Emotional Roller Coaster

Last weekend, Sarah, another PCV, and I had an interesting conversation about emotions. We both came to the conclusion that emotional states here, for some reason, are extremely magnified. Things that would make you relatively happy at home can just about make your month here. For example, getting NYT crossword puzzles and a few magazines in the mail will make me smile all day long, combine that with a few packets of tuna and crystal light and I may as well have won the damn lottery. Conversely, the smallest disappointment can make you feel like you are stuck at the bottom of a 30-foot well with no one around to hear your screams. Every day here I feel like I am on an emotional roller coaster and just wondering when I am going to hit the highest point of the day or the lowest. Granted some days the average of my emotional state tends to be higher, but today has not been one of those days.

This story really began yesterday, so that is where I will start. I was listening to the news on VOA and realized that there were some terrorist acts that took place in Nairobi as a result of Kenyan forces entering into Somalia. I called up Peace Corps because I was concerned they would not let me travel to Nairobi to take the LSAT in about a month. As suspected, I am not allowed to travel to Kenya and in all honesty do not really want to be anywhere near people and hand grenades. I then contacted the people who give the test and explained my situation. Unfortunately, they are going to make me pay the extra money (a lot of extra money) to have the test moved to Dar. I could have done this earlier, but was going to take it in Nairobi to save money. On the upside they are going to let me take it in Dar, which I guess they did not have to agree to. Anyway, this coupled with the fact that Sunday morning I woke up with another lovely case of food poisoning set my week off to a really horrendous start.

Moving on, this morning when I was going to teach my first period class and realized the majority of my students were not in the classroom, but being punished for arriving to school late, I went and rounded them up in front of the teacher on duty without permission. Looking back, it was a poor decision not to ask first, but they were using my class time to punish students.  I admittedly did what I did out not out frustration and because I wanted to teach my students for a full period, but because I needed an emotional pick me up. My latter intention completely backfired in my face (Yes, Judy, if you are reading, I may have asked for this one). After class I felt guilty about what I had done and went to apologize to the teacher, whom I had wronged. [I should mention that culturally Tanzanians will not tell you if they are angry with you unless they are extremely angry with you.] Being less than thrilled to see me, he told me he was angry. I apologized to him and tried to explain that I know I live here and am expected to follow Tanzanian culture and in America what I did would not have been looked favorably upon either. I also tried to justify my actions by explaining that it is not easy for me to follow another culture 24 hours a day 7 days a week and as a result my behavior sometimes breaks down. After my explanation he seemed to understand my position, but still insisted I stole my students so they would not be hit because I do not approve of corporal punishment. I agree with him that I do not approve of it, but stated that I knew there was nothing I could do about it and was more upset that he was taking up my class time.  After all was said and done I called up and vented to Kat, who was really gracious and listened to me even though she experiences the same situation daily at her school, then made a cup of coffee.

Lesson learned from this situation: (maybe more like hypothesis reconfirmed) emotions are extremely amplified here and I think whenever I enter into a charged situation I need to keep a better charge of my emotional state and account for huge fluctuation. All in all, sometimes, as my father says, you have to eat a little crow.

All my love from TZ. 

Tanzanian Jack-o'-lantern

It is mid-October, which means fall is in full swing at home and spring is here! This means I no longer have to wear legging underneath my skirts, sleep in a sweatsedo, worry about heating my bath water or the electricity being off for 23 hours a day. I am proud to say that I have finished the syllabi for math and physics and my classes are currently in review mode—lord knows we need it. Sadly, I believe some of my students have the retention of a [insert animal with poor memory here]. Alas, I am attempting to combat that with plenty of interactive review before exam week (mid November) and the end of the school year (Friday, November, 25^th).

Everything else seems to be moving along here. Last week the form four students all across Tanzania took the national exam (NECTA). This meant that we had about five visiting teachers sent to our school to invigilate (proctor) and two policemen with guns to guard the tests. [Seriously, these guys don’t have better things to be doing?] Hard to believe, but we said good-bye to Andrew (a volunteer in the Education class before me) this week. He is finished with his two years of service at the end of the month. His leaving got me thinking of how much time I have left here and how much time has already past. Strange to think that I will have lived at my school for a whole year at the end of November! New health and environment volunteers arrived this past week as well and we will hopefully receive some new people in early December, right around the time I will be traveling to Nairobi to take the LSAT.

