Summer has finally decided to show up in my part of Africa. After freezing for the first two months I was here, Africa has finally decided to live up tot he reputation we are taught our entire lives in school. Let me tell you living without AC or electricity for that matter to power a fan is becoming a problem. I love to be cold when i sleep and I am now stuck sweating constantly and looking like an all around hot mess daily.
The term is almost this is my last full week of teaching before testing starts and i cant believe have time has flown. The fact that it is already November blows my mind. Next week I am going to be leaving here and heading up to Dar Es Salaam to hang out and meet up with some of the other and actually be in a place that has electricity and fast Internet i cant wait.
Last weekend Gretchen, Nicole, Lisa and myself decided to go to Mbeya. It was Nicole's birthday weekend and we needed to go to the immigration office to get some endorsement stamp in our passport because we are all going to be traveling soon. The immigration office in Isongole assured us that the immigration office in Mbeya would be open on Saturday. With that knowledge Gretchen and I got up in the wee hours of the morning to take the one and only bus that leaves here which happens to be at 4 am and headed out. Most of you can probably guess that true to form things did not turn out the way they should. We got to Mbeya and found the immigration office only to be told that in fact they weren't open on Saturdays and to try again some other time. I was already coming to expect this but hey, a girl can hope right?
After that Nicole and i decided we were going to go back to Isongole for the night and celebrate her birthday by making a cake there. Everything else actually worked out and the cake turned out delish.
Halloween on the other hand was mildly depressing. I have tried to explain the concept of Halloween to all the people here and no one can understand the concept. On Monday i go to school ready to give my kids candy, for what they still don't get, only to find out 3/4 of the school had been sent home because they had not paid their school fees. I waited around for an hour at school and decided it wasn't worth it and i was going home to enjoy my cookies and lay out.
In other news there is now a huge bird living in the tree right outside my window. This may not sound like big news to you, but i swear it is taunting me. It only comes out at night and when it does it is constantly making noises and flapping its wings. Last night it started something new, there are little fruits on the tree and from time to time the bird will fly from the tree to our roof, well now it has decided to bring the fruits and drop them on our tin roof which sounds like softballs hitting our roof each time. I also have to sleep with my window open because it is so hot and this thing is making noise all night , its really starting to piss me off.
I will leave you with 5 things I learned this week
1. telling African kids to pose produces some of the funniest pictures
2. African ladies can officially carry almost anything on their heads
3. I was told by one of our friends he wants his son to marry me because it would be free because American girls don't expect a bride price, but that I would still have to do all the cooking and cleaning for the rest of my life because its Africa and that's what ladies do.
4. the concept of a swim suit is lost on the people in my village
5. my name is in fact not Lucas it is Rukasi, this was a legit conversation i have had multiple times lately. People tell me after i tell them my name which I only say is Lucas because Lindsay would be too far out of their reach to pronounce that Lucas is a boys name and that my parents are crazy for naming me this and that they really meant to name me Rukasi which is a perfectly acceptable girls name .
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Teacher On Duty
As i said in my last post last week I was assigned to be teacher on duty. Up till now I am pretty sure that the headmaster, second headmaster, and academic master really haven't had much faith in us, and therefore haven't really given us any responsibilities. During midterms they did not trust us enough to monitor the tests, it was that bad. Well now that all the student teachers have left and there are now only 5 of us teachers they kind of have no choice but to trust us. Gretchen had her week as teacher on duty the week before me and was assigned to do it with Makala the second headmaster.
Let me take this time to give you a run down of the teachers at our school, it will make things a lot more clear later on.
Makala- he is the second headmaster, he is from Dar and is 27 and probably the tallest person in the district, because everyone down here is short. He comes across as kind of a baby sometimes. He loves to come over and listen to my Ipod and hates walking around after dark (personally i think he is afraid of the dark). Anyway most of the time he is quiet and soft spoken and always refers to me as madam. Things turn though when he is dealing with students, suddenly he is loud and has a really scary and semi threatening tone an LOVES to piga (beat) the students. This morning in fact he informed me that it was good to piga the students because it gets their brains working in the morning....typical.
next we have Kassim- he is the academic master and oddly enough has basically been gone for most of the term, we are still not really sure where he went, but now he has returned and is back in action. He is from around this area and therefore is short and also semi soft spoken when you hang out with him. I have never really seen him teach a class but apparently he loves history and Geograph (because they don't ever pronounce the y on anything). He is also a big fan of pigaing the students because in his mind it builds character.
