5th October 2009 - Another Week, Another Month

Another week has passed so quickly. It seems as though the days go by so fast and before you can blink it’s already the weekend. On Saturday afternoon I went with three other women to the celebration of the feast day of the other Small Christian Community of our outstation. They are St. Francis community, and his (of Assisi) feast day was being celebrated by them and so some of the members of our community were invited. There was Mass outdoors using the wall of one of the houses as the backdrop, and then a few speeches and finally food. Every person who was there had a big plate of rice with a little meat as well as a bottle of soda. It was a nice celebration and I appreciated the walk to and fro and the chance to get to know those other women a bit better. I should say that I appreciated getting to talk to the neighbors, but didn’t much care for the walk at 2.00 in the afternoon. I had thought I’d have the weekend without the long walks, but not so. Oh, well.

The classes this week have gone well and I’m beginning to know the students a little bit better also. I find them a bit different than the ones I was used to from five years ago. First of all, they are a bit younger than the secondary students that I taught, and I’m also used to a class of only girls, so having a mixture makes a difference also. Then some of these kids are town kids, and formerly it was mostly village girls who were our students. And I think there’s just a lot more outside influence these days, due especially to TV and video. I’m not saying that these kids are bad, or even harder to teach, but I just notice a difference.

Their concern for each other was made clear for me this week. After class one day, as I was gathering my materials and preparing to leave, one of the boys remained in the classroom. He very seriously informed me that two of his fellow students stutter – he told me their names and that was all he said, then he left. I had already recognized the problem in one of them, but the other one has been sick a few days and so I hadn’t heard enough to know that she also stuttered. I guess this boy wanted me to know that his friends had this problem when I called on them to speak. Since we’re doing quite a bit of oral work, I know this is a concern, but I’m thinking that the others in the class probably have as much concern for them as this boy, and so we can just wait as they work through trying to speak. I’ve had students who stutter before in my classes, and as long as they are given some time they can usually manage alright.

On Friday after class I met up with a former student, one of the first students who attended the school in Singida. She had been in contact for some time and was begging me to meet, so finally on Friday I said I’d go to her after class. She told me that she works at Saba Saba, the place where Connie and I went some few weeks ago to look for used sheets, etc. And so we met and she took me to where she works. When she was at school, she studied the specialization of tailoring, and so that is what she was doing. We went to a big area with canvas over it, so it was like a big tent. In front were a bunch of young men on a platform and they were holding up pieces of used clothing and auctioning them off one by one to the people standing in front of them. Behind those folks again there was a line of about 12 sewing machines with women sitting at them, and Neema is one of those. When someone buys a piece of clothing they see the potential in it, eg. one small shirt I saw was in good shape except for the sleeves, which had holes in them (looked like they had probably been eaten by mice/rats). So the fellow who bought the shirt brought it over to Neema and she cut off the sleeves below the holes, hemmed the sleeves and voila! A good school shirt for some kid which can probably be sold for twice the price that was paid for it. Pieces of clothing kept being piled up on Neema’s machine: seams to be run up, pants to be changed into a skirt, sleeves shortened, etc. There was so much noise and so many people in that area I wondered how she could possibly remember what she was to do to each bit of clothing. She said that she remembers, and that’s how she makes her living! Another one of the many creative ways folks make ends meet around here.