My Placement... so far

My placement has finally gotten sorted out. I am teaching six girls who are in a sewing class to learn how to make clothes so that they can start small businesses in their own villages. Every morning I start teaching them English around 8:45 and we go for about an hour and then I do math with them for about an hour -- eventually "math" will be book keeping, but we have to get the basics cleared up first, so for now we are working on the trickier 3 digit addition and subtraction (carrying numbers) and 2 and 3 digit multiplication and division. The girls in my class are Paulina (17), Veronica (15), Gladness (13), Slivia (16), Winifred (16) and Miriam (36). I am already in love with all of them. They come from tiny villages up to 10 miles away and once they learn how to sew it will change their lives. They will be able to support themselves and elevate their families when they are married. The lives of women here are so bleak. A huge number of girls never finish school because they are required to do so much work to help the family that it eventually gets to be too much and they drop out. Boys on the other hand, are generally allowed to continue in school, though currently in Tanzania primary school (up to 7th grade) is taught in Swahili with one English class, and secondary school and beyond is taught all in English. Once students reach secondary school they must pass the examinations (in English) each year or they fail and at that point, most just leave school. Obviously, education is a huge issue here.

Anyway, I am so proud of these girls and can see them making a little progress already. I have to create my own curriculum, so I have been working really hard to make lesson plans and to try to structure both the English and math classes around words and skills that they will need in their businesses. By knowing English, they will have a better chance at growing their business and they need these math/bookkeeping skills to keep things running smoothly. It is sort of amazing how little people here understand about running a business. I am not a pro, but even explaining that you have to charge more than the cost of your supplies will help them moving forward.

So, after my lessons with the sewing girls, we have break time and we play with the 9 kids in the nursery school and the 17 kids in the secondary school. There are two babies from nursery school - Esther (2.5) and Anette (3) who I might have to bring home with me. They are SO cute. All the kids are so adorable and happy and have so much fun playing with basically nothing. They have a couple of beach balls that are full of holes, but they will spend all day blowing them up and playing with them until they deflate and then blowing them up again. The older kids have a couple of flat soccer balls and the boys LOVE to play soccer. The older girls love to dance so some of the other volunteers bring speakers and their iPods and they will just dance the whole break. Its very funny to hear 8 teenage Tanzanian girls singing along all the words to American music! 

After break I join the secondary school for an hour or so of English class. I am mainly assisting the other volunteer teacher who is in that class before break too. The volunteer who was here before me (Andrew) left last week and I've recruited one of the other volunteers in my group (Jonathan) to take his place. Jonathan is only here for a couple more weeks, but that will be good for now. We will have to see what happens when Jon leaves because there is no way I can lesson plan for both classes! I just don't want to let any of them down. It is just such a great group of kids!

For the first 2-3 weeks here there are alot of "cultural" activites that we do through CCS. We get back to our home base for lunch at 1pm. Then we have Swahili lessons for an hour. After that we sometimes have  speakers about issues that face this community (Tanzanian education system, HIV/AIDs, ect) so that we have a better understand of the lives of the people we are working with. Then we get a little bit of free time (like now!) so that we can run into town for errands or internet. Once we do all the cultural activites will be able to help out in other placements in the afternoon I am planning on helping the one doctor in our group by going to the hospital where she is working and numbering the beds. Apparently there is a ton of mix ups with patients because they don't have a system for keeping track of which patient is where. We are going to number the beds and try to get the nurses to start labeling the patient's file with that number when they are admitted. It seems so simple, but unfortunately, its not here. I am also planning on helping out at Upendo - which is an orphanage. 

Dinner is at 6:30pm and then we pretty much just hang out and talk or read or whatever. There is a "bar" across the street called "Mzungu Bar" - mzungu means "white person" and that is what people (especially little kids) call all of us. Anyway, the Mzungu Bar is handy to grab a beer at night and I have to say, I have been enjoying sampling the local brews. There is Kilimanjaro, Tusker, Safari and Sarengeti. I think Safari is my favorite - its a light beer and I'm still trying to think of what to compare it to for you.

Alrighty - that is what is going on for placement.... I will post again with what I did last weekend!!

Oh! in case you want to call/text me - I finally got a Tanzanian cell phone. the number is +255 753019391.