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ARRIVAL IN TANZANIA
When Richard Pryor returned from Africa the first time he wisely noted that people are the same all over the world: People in Africa will mess with your luggage just like they will in New York. So as I embarked from LAX to Dar Es Salaam with a 30 minute layover in Zurich and a forty five minute layover in Nairobi, I had very little hope that my luggage would arrive with me, let alone intact. I knew that somehow, someone would mess with my luggage. So I was astonished to arrive in Dar Es Salaam at ten o’clock at night thirty six hours after I had left Los Angeles to see my luggage, all of it, coming around the baggage carousel within minutes of arrival. I didn’t even care when I discovered that my back-up cell phone and MagicJack had been cut out of the packaging and stolen. I chalk that up to a tip. You can take my electronics—just don’t loose my luggage!
I was in the terminal for maybe 15 minutes—no problem with my visa, no problems in customs, and my driver was waiting just outside the terminal. En route Zurich had been colder than I remembered—literally and figuratively—an external landscape covered with snow threatening just outside the windows, the airport staff threatening to thwart my connection with their obsession with rules and protocol. So my first impression upon arrival in Tanzania was the warmth—of the people and the air.
Then thirty seconds into the parking lot, I felt something else, I’m not exactly sure what to call the feelings that correspond with these images: a young boy about ten years old wandering the streets alone, a fire in the middle of the road, my life and luggage in the hands of a man named Hussein whom I’ve never met taking me to a place I have never been before. I realized that I was crossing a threshold into disequilibrium: I know where I came from, but I have no idea where I’m going except for the address my new boss at the U.S. Embassy, Rebecca, has given me. This is how much faith I have in my country.
I realize this faith is not misplaced when I arrive safely at the apartment complex that is regaled in Christmas decorations, and my little convenience apartment, which will be my home while I am in Dar, is perfect. I fell right to sleep and was awoken the next morning by Rebecca who was as surprised as I was that I actually made the connection in Zurich. She picked me up at my apartment, drove me around to get my bearings (grocery store, new cell phone, etc.) gave me a quick briefing on our first project and told me to be ready the next day at 7:30 a.m. for a five hour drive to Kilwa where we would spend the next week working with local secondary school teachers.
The next morning I was up at dawn, mildly jet-lagged and ready to begin my fellowship. Our driver and protector for the week is the wonderful Mr. Geoffrey who was waiting for me in front of my apartment building at 7:30 in the morning. We picked up Rebecca at her home, and as we left her husband reminded us to be careful of green Mambo snakes.
THE TEACHERS OF KILWA DISTRICT
Thankfully Geoffrey is a professional driver because over 21 kilometers of the road from Dar Es Salaam to Kilwa is unpaved, and it had just rained. Several cars and buses were stuck in the mud. Tropical forests spread out on both sides of the car as we shimmied and shook along the road. Herds of cows or goats trundled alongside us. A monkey sat and stared. A van with a giant picture of Khadafi and the word “dictator” on the back window sped past us. After five hours we arrived at the Ilulu Girls School outside of Kilwa. We were met uncharacteristically (for Tanzanians) unceremoniously and taken to our faculty house.
The headmistress, Madame Sarah welcomed us a little cautiously, and brought us into the house that would be our home for a week. It was possibly the nicest house on that campus, so to say anything critical of that humble place would be rude and ungrateful. We did not have running water, but the water source was just outside of our front door which made us the lucky ones: the other teachers and students had to come from far away to fetch the water to bring back to their dormitories. We were also lucky to have a gas stove for tea and comfortable beds to sleep in.
Over the course of the week we became attached to the menagerie at the faculty house: goats, chickens, cats and even the scorpion in our kitchen sink (we just couldn’t kill him) and the millipede on our porch. We never saw a green Mambo snake.
