Living as an African... kind of

Inside our new room



Yep, that's me cleaning the floor with a rag, like all the other African women do... I swore it was my first and last time, so Simon bought me a mop, with a handle... and a broom... with a handle. It might not seem so exciting but NO ONE uses things with handles here, they all bend in double and use their hands on the floor.
I can't even touch the floor when I bend over!
MEN DON 'T DO THE DISHES!!!... Simon hiding inside to wash and he was trying to avoid his picture taken!
Me, outside in the little compound where all the women do dishes and wash clothes
'Cooking' for the first time... we made tea... it was horrible!
Simon eating chapati (we bought) and drinking chai (tea)
Me cooking french toast... it was great! check out the colour of the African eggs... just like eggs from my mum's chooks!

Moving in

Our mattress - only cut foam, but the most expensive thing we have bought so far!
The couch is coming... there is no such thing as 2nd-hand furniture here apparently so you just have to keep making more if you want any.
The tyre blew out with everything loaded on the back, I was in the front seat and it was a left-hand drive car so my ear-drum nearly blew out too!
No need to tie things down, we have 3 men to sit on them!

The Markets

These are the 2nd-hand clothes markets, where we bought things like bedsheets, curtains etc for our one room

My New Class - their last day with Miss Leslie

The Class 5 stayed back on the last day of last term to play and have a sleepover, saying their goodbyes to their beloved Miss Leslie. The girls played rede (a type of brandings game) and netball and the boys played football against a team of the school's workers (including Simon). Everyone had lots of fun! The boys won the game against the fundi!
Unfortunately, the flash on my camera wasn't very strong and so the pictures are too dark.







After it got too dark outside we all came in to play limbo and just plain old dancing fun! I tell you what, some of the dancing in these children is amazing!!!

1 Week break in Mid-term

This week I've been catching up on mountains of old and new paperwork and settling in our new house/room. We decided that the room was way too small and we needed another, fortunately the rooms on either side of us are empty... unfortunately apparently they have been claimed. So, it's still one small room for cooking, sleeping, working, everything!

I have some great pictures coming of m cooking and washing African style, something Simon thought was highly amusing until I told him that whoever cooks doesn't do the dishes and that he was going to be washing his own clothes!

He said, "But Emily, that's not African tradition! Men don't do those jobs!"
I said, "Too bad for tradition, it's that or nothing!"

He has done the dishes 3 times now and he spent all morning wahing his own clothes! No washing machines here and certainly no wifely slaves!

It's common to wash clothes and dishes outside, Simon insists on hiding inside to wash the dishes and he goes away from all the other women in our little complex when washing his clothes!

Simon already knows that I never iron!!!

Kindergarten music class

Can't really say much about this, very cute!

Orphans

On Wednesday afternoon, I walked outside the school gates to get a soda at the bar and my phone rang, it was Simon explaining the latest problems with the carpenter and his varnish. As I was on the phone 2 children walked up and stood next to me. The older one, a very grubby girl greeted me with the respectful “Shikamoh” and waited. I got off the phone and asked them what they wanted in Swahili, the replied with something but I couldn’t understand any of it. I called Mary over (she attends the school’s bar) to translate for me, but her English is not great either. She said that they had come to the school for help because they are orphans and are hungry. I didn’t know what to do so I sat them down with a soda each and went to find someone who could help. I was told that I should send them away, give them nothing and not encourage them to come back otherwise we’d get hundreds of them the next day. It wasn’t going to be easy for me to do that.

I went back to the gate and asked one of the Tanzanian teachers in the bar (he was invited to dinner so was staying back with us all waiting) to come and translate a bit better. We discovered that they had no parents but lived with a sick grandmother in the next village. The 2 of them went to school in Moshono and had been begging for food since school finished at 11am, they had managed to get 2 bags of flour and sugar for their efforts even before getting to the school!

The girl said she was 10 and her name was Ruth and the boy was 8 and his name was Godlisten. We called on Gemma’s father in law to come as he is the chief of the village and he said he knew their father was killed late last year along with others in the family. We decided to drive them to their home to check out their story and assess if we could help… we being myself, Dan (another soft volunteer here) and Sebastion the Tanzanian teacher/translator plus Janet (another soft volunteer) with her car.

We found a small mudhouse with a grandmother too sick to stand and 3 other children, including a baby. After many questions we discovered that Ruth was 13 and in Class 4 with her younger sister who is 11 and the next 2 boys are in class 1 and 2… all siblings. The baby is from another mother, a friend or neighbour who died and they took him in. The father and aunts and uncles all died in a vehicle accident last year and the mother died from HIV before that. So, this poor grandmother has been left with 5 kids and no way to earn money!

