I have been in Ngara for a week (as of the writing of this post on September 13… yes, it has taken a while to post this), yet already I find myself falling into routine. I wake up by 6:10 so I can be out the door by 6:30, so I can arrive at school by 7:30. My first day I thought I could make the walk in 40 minutes, but even at a really fast speed walk I still arrived about 5 minutes late. Now I leave myself an hour, so that I don’t have to walk on the verge of a run, but I have decided that I will purchase a bicycle so in the future I will not have to devote so much of my life to walking to and from school. Still, walking has been a worthwhile experience. Many of the students at my school, and others across Tanzania, walk double the distance I have been walking, and then they have next to nothing to eat or drink over the course of the school day. It is very impressive, but also very sad.
Arriving at school, I sign into the book which teachers must sign into every day. Nobody ever signs in after 7:30. I say hello to whatever teachers are milling around the staff room, and then head to my ‘office’ where I will either prepare to teach, help students, or chat with whoever else is there. My time at school is by far the most unpredictable part of my day. While there is a set schedule, even during this first week it seems like it is rarely stuck to. The only real constant, it seems, is the tea break, which never gets canceled. A staff meeting will be held during class, or, classes will simply be canceled.
Something that happened yesterday illustrates brilliantly how my school, and presumably most Tanzanian schools operate. Many of my classes are doubles, meaning that there are two periods back to back, but this specific class is a double with a period separating it for “radio.” So, I found a natural break in my lesson, and told my students I would be back in 40 minutes to finish their lesson. I walked down to the staff room, and had lunch with the other teachers. A few minutes before my class was due to start, I said “I am going back to teach. Badaye (later).” I entered class and began to continue my lesson, but five minutes in a student approached me and said, “Mr. Alex, we have to leave.” I was very confused, but figuring they knew better than I did, I released them. As I walked outside, I saw the Discipline Master (the teacher who has the additional duty of handling student misbehavior, occasionally with corporal punishment). I asked him why my students had left, and he explained that for the next three days (and maybe more) after 12:55 Form IV students would be practicing for graduation and they would not be going to class. I had a moment of panic where I began to worry that this stream (I teach 4 steams of Form IV with about 50 students a piece) would fall behind. Then, I realized that this kind of thing will be happening all the time, and there is nothing at all I can do about it. I will simply have to be prepared for the cancelation of my classes from time to time – it is a fixture of the Tanzanian school system, and no amount of complaining or arguing on my part could ever change it. While, to my mind, such cancelations are detrimental to the education of my students, that is simply not how Tanzanians would look at it. How, exactly, they see it, I cannot be sure, but it is yet another example of cultural difference.
In any case, after school ends at 3:00 I walk home, making a stop at the market to pick up anything I need, and then a little further down the road, making a stop at the internet cafe if I have the time. By the time I get home it is around 4, which means it is time to start cooking if I hope to eat before it’s dark around 7:00. I start the charcoal jiko, which takes about 15-30 minutes to get to temperature, depending on how much kerosine I use, and then I begin to prepare dinner, which variously consists of picking through and cleaning beans and rice to make sure there is not rocks, grass, or other random matter in them, and preparing vegetables. And, of course, there is only one burner unless I light up the kerosine jiko. By 7:00, if I am lucky, I have finished eating dinner, and if I am even luckier the electricity is working, meaning I don’t have to walk around the house with my headlamp until 9-10, when I go to bed.
And thus ends my day. More to come on Tanzanians, my students, the school (and the school system), and much more.
PS: Cold showers in coldish climates are really awful.