Finally we have the Old Man- He is the other English teacher and he is not really old by American standards but here he is Old. He has also been gone pretty much the whole semester which is my excuse for not knowing his name. That and the fact that when he signs in in the mornings he has worse hand writing than me and i cant read his name. He is also super quiet and only likes to piga the students when it is really necessary, but he always walks around with a huge stick to intimidate the students.
Now back to my week, I was assigned to be teacher on duty with the Old Ma. From the onset he knew my thoughts on pigaing the students and told me that this week he would try to do things my way. My way included hard labor for the kids who misbehaved. He liked the idea of hard labor so Monday afternoon all the students who were in trouble got to move bricks from one side of the campus to the other, i am not really sure why they moved them but hey it was something to do. Being teacher on duty basically means you are the secretary/ disciplinarian/ monitor. When the kids want to leave campus for any reason they must ask you. You make all the announcements in the mornings at the assembly and at the end of the day you dismiss them. All week long i would have kids coming into my classes to ask if they could go home because they were "sick."
Everything ended up going great the Old Man restrained himself and did not piga the students all week because as he told one of the parents who was up at school one day and did not understand why I was against pigaing the students, "in America they are taught that hitting people is against their human rights" after he made this comment there was a silence and then they both laughed at the idea of human rights and students actually having any. Needless to say I survived being teacher on duty even though i had to be at school early and stay late, although i am fairly certain that the students thought me being teacher on duty was a joke, because when i would go around doing uniform checks they would just kind of giggle as I passed...Oh well they like me and they respect me and listen to me when I tell them to do things so I am okay with it.
Let me take this time to give you a run down of the teachers at our school, it will make things a lot more clear later on.
Makala- he is the second headmaster, he is from Dar and is 27 and probably the tallest person in the district, because everyone down here is short. He comes across as kind of a baby sometimes. He loves to come over and listen to my Ipod and hates walking around after dark (personally i think he is afraid of the dark). Anyway most of the time he is quiet and soft spoken and always refers to me as madam. Things turn though when he is dealing with students, suddenly he is loud and has a really scary and semi threatening tone an LOVES to piga (beat) the students. This morning in fact he informed me that it was good to piga the students because it gets their brains working in the morning....typical.
next we have Kassim- he is the academic master and oddly enough has basically been gone for most of the term, we are still not really sure where he went, but now he has returned and is back in action. He is from around this area and therefore is short and also semi soft spoken when you hang out with him. I have never really seen him teach a class but apparently he loves history and Geograph (because they don't ever pronounce the y on anything). He is also a big fan of pigaing the students because in his mind it builds character.
Finally we have the Old Man- He is the other English teacher and he is not really old by American standards but here he is Old. He has also been gone pretty much the whole semester which is my excuse for not knowing his name. That and the fact that when he signs in in the mornings he has worse hand writing than me and i cant read his name. He is also super quiet and only likes to piga the students when it is really necessary, but he always walks around with a huge stick to intimidate the students.
Now back to my week, I was assigned to be teacher on duty with the Old Ma. From the onset he knew my thoughts on pigaing the students and told me that this week he would try to do things my way. My way included hard labor for the kids who misbehaved. He liked the idea of hard labor so Monday afternoon all the students who were in trouble got to move bricks from one side of the campus to the other, i am not really sure why they moved them but hey it was something to do. Being teacher on duty basically means you are the secretary/ disciplinarian/ monitor. When the kids want to leave campus for any reason they must ask you. You make all the announcements in the mornings at the assembly and at the end of the day you dismiss them. All week long i would have kids coming into my classes to ask if they could go home because they were "sick."
Everything ended up going great the Old Man restrained himself and did not piga the students all week because as he told one of the parents who was up at school one day and did not understand why I was against pigaing the students, "in America they are taught that hitting people is against their human rights" after he made this comment there was a silence and then they both laughed at the idea of human rights and students actually having any. Needless to say I survived being teacher on duty even though i had to be at school early and stay late, although i am fairly certain that the students thought me being teacher on duty was a joke, because when i would go around doing uniform checks they would just kind of giggle as I passed...Oh well they like me and they respect me and listen to me when I tell them to do things so I am okay with it.
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