Ruth is an amazing actress and very clever in her own little way, however is repeating class 4 this year and couldn’t answer a simple maths question from Sebastion. Dan and I will go back to visit and figure out how we can help them, even if we aren’t exactly meant to.

My Big Week

Last weekend Simon and I found a room to rent in a ‘suburb’ called Banana (areas around here tend to be named after the largest sign in the vicinity, so there is a Banana wine factory with a sign by the road so the area is called Banana).

It’s fairly uncomfortable at times to live inside the school with all the usual sharehouse problems but with 25 housemates! It was also a matter of money as it’s only 10 000Tsh per month to rent (about $10). So, I have been happy all week waiting for the custom made furniture to be finished and transported to our little place… today hopefully!

I’ll be learning to cook the African way on a small burner on the floor, plus I’ll be cooking African food as it’s much cheaper and Simon doesn’t like most Western food. It’s going to be like I’m really living in Tanzania now! No shower at all let alone a hot one, I’ll be heating a bucket of water with an emersion heater and sloshing it over myself in a cold little cement room, a lot like a small cell.

So, that was the first thing to make me happy, then Gemma came to one of my recorder clubs and took photos for the newsletter (she might have finally accepted them). You can see the newsletter at the school’s website at
http://www.schoolofstjude.co.tz/



The next thing was that after Gemma telling me I was not good enough to take a homeroom class, especially the most important class in the school (Standard 5 – who have been here the longest and earned the school the number 3 rank in the district) Gemma then approached me and said she’d love me to take the class after the homeroom teacher left this week! Leslie, the current homeroom teacher had recommended me for the job about a month ago and it did not go down well, especially as I had never asked for the job and wasn’t particularly interested. So, now I’m the new Standard 5 homeroom teacher and that brings with it more report writing, parent teacher interviews and more classes!

Our deputy, Nestory dropped in to the artroom to point out the new logbook to Suzanne, the art teacher. He was informing her exactly how she needed to fill in yet another pile of paperwork (we have lesson plans books, schemes of work books, week outline forms, logbooks for after the teaching and something else that I’m sure I haven’t done). In the logbook there is a space for the Head of Department to sign, so we asked who signs there as we don’t have an HOD. Nestory then reminded me that I was the HOD since I had, in a tongue-in-cheek way called a meeting with all the ‘left over’ subject teachers like PE, art, music, library and tuition. It is EXTREMELY important to be ‘recognised’ in this school and if you are not seen to be doing you job then it is thought that you are doing nothing at all… something that happened to me as I did not ‘market’ myself.
So, now I’m officially the HOD of the extras, another job requiring a lot of paperwork and also making sure all the teachers ‘under’ me are properly recognised at staff meetings etc.

The next thing was that I was elected to represent all volunteers when it came to the monthly whole school meetings, this includes the cooks, cleaners, drivers, security guards, admin staff, gardeners and head tradesmen… apparently I’m diplomatic!!!

In the next week, when the school is closed for a week for mid-term break, I’ll be so busy with all of these things plus writing a music curriculum, I think I’ll go mad! At least my health is ok at the moment… although now I’ve written that, who knows?

Next week is the dealine for decided what I’m doing next year, both for the School of St Jude’s sake and for Orana School back home. At this stage, I just don’t know but I have 7 days to think!

Recorder clubs... we are getting somewhere

Each week on Thursday and Friday afternoons 25 children fit inside the small artroom for recorder club. There are 2 groups as there are so many keen to learn. We are beginning to hear notes now rather than just squeaking.
Outside on the grass for their individual practising... amongst the workers of the school
The tractor is much more interesting than playing recorder


In the artroom



Some days I just dread recorder club as it is so loud in such a small space, but it seems to be paying off.

In need of beaters!

Beating is discouraged at St Jude's (though, unfortunately some of the local teachers have been known to use some sort of physical punishment). In this case however, beaters are needed for the xylophones. We are using rulers and sticks and pens.
This is a Standard 4 music class

New House!

This is the building that Simon and I will be living in, ours is the closest window you can see. It's a medium sized room... yes only one room. We share a toilet (drop hole) and a bathroom (a room with a tap... cold). I will be keeping my room at St Jude's for a while for the occasional hot shower.
Cleaning the window... Many locals stood to watch in amazement to see a white person actually cleaning!

Simon, happy!