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.