this is true or not at the present time, I suspect that it is true. Historically, (again, this is mostly things I have put together from the aforementioned educated Tanzanians, so take it with a grain of salt) Tanzanian secondary schools were for the best and the brightest primary school students. They were academically rigorous. and as far as I can tell most of the students who went to secondary school were expected to go on to advanced studies, and then to university. They were also selective. There were not many secondary schools, and they tended to be boarding schools, so that students without a secondary school in their area could attend.

As a mentioned in my last post, over the last 10-15 years, under international political pressure to provide universal secondary school education, Tanzania began a massive expansion of the secondary school system, when realistically Tanzania was not ready for an expansion of this magnitude. This pressure seems to have come largely from development groups and the UN, but conceivably Tanzanians were interested in this as well. So, secondary schools were built everywhere, even in the most remote wards.

Presumably, some problems quickly became evident. First, there were not enough teachers to teach in these remote areas, and not many people wanted to move to “the bush” to teach. Second, there were not enough students. The primary school system in Tanzania has many of its own problems, but among them are the fact that the language of instruction in Swahili, and the fact that most students do really poorly in primary school, as a result of not having enough teachers and resources.

The first problem was resolved by staffing schools at a minimal level (see: 5 teachers for 300 students at one school in specific, but this is a common problem). The second problem was resolved, gradually, by allowing failing primary students to advance to secondary school. This mostly allows the government to look good (“look how many students we have in secondary school!”), except when people realize that even though students are in secondary school they are failing (“there were some problems this year with teaching, and some schools don’t have enough teachers or resources, but we expect to improve performance next year”).

This creates a major problem in secondary schools. For example, I would say that over half the students at Ngara Secondary never have any chance at all of passing their national examinations. Another quarter might have a small chance if the school had better, or more dedicated teachers. The final quarter have a decent chance, despite the bad odds because they are dedicated, driven, go to tuition (they pay for class after school), and maybe had the luck to go to a private English medium primary school or have had siblings who have learned English. The reasons for this are extensive, but primarily this is because secondary schools are teaching students who failed Swahili language primary school in English, and are teaching an advanced curriculum designed for university bound students.

This creates a host of problems in the secondary schools themselves, whose teachers now have to teach a difficult curriculum to students who don’t have the English ability, or scholastic foundation to understand the vast majority of what they are being taught. Obviously the problems of Tanzanians schools have a variety of roots, but in some sense we could identify these two problems as the major structural impediments to improved education at the secondary school level.

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Development Perceptions

Posted on March 11, 2013 by Alexander Rolnick

As a student of colonialism coming to Tanzania I expected more negativity from Tanzanians, especially educated Tanzanians, about the impact of colonialism on Tanzanian society, and possibly some analysis of how current international power structures have failed to help create conditions favorable to Tanzanian development. As you might suspect, if you read my post about colonialism in Tanzanian education, these expectations were false. In all my time here only one person has voiced opinions that seemed in any way to reflect a post-colonial analysis of Tanzanian society and politics.

The vast majority of Tanzanians – especially the poor, uneducated, rural people that I have met in Ngara – find no problem at all with the impact of the structure of international power on Tanzania. When they find out that I am from the United States (America, to Tanzanians, except the ones who sometimes ask, “North? Or South?”) people almost universally respond with excitement, saying something about how America does so many good things for Tanzania, and that I am proof of that. You might think this is an impact of Barack Obama fever, but actually Tanzanians don’t seem entirely excited about Obama, as some of them have learned about his position on gay people in the military,

In fact, many of the Tanzanians I have talked to love George W. Bush. Apparently he visited here at one point, and to Tanzanians that was a great sign of his deep respect for the Tanzanian people, and this visit, to them, represented how America was doing its best to help the Tanzanian people. During this trip, apparently, he did the American standard of kissing some babies and shaking some hands, and as a result of the entirely favorable response he received, Tanzanian President Kikwete has adopted some of the same public relations strategies.

So, if America is doing good in Tanzania, and European countries (sometimes America is included in this group) are not at fault for Tanzanian problems, who is? Well, as my post on colonialism in Tanzanian education suggests, some Tanzanians believe they are lazy, and must be pushed to work harder with “the stick.” This is some heavy post-colonial Stockholm Syndrome shit if I have ever heard it. Sure, some Tanzanians don’t work hard (teachers, especially), but a lot of Tanzanians work extremely hard just to subsist.

