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.