Seventy teachers from the Kilwa District spent the first week of their Winter Holiday coming to this training session. We gave workshops on English teaching methodologies, technology, classroom management (corporal punishment is ubiquitous here), and theories of Multiple Intelligence. World Teach trainer, Rachel taught the teachers how to use computers—many had never used one before, and my childhood friend, Monica gave me pen pal letters from her students (as well as a poignant letter for the teachers from her) and several teaching modules to share. I cannot describe the look of accomplishment on the teachers’ faces working on computers for the first time. I cannot describe the appreciation in their voices at reading the letters from America. One teacher said, “I am happy to have one friend in America.”
We all ate every meal together, and we were able to share our stories of teaching. Despite the problems we educators have at home, I assure you the Tanzanian teachers have more. When I asked them what they wanted most to improve their conditions one of the most common responses was simple enough: They wanted respect. They also had questions for me that I am still struggling to answer:
How do you teach a student who cannot read or write?
How do you teach a child who has hunger?
What can we do about young girls becoming pregnant?
As hard as it is to be a teacher in Tanzania, it is even more so being a female. Of the 70 teachers, approximately 20 were women. I only saw the women fetching the water. One woman, the headmistress of her school, was at the well outside of our house every morning in her kanga, then she attended every workshop and then at night she was back at the well with her baby strapped across her back. I heard stories that young female students are encouraged by their parents to have sex with their male teachers for better grades and opportunities. Girls cannot attend school when they are menstruating. One of the teachers is writing his Master’s Dissertation on FGM (Female Genital Mutilation) in traditional songs. The female student even faces challenges like this reading from a (thankfully retired) textbook:
I direct your attention to the last paragraph about “Miss Tanzania.” Her “breasts are like needles.” In addition “…her skin is fair.” Just to reinforce the objectification of a young female in this textbook the comprehension questions after the reading ask, “What part of her body was as pointy as needles?” Not exactly concepts that a young girl who is most likely walking miles to school needs to internalize.
Despite (or maybe because of) these challenges, the women I met are strong, smart and beautiful inside and out. The men were thoughtful and sensitive to the issues facing their students. Even the administrators who came to the opening and closing ceremonies, and who met with us in their offices after the workshops (the “honchos” as Rebecca calls them) expressed sincere and thoughtful ideas on how we could continue to support the teachers of Kilwa. Over the course of this week I watched Islamic, Catholic, Methodist, Seikh and agnostic teachers work together for a common purpose. I watched them sing, eat and laugh together. “We are all the same” said one Muslim teacher. “We are just all trying to understand God and this life.” And for those few days I felt that very profoundly. In many ways we were all the same, despite our salient differences.
REBECCA, REGIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE OFFICER FOR EAST AFRICA
My boss during my fellowship here in Tanzania is the perfect kind of educator: She is a teacher who has power. I had seen her load up the car with Geoffrey; I just hadn’t seen what she packed. Until the last day of the workshop. For our last session we grouped the teachers according to their schools, and Rebecca handed out books, teaching supplies (markers, tape, paper), CDs, visual aids and academic journals to every school. She also helped supply every school with a computer and projector. She could easily have stayed off campus in a nice hotel on the beach; however, she chose to stay with the teachers. After working with the teachers all day she spent evenings showing movies and talking to the teachers about grants and other opportunities through the Embassy here. She is an amazing woman and mentor. She is also a lot of fun. The work that is being done at the Embassy further strengthens my faith in my country.
Halfway through our first week together, Rebecca handed me the Tanzanian newspaper “The Guardian.” She thought it might offer some interesting insight into the country that will be my home for ten months, and it did. I read about the unnecessary malaria deaths of 1200 children, about a father who had sold his son to Albino hunters, about gender-based torture against young girls in the Arusha Region. Just when I started to think that Tanzania was too dangerous for me I turned the page and was reminded that it isn’t just Tanzania that can be dangerous: twenty children and six teachers were shot and killed in my country. And I am reminded that Americans and Tanzanians differ only in the details of how we fail to protect our children. I am also reminded of the wisdom of Richard Pryor: People are, for better or for worse, the same all over the world.
leeannelangton 