Another group almost universally blamed for Tanzanian problems is the corrupt, inadequate, Tanzanian political elite. This is probably very true, and for a second I even thought “wow, what if Tanzanians are really at fault for their own development failures?” But, like I said, it was just for a second. Obviously Tanzanians, as the primary stakeholders in their development, do play a large role in determining whether Tanzanian development proceeds or stagnates, but a lot of blame can be accessed to external groups and pressures.

Indeed, many of the problems Tanzanian faces are the result of negative external influence. Tanzania is a rich country in minerals, land, and now oil, but in many respects it has utterly failed to utilize these resources effectively. This may primarily be a problem with Tanzanian government failing to write good contracts with international resource extraction groups, but the groups themselves are also to blame, as presumably many of these contracts have “sweeteners” for the Tanzanian officials involved.

Additionally, much of the “aid” that Tanzania receives from the West does little more than allow the West to control how the Tanzanian government operates. For example, a World Bank report on Tanzanian roads in 1998 suggested that while Western donors spent over 2 billion dollars on the construction of roads in Tanzania over a 20 year period, the actual quality of roads did not increase, because there was no maintenance of preexisting roads during this period. As William Easterly suggests, the growth industry in Tanzania is actually just a big bureaucracy that functionally does little more than provide jobs to the people who work in it.

Striving for specific development markers set by international organizations like the UN can also prove problematic for achieving actual development. Over the last 15 years, under international political pressure to provide universal secondary school education, Tanzania began a massive expansion of the secondary school system, when realistically Tanzania was not ready for an expansion of this magnitude. So, secondary schools were built (and funded by international groups) everywhere, even in the most remote wards. Now, these schools don’t have teachers, resources, or students capable of handling the rigorous, university prep government curriculum. I will say more about this in another post, but it should be clear that even a well intentioned goal like providing universal secondary education has a lot of potential to negatively affect development.

Where does this leave Tanzanians? Languishing, to an extent, but also in this odd position of not understanding why development is failing to reach them. While there are signs of development everywhere, in Ngara for example, it’s very hard to say whether most people are actually any better off. Yes, many Tanzanians in Ngara District have better roads, improved access to electricity, and more schools to send their children to, but do any of these amenities actually help the poor farmer who still lives off the grid? Not really, and these poor farmers are the vast majority of people in Ngara District.

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The village visit

Posted on March 5, 2013 by Alexander Rolnick

A few weekends ago, I visited the villages of the District Education Officer (DEO) and his wife, with two other WorldTeach volunteers. The DEO and his wife are both extremely generous and welcoming people, who, as good Christians, and as part of the Tanzanian wealthy middle-upper class, do a lot of giving back to people less fortunate than themselves. They are very affluent by Tanzanian standards, and sometimes I can’t help but to think that they are detached from the reality of Tanzanian life for most people. However, a trip to their villages showed that they have a very real understanding of how most Tanzanians live, even if as a result of their affluence they have been able to substantially improve the quality of life of their families.

Both of their families live outside of the city of Bukoba, within 100 kilometers from the Ugandan border to the North. Ngara to Bukoba is about an eight hour trip by public transportation, but traveling with the DEO in private transport (with a driver) we arrived in just under four hours, including a stop to purchase charcoal, and buy pineapples on the side of the store. Arriving in Bukoba, we stopped in the city center to stock up on essentials: a few 25 kilo bags of corn, a couple 25 kilo bags of sugar, and a lot of vegetables. We also picked up about 7 or 8 loaves of sliced white bread.

Then, we headed to the village. About 60 kilometers later (40 of which were on a dirt road), we arrived at the DEO’s village (more specifically, his mother’s house, and his house, just down the road), just before sunset. It was spectacularly beautiful, set on a plateau overlooking the lowlands. Banana farms abounded, with the characteristic cassava, yam, and sweet potato plants mixed in. The house of the DEO’s mother was very nice by Tanzanian standards, and even included a solar lamp. From the minute we arrived, until about 11:30 (when we finished dinner), there was a constant stream of visitors coming to greet us, (Karibu sana – You are very welcome – was heard many, many times). It was clear that the DEO was very respected, and that his success (and before him, the success of his father) had impacted the lives of his extended family and the wider community in a very positive way. We ate boiled bananas and beans three times over the course of about eighteen hours while we were here (traditional Haya food), though I was assured that with one of the meals the beans were not actually beans, but were instead a different crop that was awfully like beans (but actually, somewhat distinct and very nice).

