Last day of School

Today was my last day as a teacher. I had the standard one class and we did an English lesson on items of clothing. When the kids were finished I gave them huge stickers my aunt Beth sent me. The kids were amazed by stickers that size. After English I had a little extra time before leaving and we played a few rounds of hang man, which the kids love to play, though they don't get the subtleties of the game. The answer to the last puzzle was good bye. When the van came to take us I said good bye to the class, good bye to Teacher Madam, good bye to Mr. James and left my boots with him for his out reach program, and good bye to Teacher Herman. One of the students, Shadrack, gave me a folded piece of paper with a small poem and an old picture of him inside of it as a good bye card. The last day of school always makes me feel both happy and sad, usually more happy than sad though. This was the first time I felt more sad than happy after leaving a school for the last time.

Yesterday I was able to give the standard three and four kids the response letters from my aunt Beth's class in Stratford. They were very excited as it was a surprise for them, and they loved the class picture that was included so that they could see what their pen pal's looked like. We wrote letters back again and I have them with me. When I get home I will bring them to the class myself and try to answer any questions my aunt's class has about Tanzania. I'll also bring pictures I took of my students writing the letters to show what they look like. My students also got Disney pins that came with the letters, which they were still wearing on their uniforms today. The many Tootsie-pop's that were in the package were divided between the Kili Kids orphanage, and another volunteer's nursery school class. They were all very much appreciated.

I am feeling just about healthy again after finishing my malaria pills yesterday. They worked amazingly fast for which I am greatful. My amoeba pills I will have to take until next Tuesday, but they are a very minor problem and aren't bothering me much. Dad has already booked me an appointment to see Dr. Scifo on next Tuesday just to be safe. I'm sure I'll be fine.

Now that school is over for me I feel more ready to come home. There is very little left for me to do here. I have finished my gift shopping and am mostly just waiting for Sunday evening. I will go out to dinner tonight with my friends at CCS and probably tomorrow night as well for one last time. I will miss my kids at school, but I know they will be alright because Mr. James runs that school extremely well. I will miss the friends I have made here as well, both within CCS and from Moshi. But I miss my family and I miss my friends back home, and its time for me to return. I will see you all soon.

Thank you for reading,

Allen

Just a little sick

So on Sunday I went to bed with a slightly upset stomach, I took some ant-acids and went to bed with the expectation of waking up feeling much better in the morning. When I did wake up in the morning, some time around 2 am I would guess, I was decidedly not feeling better. I was very hot and had a bad head ache. I spent the whole morning tossing and turning. When I tried to stand up I would get very dizzy, and only managed to get up once to get an advil from my bathroom. It helped a little.

I slept for most of the morning, well, I dozed for most of the morning, trying not to move to much. I thought I may have had the flu, it's flu season here and it has been going around. In the afternoon, because I was not getting any better, I went to the hospital. They drew some blood and quickly told me that I had malaria. The nurse gave me a shot of medicine because they were afraid that I would throw up the pills. The shot did help, and I slept much more soundly last night.

I went back to the doctor this morning for a check up, and they discovered that not only do I have malaria, but I also have ameba's in my stomach. This at least is not a very big deal, and the doctor offered to let me finish my malaria medication before starting the amoeba medication. I decided to take the amoeba pills now though, because I want to be healthy as soon as possible, and the doctor said there is nothing wrong with taking them both at once.

So now I take 5 pills a day to keep my fever down, 8 pills a day for the malaria, 9 pills a day for the amoebas, and 2 pills a day to keep my stomach settled. That's 24 pills a day if my math is right. It's not so bad as it sounds, and the medicine is working already. By tomorrow or Thursday I should be well enough to go back to school for at least a couple more days. I hope so anyways. It would be sad if I didn't get to see the kids one more time before I leave.

The Walk to School

Now that I am out of CCS and on my own in Moshi it means that I have to walk to school in the mornings. I've walked every day this week and will for my next, and last, week as well. It takes about half an hour to get from my hotel in down town Moshi to the school which is in a section of town called Pasua. Though Pasua is one of the poorer areas of town I feel completely safe walking in the morning, and even keep my passport and plane tickets with me because I feel safer to have them on me than to leave them in my hotel room. The walk itself is rather interesting, and I think worth describing.

