Sunday I was incredibly tired – like,
the kind of tired where you're not sure you're still alive when you
first wake up in the morning because your body doesn't want to move.
I slept in and hung around the house pretty much all day. My only
goal for that day was to finish up the gifts I wanted to send home to
the USA. I have to say, there may not be anything too special in
those packages but they were incredibly fun to put together! I am
praying they make it in time for Christmas. (Please please
please!!!).
Monday as usual, we had our morning
pre-form session. I don't have class at school until 3:20pm (9th
period Advise), so I headed straight to the post to mail away these
packages. It's getting too close to Christmas now, so I wanted to do
it ASAP. I met the lady who works in the post store (selling
envelopes, tape, stamps, etc.) who has become my friend over the
months. I bought stronger tape on my way to the Post to seal them
all up and she insisted on helping me tape. Consequently, after
about 20 minutes and almost half a roll of tape (she went crazy –
no one's getting in those boxes!) I excitedly brought my packages up
to the other Mama to see how much it would cost (this Mama is nice if
you butter her up with a lot of Kiswahili, otherwise she can be a
little grumpy). She was kind enough to inform me that I needed to
check customs for a package this size – you know, customs, as in
they have to see what is INSIDE my package BEFORE I tape it up with a
half a roll of tape and a waste of 20 minutes. I think I almost
cried, which was very uncalled for, but I just didn't know when I
would be able to get back to the Post, and at that moment it felt
that any second longer I wanted was a guarantee these dumb boxes
wouldn't get there in time. They both were really sorry, handing out
the “pole”s left and right (pole, “sorry”). Not sure why
lady #1 didn't mention this before all our work, but it's my fault
not theres. Anyway – I rushed to school and made it right on time,
but really tired and dehydrated from my lengthy excursion. It's
really hot now!
I woke up with a dreadful headache on
Tuesday – it's the rainy season, which means every other week it
might rain once, but I think that's what brought on the headache. It
was the kind too that makes my stomach hurt so bad that I think I
might throw-up, so I talked with Sean and decided to stay home from
our morning class. He actually had been feeling pretty bad too the
past few days (I really hope not from our Thanksgiving dinner!) and
didn't go to class on Monday, so he instead took my computer and a
movie that Maura sent - “Despicable Me” (excellent movie,
seriously watched it 4 times already) and we called it an English
lesson. I went back to bed, but decided around 9am to try the Post
again. There was no way I'd be able to teach for a few hours without
being a complete B*%#^ (from the headache, doi) but I needed to move
around. I decided to take a risk and not reopen my packages until
the Customs person told me to because I wasn't about to wrap these
bad boys all over again.
Unfortunately, the Customs man is
probably the most terrifying person in this country – we have to go
to him when we pick up packages from the States that are above a
certain weight/price. He hates smiling and kind words. I think he's
allergic to me. Anyways, when I saw him I thought for sure he'd make
me open them but when I explained what ridiculous things were inside
(can't go into detail here but basically things that mean a lot to me
but have really no value here), he rolled his eyes and made me write
it all down and sign the customs slip. After slamming the stamp onto
both sheets and handing them too me, I gingerly got up not sure if we
were through and quite frankly, terrified to ask it we were through
when he gave me the go with a short “nenda” (go) I got the heck
out of there. The Mama was excited to see me again when I had the
slips attached and gave me like 100 stamps (not kidding) to paste all
over these boxes. You'd think 10,000 tsh stamps existed, but
apparently not because I got 67,500 tsh stamps in 2,000s, 1,000s, and
500s. Ridiculous. Basically it took me about 10 full minutes to
puzzle piece these stamps all over the fronts of these packages –
actually, Dad and Maura: you should probably take pictures of those
boxes. It's humorous really. The most exciting moment was finally
handing the freshly stamped boxes and walking out the door. I met
Sean at home and we both spent the day in bed, basically with stomach
issues that kept us close to the choo (toilet). Verdict came back
that at least two other friends were also sick from after
Thanksgiving, so it had to be something we ate. The others keep
blaming it on the turkey fat (but who ate turkey FAT? ew) but who
knows! I'm just glad they're not pointing fingers at me!
This week was actually a really
unfortunate week to get sick because my students were giving ethics
presentations in which Teacher Roland, Teacher Sean and I were voting
for the best group in each class and we (especially me, their
teacher) needed to be there. But Roland is great and he really took
interest in the whole project. Thank God for him!
The past few weeks in my ethics class
we've been discussing the value of “justice.” We started out
talking about wants vs needs, then talked about rights especially the
UN's list of children's rights, and later talked about justice, how
both knowledge and action are necessary. At the end of it, I brought
up five serious issues in Tanzania (and almost every other country
really, but we used real cases from Tanzania so it was more relevant)
regarding children. The goal was to create presentations as if we
were part of the Bunge (parliament) of Tanzania and we wanted to
address and solve the issue. I assigned five groups in each stream,
about 6-7 students per group. Each “committee” was assigned an
issue: 1. low number of people having birth certificates, 2. low
numbers of children attending secondary school, 3. low numbers of
girls attending primary school, 4. trafficking of children, 5. street
children. Each committee was supposed to give a presentation which
included an explanation of the issue, which rights are being violated
because of it's existence, and short and long term plans for fixing
the problem for good.
The presentations ended up being so-so.
I know I asked a lot and didn't give them much time to prepare, and
I was impressed with what they did come up with. Actually, the most
impressive part of the whole experience was how their classmates
asked challenging and relevant questions after each presentation. I
can tell some of them are really thinking these things through, which
is excellent! After seeing all presentations, Roland, Sean, and I
chose the best group for each topic and announced a Bunge session for
the following Friday. The students did pretty well – they still
need a lot of work in terms of public speaking, but they tried their
hardest. Some groups ended up talking much longer than expected, and
consequently we ran out of time for questions which was the part I
was really looking forward to. But this was a first time! We're
planning on using my lesson plans for ethics class next year and
we'll be able to spend more time with this whole thing. I'm looking
forward to that! At the end of our Parliament session, we treated the
committees to soda and karanga (peanuts). It was a success! And
that pretty much wrapped up my classes for the year!
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