School is out!

All exams given.

All exams marked.

Marks recorded and submitted.

All paper work done for the term.

Three hour committee meeting done.

Three hour staff meeting done.

Non-exam year students gone home.

Time for a change of pace!  And a very nice way to start the month of June. 

Yes, we have closed the school, somewhat.  Exam students (2^nd and 4^th year students) will stay for three weeks to do remedial/extra work in preparation for their exams but others (1^st and 3^rd year students) are now happily at home, enjoying family life.  Since I don’t teach 2^nd or 4^th year students, I’ll have no classes.  We expect to move the library to its new location sometime during this month, so I’ll be part of that move but otherwise there will be lots of time for other – than – school – activities.  The time will go fast, I’m sure, but I’m not thinking about that yet.

A safari to Dar es Salaam is on the schedule for this week – meeting and a couple days extra to enjoy the Indian Ocean.  How nice is that going to be !!??

20th May 2014

The biggest event of the last two weeks was the opening of a new box of crayons!  The afternoon scholars could hardly contain their excitement when I brought out a new box (48 count!) of crayons.  They had to count them all (good practice ‘cause they did it in English), arrange them on the mat in order, hold them in their hands and gaze on them, quarrel a little over who had which color, accuse each other of holding too many at a time, and all in all could hardly contain themselves in their joy.  The few little stubs of the old box that were left I gave to each one – two to each – and that was pretty exciting too.  We had a long discussion about how they were not to write/draw on any walls with those crayons, and so far I haven’t seen any of the colors in the neighborhood.  It’s the little things in life that mean the most!

Since it’s the time of year for harvesting of ground nuts (peanuts) and other legumes, we’re enjoying a special treat of boiled nuts as a snack.  Because they’re dug/pulled from the ground while  not real dry, all we do is wash them and put them in boiling salted water for about 15 minutes and then enjoy, warm or cold, shelling and eating them.  They’re a good source of protein, good for the heart, fattening, I suppose, and very tasty.

I was reminded again this past week of the cycle of life and death of a family:  A cousin was laid to rest and a great-grand-niece was born on the same day.  Thanksgiving for the lives of both.

It's May

4 May 2014

The beginning of another month and here is dawn as seen from outside our house on the 1^st of May.   We’re already into our fifth month of 2014 and the year is galloping along.  We celebrated Worker’s Day on Thursday – a public holiday here with no schools or banks or government offices open.  In Dodoma, as probable in every town and city,  there was a parade of workers from various companies and government entities, marching through town to proclaim “their” day.  I haven’t heard of any pay raise for workers this year.  As far as I know, the last pay raise was last year, and I was interested to know the minimum wage.  I’m no longer an employer (like I was when managing a secondary school) so haven’t kept up with the wage scale.  People who live around us and who are not employed but do daily labor get paid according to the work they do, be it mixing cement or carrying water or whatever in the building boom that’s going on around us.  But for someone who is hired I haven’t kept up with what they might be paid.

And so I looked up what the minimum wage is, and it’s the equivalent of about $50.00.  No, that’s not a day, no, that’s not a week, that’s a month.  A farm laborer gets paid less than that while teachers, nurses and other professionals get about six times that, or around $310.00 per month.  Of course, there are others who get more – managers, technology experts, politicians (they get more than three times a teacher’s salary.  What’s new?  That seems to be the case around the world).    For some things it’s cheaper to live here than in other parts of the world, especially in the developed world, but in some ways it’s more expensive.  Gas/petrol for the car costs a bit over $5.00 per gallon but of course that doesn't

directly impact those who earn minimum  wage.  But it does still  impact them, because even if they don’t own a car that needs a tank of gas now and again, they do use public transport and bus fare always goes up along with the price of gas.  And so we celebrate another year of just getting by for most people. 

But some good news I heard this week is that in many of the villages around us, there is an abundance of food.  That makes people here happy also, since that food will be transported here to the city and if there’s a lot, it will be fairly cheap.  Those with a little nest egg can buy enough food for the year now while the price is cheap; those who are too poor to have any savings will continue to live from hand to mouth.

19 April 2014

Tomorrow is Easter and the world is celebrating new and resurrected life.  We have wild flowers, aka blooming weeds, decorating our living room.  They are yellow, so full of color, so vibrant – just like life itself.  Alleluia.

The week has been slow and nice after closing school one week ago.  Filing of class notes, organizing handouts, a morning of accessioning books in the library, thinking about lesson plans for the rest of the term:  these were the school tasks which I faced and did, slowly and leisurely.  Then one morning was spent at the dentist for annual check-up and teeth cleaning.  Since I was in the U.S. last year and so hadn’t seen this dentist for a couple of years, he acted really pleased to see me again.  “Oh, you’re still here.  How wonderful!”  I’m not sure if he meant “here” in Tanzania or “here” on this earth, but both places are fine with me.

For the Holy Thursday services we went to celebrate with the orphans at the Village of Hope.  The service was much too long but I stayed awake by interacting with a little girl, about a three year old I’d say, who danced to her heart’s content whenever there was some music.  Especially at the “Glory to God” when the bells rang and the drums sang out, did she get out into the aisle and enjoy herself.  She was a little darling, and I pray for her future, infected as she is with HIV.

And then on Good Friday morning we went to visit some other children, this time at a facility for children who are mentally challenged.  It is run by a group of five Sisters and supported by the Diocese of Dodoma, Cheshire Foundation (from Great Britain) as well as local donations including some help from the Tanzanian government.  There are 40 children who live there, and those with less severe disabilities go to classes with their special education teachers.  They have some projects to help them with running expenses:  cows, pigs, chickens, a garden, a plot of grapes.  The children are precious, and followed us around wherever we went, holding our hands and arms.  Children love my arms because they are soft and fat, and they’ve never received such massaging as they did yesterday!  We took them some boxes of fruit juice as an Easter gift and hope that we can find some other things to take to them in the days ahead.  I admire so much those people who care for the children.  All the children  looked so neat and clean, and their overly exuberant behavior was lovingly accepted by their caretakers.  The Sister who took us around said that she had just received a phone call that the Prime Minister of Tanzania was on his way with some Easter gifts.  I hope they were many and useful for these beautiful children.