I get up about the same time here as I did at CCS, about 6:30, just as the sun is coming up. I shower, put on my school clothes (kackies and a button down shirt) and go upstairs for breakfast in the roof top restaurant. From the fourth floor of the Kindoroko I drink my coffee, which is excellent, and look out over Moshi town. The mornings lately have been very overcast, and yesterday and today it was actually raining out as I left for school.


The first third of my walk is down the Double Rd., which is the closest thing to main st. that Moshi has. The pavement makes for a quick walk with out much mud or many puddles, and I usually make good time. When the Double Rd. ends however, and by end I mean that the pavement ends and it turns to dirt, is when the walk becomes a bit more challenging. The mud is thick, sticks to your shoes and builds up to a nice layer so that the bottom of your shoes don't actually touch the road. What is amazing is that the Tanzanians are able to walk along these roads with out getting a speck of mud on their pant leg's, and in most cases with out it even getting on their shoes. As hard as I try I always end up with at least a bit of mud on my pant cuff's and my shoes are a lost cause.

There are several interesting things that I see along the way. The end of the Double Rd. is where most of the auto mechanics in Moshi are located and outside their shops are bits and pieces of cars. Later on down the dirt road in fact there is what appears to be an elephants graveyard of old Dala-dala buses. In the background I can hear a team of blacksmiths pounding on the metal to reshape it into new pieces. Also on the dirt road is a fenced off field of mostly mud these days, and in the field are these huge birds that just sort of hang out. I don't know what kind of birds they are, though they look like large storks, or why they are always there. I have seen them in flight and know they could fly away if they wanted to, but they are always there.

It's an interesting walk and I enjoy it for the most part, thought I do not mind hitching a ride back to town on the CCS bus when it comes to get the other volunteers. I wish the mornings would be dryer so that I didn't have to wear my boots that pinch my feet just slightly, and so that I could see Kili a few more times before I leave. It's hard to believe that I only have eight more days here and then its back home again. It will be good to come home, but I will miss Moshi very much.

Moving day

Today was my last day at CCS, and I have moved into the Kindaroko hotel in down town (such as it is) Moshi. I have a very nice room with a balcony and my own bathroom, and I get breakfast included for $15 per night. I'll be there for the next two weeks until it's time for me to go on the first of June. Leaving my room was harder than I thought. Seeing it so empty, after having lived there for three and a half months was very sad. I'm sure I'll be making at least a few trips back to CCS over the next few weeks though, I wouldn't want to be away for all that long.

Everything else is going well here, it's been on the cool side for the last few days and overcast. It's not quite so cold that I would wear a sweatshirt, but I wouldn't be too hot in one either. The rain's have slowed down and mostly come at night now, today was the first major day rain storm I've seen in a while.

At school the kids are doing well, the other teachers let me teach the lessons by my self now. It go's well for the most part though I have resorted to using stickers to bribe them into keeping quiet. On last Friday I had the Standard 2 class after tea break for math. Now that they know that I will give them stickers for good behavior they tend to settle down more quickly. They like to remind me that they are being good, it's not uncommon for me to hear, "I am being quiet teacher." or, "He is disturbing the class teacher." Stickers are a very competitive sport for these kids.

That's about all for now, I've been keeping busy with many projects here. It's good because it keeps my mind busy. One reason I am glad to leave CCS is because after seeing so many of my friends leave it gets hard to be there. It feels sometimes like there are ghosts there, people who i expect to see at any moment but aren't there to be found. In two weeks I'll be home to relax, until then I've got lots of things to do.

Before I go, I would just like to throw up a few pictures from the last few days. Here we have Rose and Pendo at Kili Kids being cute, an evening view of Kilimanjaro, the Moshi bus station, Me and I believe Fredi at Kili Kids, and Nancy from Kili Kids.