The next day we drove back to Bukoba to resupply, driving past the turn off the dirt road where the DEO’s wife family is from. In Bukoba we went back to the market to buy many of the same things we had bought the day before, and then we stopped at a mattress shop, buying a mattress for someone. Then, on the way out of town we stopped and bought a bed frame for the mattress as well. Arriving at the DEO’s wife’s family’s house, we were treated to another meal (no bananas, but some of the beans that are not actually beans), and another series of welcomes. Here too it was clear that the successes of children have a big impact on how well parents live. The DEO’s wife is working on her Masters, and her sister just graduated with a Masters. In many respects it is amazing that people from so far in the bush have achieved so much educationally, when their parents were simple subsistence farmers, though obviously they emphasized the importance of education to their children.

Leaving the villages, I could not help but be impressed with how much the success of one person has had such a positive impact on the lives of the extended family. While you see this influence to an extent in America (typically more in regards to the immediate family), wealth is not spread around to such an extent, and the emphasis on taking care of family is much less present. Indeed, in the village were were introduced to the DEO’s “fathers” – there were at least 5, and his actual father died some years ago.

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Bob Marley Bags

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Alexander Rolnick

Many Tanzanians like Bob Marley. His music is very popular with many middle aged Tanzanians, as well as younger Tanzanians, including my students. However, these people – largely – have not realized that he is widely associated with marijuana use. Tanzania is very conservative regarding drug use, and while I am sure some Tanzanians grow and use marijuana, the prevailing opinion seems to be that it is an awful drug that ruins your life. Indeed, have an informative leaflet printed in Swahili with a guy in tattered clothes smoking a joint under a tree, which seems to suggest that marijuana is the root of his troubles. Given this, it is very amusing that a very large percentage of my students have Bob Marley bags that depict him, variously, smoking a large joint, exhaling a cloud of marijuana smoke, or hanging out next to a giant marijuana left.

These bags – screen printed black backpacks that cinch at the top – are widely available for purchase throughout town, and at the market. Where they come from I am not sure, but someone is making a lot of money from Bob Marley’s drug image, which is ironic, because the bags are bought – largely – in ignorance of their promotion of stoner culture. Indeed, as far as I can tell these bags are either printed with a Bob Marley stoner theme, or a picture of Obama and his family (this one is far less popular than Bob Marley), and are bought because the bags are cheap, and the faces recognizable.

The bags – which would be banned without a second thought at High Schools across the United States (even in Washington State where the recreational use of marijuana is now legal) – are by far the most popular bag type at Ngara Secondary School, and do not create any problems because of the ignorance of what exactly they represent. So, students walk around in their regimented school uniforms with various deceptions of drug culture hanging from their backs.

I have yet to mention this to another teacher for fear of how they would respond to what is really a completely harmless phenomenon, but I can’t help but to wonder what would actually happen. Would the bags be banned, forcing the parents of many of my students to find them new bags? Or, would the teachers simply shrug it off and say that they are just bags? I have no way of knowing if that has already happened, though given Tanzanian’s overall ignorance to drug culture, I suspect the first scenario represents a likely eventuality when the true meaning of these bags is discovered.

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The Form IV Exam

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Alexander Rolnick

Exams are extremely important in Tanzania. Tanzanian students must pass a national exam to enter Secondary School, and after they have finished Form II they must pass another exam another exam to move on to Form III (as of the end of last year). At the end of Form IV they take a national exam in all the subjects – 10 at my school – with serious implications for the rest of their lives. There is a complicated point system that determines whether students can move on to High School for two years (Advanced Studies), and what they can study there, but basically students need to score the Tanzanian equivalent of a “C” average (41-60%) on their national exams to move on. Only four students at Ngara Secondary managed to do so, all in this “C” average range. Nationally, 240,903 students out of 397,136 failed.

The night after the results from the Form IV exam results were released I received a despondent text from one of my former Form IV students. His dreams of High School and University were dashed. He was a student I thought was absolutely capable of both of these goals – driven, dedicated, intelligent, and very conscientious. He, and a number of his peers (many, no doubt, like him), both at Ngara Secondary and across the country, can no longer dream of being a doctor, engineer, or lawyer. His options (as a student in the high “D” range): vocational school, teaching at the primary school level, low level civil service, or a life like his parents (in this case, being a tailor, for many others, being a farmer). There are two primary reasons for his failure, and both of them are abhorrent.

First, the Tanzanian educational system fails students on a fundamental level at both the national policy level and in local implementation. Students are expected to begin learning English in Secondary School, and simultaneously learn and be tested in English for all their subjects. The syllabi for all the subjects is outdated, requiring students to learn fundamentally useless material, and leaving no room for slow learners to be taught a different curriculum at a different pace – all the curriculum is aimed at university bound students. Locally, schools are chronically understaffed, teachers do not teach (or teach poorly), and classes are frequently interrupted for a variety of silly reasons.