HAPPY EASTER!

7 April 2014

Today is Karume Day and a day off from school since it’s a public holiday.  Abeid Amani Karume was the first president of Zanzibar after a revolution (in 1964) which deposed the last Sultan of Zanzibar.  Later that year Zanzibar and Tanganyika united as Tanzania and Karume became the first Vice President of the United Republic of Tanzania with Julius Nyerere as president.  Karume was assassinated on April 7^th 1972, and I remember that quite clearly.  History seems to have happened very recently in a relatively young country like Tanzania.

The two past weeks have been rainy, with lovely rains falling almost every day except for the last few.  The air has a feel that seems the rain might be about over, but certainly the blessing that fell during these weeks have saved a lot of crops.  Some of the maize was really too far gone, but other fields were young enough to benefit from this rain.  I’ve heard that many parts of the country predict a good harvest; here it’s dicey, but some will reap and others not so.  That’s the life of a farmer.

We are getting ready to close school for mid-term break next week and so have been administering the exams that precede every break like this.  I still have a few of the 87 English papers to mark but the pile is getting smaller every hour.  Good results from good students.

And our city, Dodoma, the capital city of Tanzania, has its first traffic lights installed!  I don’t know if there are more than two intersections, but those two are the only ones that I’ve seen so far.  It’s all very orderly with drivers being patient as they wait out a red light.  Now if only there was a light at the end of our road that leads to the main Dodoma-Dar es Salaam highway.  One has to look right and left several times, trying to see past staff buses which have parked obstructing a line of vision to the right, small commuter buses dashing both right and left, bicycles, pedestrians trying to cross the road, and motorcycles by the hundreds.  Last week when I came home from town I decided to count the number of motorcycles on the road.  From downtown Dodoma where I started counting to home (distance of about six kms.)  I counted 69 motorcycles on the road.  They are menaces, and we  are told that many young men have been killed or incapacitated because of motorcycle accidents.  They take too many risks, for sure. 

23rd March 2014

Another two weeks have gone by, and these weeks were full of activity of which I’m still trying to catch up to.  After teaching on Monday (10^th) and giving out work for other classes that week, on Tuesday we left  early for the trip to Arusha.  It’s a long enough trip, usually taking between 7 and 8 hours, and we made it in good time that day.  On the way we saw lots of good looking millet between Dodoma and Singida, and after Singida until Babati, there were fields of beautiful corn as far as the eyes could see.  It was a treat for the soul to see all of that beautiful corn, knowing that not only will the people in that area have a good crop but that they will also be able to feed others who are not so lucky.  Closer to Arusha it was much drier but it rained while we were at the meeting and so on the way back here the grass had already become green.  The road is beautiful almost all of the way these days – there is resurfacing going on still near Arusha but what a difference a good road makes in both time used for getting somewhere as well as wear and tear on the body.

I had a good birthday week and enjoyed all the greetings that a special day like that brings.  I spent some of the day catching up on things that were delayed because of being away, and then in the evening was cooked a lovely meal which included birthday cake and ice cream.  There was a celebration at the meeting in Arusha, and the students had a fun time singing Happy Birthday to me at school, too.  Several of the students gave me cards, some handmade, and one class even managed to surprise me.  I walked into their classroom and at first glance there were no students.  As I walked in, I said out loud, “Oh, the students aren’t here” at which point they jumped from along the wall that I couldn’t see and from behind desks shouting “Surprise!” and then sang Happy Birthday.  Of course they wanted to know how old I am, so I asked them how old they think I am.  The answers ranged from 47 to 90 so it’s obvious their perceptions are skewed.  Anyway, I’m grateful for good health and enough energy to deal with them, even on days when they’re hyper!

The moon going down near my favorite baobab tree.

Wild flowers along the way.

Wild flower among the thorns.

Millet field.

Corn field.

Groundnut (peanut) field.

Here are some photos of my early morning birthday walk.  Truly blessed with beauty.

9th March 2014

Yes, here is the confession:  I didn’t write a blog post last week.  It’s not that I was too busy or too lazy or too anything except not creative enough to think of something that might be interesting.  AND that’s really the case for today as well but I can at least talk about the weather.

And that is very disappointing.  We haven’t had rain now for too long a time and the corn is all looking very unhappy.  Most of it was tasselling and starting to form cobs but that process has really stopped now and very soon it will be only food for cows.  A lot of people were really excited about the prospects for a good crop this year but then the vagaries of Dodoma weather clicked in and that’s the end of the excitement.  Even most of the peanuts haven’t set their fruit yet so the food situation in the area isn’t looking too good for the coming year.  Hopefully there will be areas of the country that will get a harvest so that people will at least eat, even though it will be costly.

If you were at all impressed with my cement sack garden and the greens growing so nicely, you should see them now.  They were invaded by some insects which have left only lacy remnants between the ribs of the leaves.  Looks terrible and I’ve given up trying to find the little critters and drowning them.  I must say those leaves, when they were in good shape, were delicious and tender.  Good while they lasted.

Next week is a safari to Arusha and a Maryknoll Sisters meeting and workshop.  It will be nice to have a change and to see the Sisters, have some good discussions and learn something new.  The car is serviced and ready to roll so we hope and pray we'll have a good and safe trip.