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, 25th).
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.
1 comments:
You're going to have to make some of those recipes when you return, Carly. I would love to taste your curry.
LOTS OF LOVE!!
MOM
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