It's Been A Long Time

I've been realizing recently that I have in fact been in Africa for a long time. When I left the Giants had just won the Superbowl, Republicans other than John McCain were trying to be the next President, and the east coast was just about to be hit by February snow storms. Now, though I am a little behind on news, I hear that the sun is coming out from time to time. As for me, I have filled 9 gigabytes of memory cards with pictures, and we wont even get into how much film I have used, acquired an awesome farmer tan, learned a smattering of Kiswahili, and fallen in love with about 120 Tanzanian children.

I have also learned several important things since I've been here as well:

1. The three most important things for teaching in Tanzania are a red pen, stickers, and the ability to know when it is and when it is not a good idea to let kids make mistakes.

2: Australians are pretty cool people.

3: Applying for financial aid from a third world country is really really hard.

4. Digital cameras are not meant to be taken apart by a small pocket knife.

5. My level of skill in soccer is exactly the same as that of the average third grade student in Tanzania.

6. Most Swahili words are really fun to say, for example, duka la dawa is way more fun to say than pharmacy, and Kuku may be the best word for a chicken in the entire world.

7. Going on safari, something I originally hadn't thought much about doing, turned out to be about the best thing I have ever done in my life and I cannot express just how much I think everyone should try to do it.

8. Several skills that everyone should have in life include; a good knowledge of playing card games, basic camera composition, and the ability to say a proper good bye.

9. Africa is much more like home than you would think. You find all types here, and once you get past your initial culture shock it turns out to be more familiar than you would have imagined.

That last one, for those of you who are wondering, is a picture of Andrea asleep on my lap at the Kili Kids Orphanage.

Picture day!

Today I got my package from home, and in among the pencils and stickers and massive bag of tootsie roles (thank you very much mom and grandma) was a camera cable and two new memory cards. It's very exciting for me because now i can once again upload pictures to this blog, and take even more for later on. I was down to about 50 pictures wort of space left on the memory cards I had here. I'm going to put on a bunch of pictures today, and I'll fill in some of the older posts with pictures as well, so please have a look. So here are a whole bunch of random pictures.









Ok, from top to bottom we have: 1. the largest numbers of bills I've ever held, about $250 US. 2. The home base where I live, not exactly roughing it, I know. 3. The sun set over Moshi last Saturday. 4. Regan, one of our good friends from Moshi, a local artist. 5. The sun set with Mt. Meru. 6. The Karanga road after some rain. This is the road our house is on about 1 Km from the paved Arusha rd.



I hope you enjoy, and there will defiantly be more pictures in the near future.

PS: One extra picture for John, this is me painting a map of Africa on Nikki's classroom wall. The outline is about half finished here, and was compleated yesterday. When the paing drys we'll color in the countries and paint the names on as well. Nikki deserves all the credit for this project, as she has bought all the supplies and orginized all the painting trips there.

Education in Tanzania

Today was the first day of school after a break of just over a month, and most of the children arrived for class in their green uniforms. It was nice to see the school back in full swing after having only about a quarter of the usual students there for so long. All the teachers and other volunteers were back, as was the 10:00 tea time. I spent the day teaching the standard 2 students, we had English in the morning where we reviewed plural and singular from of words, and after tea break we reviewed science an spelling. I was working with Claire, a volunteer from another organization, and class went relatively smoothly. I was happily surprised to find that I remembered many of the names of the children whom I have not seen in over a month.

The students at TCC are very advanced in terms of the curriculum when compared with students at other schools in the area. The education system here is not quite up to the task of educating all the children in the country. It is not uncommon for one class to be over 80 students, and I have heard that in some of the more remote villages an entire school of 100 or 200 students may have only one teacher. Partly this is because compulsory education in Tanzania is a newer concept, and the system has not yet been able to expand to the new demand. Another problem is money, or the lack there of. Even public schools require a small fee for the students to attend, and some family's are simply not able to pay.

But despite the problems and short comings there is hope as well. Teacher colleges have sprung up all across the country to help meet the demand, and new schools are built as often as possible. Every morning we see hundreds of young and old kids walking to school in various uniforms, some green, some red and white, many blue, and a few in green, yellow, black, and blue, the colors of the Tanzanian flag.

(the computer is giving me trouble, and may not save this post if I stay on much longer. I'll finish it at a later time if possible.)