It’s been six months since 39 Americans landed in Tanzania. Four months in the village. Three months of teaching. And by now things are settled, most of us have established some sort of routine, we (think we) know what to expect on a day-to-day basis. I can’t say Tanzania feels like home but it feels nice to finally be settled here.
I’m teaching 22 periods per week: Form 2 Basic Mathematics and Form 4 Physics. Every morning I wake up with the sun at 6:30, get dressed and arrive at school around 7:15, watch the morning assembly or prepare for the day’s classes until my first period at 8:00. I enter the class, the students stand up to greet me, “good morning, Madame,” and usually reply to whatever I say with “we are fine.” The lesson begins. I explain how to simplify algebraic expressions and the laws of exponents. Some students are eager to come to the chalkboard and solve problems, others are afraid and won’t get out of their seat when I hand them a piece of chalk. Many get the problem incorrect because of a simple arithmetic mistake, and I take time to explain why -6 + 4 isn’t -10. Some students interrupt class, talk out of turn, don’t pay attention, copy another student’s Agriculture or Chemistry notes during my class, and I have to come up with some way to discipline them, to keep my class under control, to motivate the students to learn.
The timekeeper, a Form 2 student, runs out of class to ring the bell, signaling the end of the period. I walk out of class carrying my duster and a few pieces of chalk, along with my notes for the day, and immediately enter another classroom. In Tanzania the students own the classroom and the teacher makes their way from room to room. I hand the duster to a student to wipe the board clean as the others stand up to greet me, and the lesson begins again, the exact same lesson to another group of 40 Form 2 students.
Form 2s are difficult. While some are wonderful students many of them just don’t listen, don’t care, dislike mathematics and therefore try very little in my class. Disciplining them is incredibly difficult because they speak very little English and my Kiswahili isn’t good enough to say what I want to say. My Form 4s are usually different: these are the students who have chosen to take Physics so they are the oldest and brightest in the school, many of them staying after school to study, to work on projects, to prepare for their upcoming national examination which will determine their future post-secondary school. These students rarely need to be disciplined and many are not afraid to ask me questions in English.
At 10:40 every day the fourth period is over and it’s time for our chai break. Teachers get scalding hot sugary tea and maandazi, fried and mildly sweet squares of dough. Students get uji, a porridge made from a mix of anything from millet to maize flour to peanuts. Two students bring teachers chai every day, usually 10 or 15 minutes late, so most other teachers take their time on their break, ignoring that our period starts at 11:00. Usually by 11:15 or 11:20 the staff room is cleared out and the teachers have dispersed to teach.
Four more periods then lunch. Mondays and Fridays we have makande, Tuesday and Thursdays it’s ugali and beans, Wednesdays it’s rice and beans. The students eat ugali and beans every day. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I usually eat very little, sometimes nothing at all, because the ugali at my school isn’t terribly appetizing.
After lunch the students return to their classrooms for 40 minutes of private study. Then the bell rings again and students emerge for cleanliness, some washing the lunch dishes, others fetching water, some cutting grass and taking care of the plants. Sometimes I’m still in the staff room, correcting exercises or preparing notes. Often I’m already at home, cleaning my house, reading a book, working in my garden. On the days when school is really tough I come home and nap. On days I’m feeling motivated I boil that day’s delivery of fresh milk, sip chai and make notes. Sometimes I’ll take a walk into the village, stopping and greeting people, helping a friend sell her vegetables, buying a soda and talking to a shopkeeper. Trips to the village are never shorter than an hour, even if I plan to just stop at the duka then come home. Sometimes I don’t walk back until almost 7:00 when it starts to get dark, and people ask if I’m afraid of elephants.
Night falls and I light my lantern. Sometimes I cook rice or soup if I’m hungry, sometimes tea is enough. I lay on the couch with a book, do yoga, talk on the phone, stare at the stars, sit on my porch and think about the animals lurking around my house, write letters. Things are pretty quiet after dark and given that I’m deathly afraid of leaving my house when I can’t see and when there are elephants and leopards roaming my village, I usually don’t go farther than the front porch. 10:00 rolls around and it’s time for bed. I cover myself in blankets and fall asleep.
Wake up the next morning. Repeat.
Every day the schedule is more or less the same but there’s always something unexpected that happens. Planning anything more than a day in advance is nearly impossible: a friend happens to drop by for a few hours, the rain keeps everyone indoors for an afternoon, someone suddenly decided to hold a soccer match after school, a surprise staff meeting is occurring today so a few classes are cancelled. Everyone is constantly kept on their toes, things are always changing, the air is always fresh. Some days I’ll even show up at school only to realize it’s a public holiday that nobody told me about — surprise, you get the day off! (Those are my favorite days.)