This past week I embarked on a new adventure in the spirit of fall in New England, I bought two pumpkins. One I used to make pumpkin cookies, pumpkin bread and pumpkin curry and the other I had a bear of a time carving into an African Jack o’ lantern. The food actually came out really well, but I was disappointed that the left over pumpkin I had spoiled before I could use it to make ravioli.  Speaking of cooking I am actually amazed how far my ability has come over the past year, I am no Julia Child, but I can now make noodles from scratch, grill steaks and make a mean curry. Hopefully after service I will continue to cook from scratch, but will all of the convinces that are available at home and that have been unavailable in the past year I am not sure how true that statement will prove.

So seeing as there is never a dull moment here, this morning was no exception. On my way to teach my first period of the day I was followed by a boy about 10 years old who was dressed in tattered clothes, carrying homemade toys and wearing two broken sandals. At first I did not think much of the situation because kids follow me around here a lot, however when he walked into my classroom, I was a little scared. All 80 of my students started to laugh when he continued to walk further into my classroom and closer to me. At this point all of the students looked at me and seeing the panic on my face because the kid was giving me the hairy eyeball, got up and chased him out of the room.  After they came back in the room we all had a good laugh. Apparently he is a mentally handicapped kid who lives in the village and escapes from home every once in a while, which would explain why I have never seen him before. This morning I was also visited by James from Peace Corps because he was doing new education volunteer site visits in the region. I was surprised when he asked me if I was going to Tanga for the new health and environment volunteer training and I said I wasn’t. About a month back I applied to be a facilitator and teach a session on the Tanzanian education system and teaching in Tanzania. Apparently the staff liked the idea, but never contacted me about it? Not quite sure, but I would have really liked to do the session…

Miss you all! Good luck next weekend to people racing in the Head of the Charles. Wish I could be there!

All my love from TZ. 

"That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Living in Tanzania when it is down pouring outside and no electricity would probably leave anyone with a lot of time to think and I am no exception. Yesterday morning when I turned on my MacBook Pro to check my email and the news, as I do every morning, I was shocked and saddened to learn that Steve Jobs had passed away. As the day wore on most of my friends on Facebook had posted some sort of tribute to him, which got me thinking about how much I admired him not only because he helped to develop half of the technology that is sitting on my coffee table, but because he liked to keep things simple.

After having lived in Tanzania for almost 13 months now, I appreciate simplicity more than ever. I see where Steve Jobs was coming from when he wanted his products, and possibly life, to be simple and streamlined. He appeared to live a very modest life, considering that his net worth was more than the GDP of most countries, and to be in love with his job. Living here has taught me that simple is good and that less is definitely more. After this adventure is over and I return to the land where life can be complicated by luxuries that are taken for granted, I hope that my life is simpler and more streamlined than it was before I left. Does this mean I will be giving up running water, hot showers, a dishwasher, car and eating processed food, no probably not, but I will hopefully have a more stripped down and simplified view of life; I hope that I continue to find the joy in the small things. Here I get excited about Nacho night, being able to watch “When Harry Met Sally” on a Saturday night with a bowl of popcorn or talk to my parents on the phone. I also hope to enjoy my work at home as much as I enjoy my work here.

To look at a bigger picture, I think the ideologies of Steve Jobs and the Peace Corps can be considered one in the same. Change the world, but keep it simple.  As a Peace Corps volunteer I am aware that what I am hopefully doing is initiating change on a small scale, but small is simple and affective. I like to think of the ideas I share with my students as a small rocks thrown into a placid lake. I think one could say the same thing for Steve Jobs contributions, although his ideas were more like simple boulders. I am not sure change could manifest itself in a more simple way than the ripple effect.

So thank you, Steve, for my all of my computers and iPods (without them I have already expired here due to boredom) and for showing the world that no matter how advanced we become we can still keep it simple.

Everything else is going well here. Yesterday it rained from 1 pm to about 12am and I thought that the rain was going to wash out my garden, but it is still standing as of this morning. On the bright side, I will not have to boil drinking water for the next week and tonight is nacho night in Tukuyu!

All my love from TZ

*Title quote from Steve Jobs