If students manage to deal with all of these issues and actually learn, they then face another serious problem: the national examination system run by NECTA is fundamentally flawed. There is no dialogue between this organization and the Ministry of Education, which develops education policy. The exams are not only extremely difficult, containing sections of abstruse knowledge and testing on areas of knowledge that even I, a native speaker, have to think twice about, but often contain errors, grammatical mistakes and confusingly worded questions.

Dealing with these issues is a big hurdle for students, but even the smallest of changes could enable more students to succeed. Another 47 students at my school scored in this “D” range. Not all of these students realistically had a chance at getting to A level, but many of them did. However, split between 4 different classes at my school, being taught alongside students who – in many cases – can barely speak English, their ability to learn the material is diminished. If students with higher ability were in class together they would not only be able to tackle more difficult material in a more efficient manner, but they would be able to learn together, challenging each other to do better

This morning I asked my headmaster if the school had ever thought about streaming students by ability, like I have outlined above. “Yes,” he said, “but the government thinks that doing that makes the other students feel inferior.” As if they don’t end up feeling inferior when they get beat for getting the lowest marks on their exams, or as if every student who doesn’t do well on their exams doesn’t feel inferior when they can’t live their dream of a better life.

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Water

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Alexander Rolnick

It wasn’t until I was talking with my dad the other night that I realized I had yet to blog about my water situation here, which is an experience worth conveying, though it is such a Western problem that I feel a little silly discussing it: life for many people in Tanzania consists of carrying water for unimaginable distances every day, and in my whole time here I have only carried water a semi-substantial distance once.

In any case, the narrative: when I arrived, I had a tap in my bathroom that would run every few days or so for a few hours, either in the morning or the afternoon. While I occasionally got really low on water, I was never in dire need. This changed towards the end of November, when water completely ceased running from this tap

We (my roommate and I) had always been careful with the water, but this brought us to a completely new level of care. We had to pay people 200 shillings a bucket (6 gallons?) to carry water from elsewhere in the compound, as other outside taps still ran in the morning for a couple hours. We began to use leftover clothes washing water for flushing the toilet, and tried to conserve water in every way possible. We left for our winter break hoping our water troubles would be resolved when we returned.

No such luck. As they say, TIA (this is Africa). This situation continued for a couple weeks (and we purchased more water containers to increase the time we could go without water), until one day there was no power. Outages are very common here, and it’s not uncommon to have a short outage in the evening, during the rain, or even for a few days. This power outage lasted nearly a week, which was the longest we’d gone without electricity (barely, we had a couple five day outages previously). This outage was a little different, and was caused by TANESCO (the Tanzanian electricity company) running out of natural gas, which is how Ngara district is powered. As a result, all the pumps stopped working, many people in Ngara did not have water (nobody had electricity unless they had a generator).

This was a dire situation, and we were down to no water at all, when our neighbor, the District Education Officer (the Tanzanian equivalent of a Superintendent of a very large school district), arranged a car from his work to drive all our buckets to his office, where for some reason the pump was working. This was a long undertaking, and involved the hauling of some very large buckets. It was also very Tanzanian. One evening he came by and said, “Mr Alex, are you ready to go?” “Go where?” I asked. “To get water,” he responded. We left a minute later. When we were there he said, “Mr. Alex, you now know what it is like to be African.”

Eventually, the electricity returned, but the water did not. A week later (and another couple trips to the DEO’s office) I asked why the water had not returned, and got two different answers from the DEO and his wife. The DEO said the pump was broken, and his wife said that the water company had shut off water to the whole compound because nobody had paid their bills. So, really, I have no idea why we don’t have water, but we don’t.

About another week later (and a couple expensive water haulers who carried water from about a 20 minute walk away), one of the pipes that carries water into the compound was broken open by someone. Now, every morning from about 6-8 (or 9), this pipe sprays water all over the ground (as though it was leaking) and people collect water from this leak. Last Saturday, in dire need of water, I walked over (about a five minute walk from my house) at 6:30 before a line developed, and carried back around 7-8 gallons of water. It was awful, and it was only five minutes.

I have no idea how people carry 6 gallons on their heads. In many places, people carry water up to 5 kilometers (and more than that, in some places). Even the students at my school carry water from about 4-5 kilometers away. The craziest thing about this is that before the popularization of the lightweight plastic water bucket people (women mostly) carried water in heavy clay containers. Imagine that.

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