Sorry... another downbeat entry

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  Iringa, Tanzania
Thursday, April 24, 2008

Shortly after my last update, a friend wrote me a letter, sounding worried that I was having a terrible time out here and that maybe I wanted to return home early, because my blog updates came across so downbeat.

So, I had resolved to make this, my next entry happier, funnier and more positive. But although there have been good times in the last month, when I think back over the time since I last wrote, the bad far outweighs the good...

It starts happy - the day after my last entry I got a call from Dad saying my Grandmother had made something of a miraculous recovery and was able to speak and sit up out of bed. (She's now almost fully recovered).
Later in the day I went to my favourite restaurant in town and bumped into a friend from the internet cafe - Andy, so we ate together then went to the pub nextdoor (Twisters) to join some of his other friends, who were on their way to another bar in the middle of town (Shooters). I was pretty tired and wasn't planning on staying out past the restaurant but Andy was insistent and said there was a friend he wanted me to meet in Shooters. So I got in the car with Andy and his two friends to go to Shooters, we got there fine but it was a pretty scary ride since a short way into it I realised that Wilson (the driver) had been drinking, and although he still had some modicum of control, he was deliberately swerving the car and showing off...
Anyway, in Shooters we meet these other friends of Andy, young women studying at the local university. Andy's closest friend among them is a girl named Sherry, who I spoke to for the short while I was there and found her charming and interesting. Still tired, I left after one drink, after arranging with Andy that he could sleep at my guest house room if he had a late one, to save him going all the way home. So when he called at 4am, I thought it was to get in to the room, but instead he tells me Sherry is dead and hangs up without further explanation. I couldn't get hold of him again until late morning, so we met later in the day and he told me that she'd left shortly after I did, to go home and get changed for the club. She'd gone with Wilson, who by that time must have been even more drunk, and two of Wilson's other friends. Wilson was driving again, and when the car crashed into a building Sherry flew through the windscreen and hit her head against a wall. She was taken to hospital but died later in the night from her head injury. The others in the car fled to avoid trouble, and the next day Wilson was in Moshi - around 12 hours away, in the North of Tanzania near the Kenyan border.
Understandably, Andy was a mess, shaken up and upset, since he'd been the one in hospital with her as she died. I didn't quite know what to do or say because I was so shocked as well, disbelieving that I'd met and spoken with this beautiful young girl and just hours later she is dead.
I know road travel out here is dangerous but after a few months I guess I've gotten somewhat used to it even after having several near misses. It could quite easily have been me too, so Friday 28/03/08 will be the last time I ever get in a car with a drunk.

So Monday 31st March was my birthday! It felt strange to have it not only abroad, but alone too, since I was still in town waiting for news on my Grandmother. At least the news of the day was good; I heard that many family members had gone to visit her out of concern the day before, but her condition was so improved that they got together to celebrate her recovery. The evening was a bit of a downer again because, like all weekend, I'd spent it trying to console Andy.

The following day I left for village, happy that I wouldn't have to fly home early and that I could go back to work undistracted by what was going on at home. It was only a short stay in village again, because I had to come back after a few days for the monthly meeting which was actually on this time. The way that the monthly meeting works is that half the volunteers come to Iringa (including me) and the others go to a town called Njombe, because that town is closer to their placements. Our Iringa meeting dragged on all day and wasn't very productive, but we were looking forward to the evening to celebrate getting together again and belatedly celebrate mine and Jess's birthdays that had passed earlier in the week. The other volunteers, being as fantastic as they are, had arranged for some of our close friends among the Njombe volunteers to come and surprise us - Clare, Asha and Jessy. We all had a great although heavy weekend together, celebrating both nights because another Njombe volunteer; Jake showed up out of the blue too on Saturday. On one of the walks from the guesthouse to the club, I managed to fall in what is perhaps one of the biggest roadside ditches in Iringa!

Jacob and I went back to Ukumbi village together on April 7th to teach in secondary school midweek (primary school were on a week's holiday). Jacob had to go back to town on Thursday and Friday to sort out his university application. It had to be stamped by his local official, and sadly he had to pay a bribe to get it done. Being in village alone for a couple of days was cool, it meant that I had to man up and be more confident with my Swahili since I didn't have Jacob to lean on! I spent much of my time working on my cooking of the local cuisine, which is coming on nicely now! I also tried putting some order into our sty of a house, finally putting our mattresses into the bedroom and taking delivery of some furniture we'd ordered previously.

Once Jacob returned, we had our most productive period in village so far - doing lots of teaching in both schools, getting to know some local out of school youths and working on our IRCs (Information Resource Centres) in secondary school and in the village hall. Three coats of paint and many trips to the carpenter later, they're ready to open! The opening of those two mini-libraries will be one of our biggest achievements so far. Work is definitely getting busier now, once the libraries are open, we'll have to spend time in there talking to students and villagers, and we still haven't started giving community seminars because of all our comings and goings to town and teaching in between... When both schools are open we teach 18 lessons per week, but as it stands we only see our secondary school classes once per week, so hopefully if/when the new timetable gets sorted out, we'll be teaching 24 lessons per week.

Teaching is for the most part fun and rewarding, though it is so in different ways between primary and secondary school. Primary is fun because before we start the lesson we usually sing a song or play a short game, and the kids get a real kick out of seeing mzungu (foreigner) act a fool, then they're energised and enthusiastic for the lesson. The primary school kids aren't shy and will always offer up answers to questions, whether correct or not.
My biggest frustration is disruptions during the school day, by the school management. One day in primary school we found that there were no girls in the class because they had all been taken to the local clinic for a compulsory pregnancy test. Thankfully none tested positive... Also once in secondary school all the students were called outside to line up to be disciplined for inappropriate sexual conduct, which ruined our lesson, yet if we were allowed to teach, maybe the kids would refrain from relationships in school.

Secondary school students are mostly apathetic and it takes real careful effort in the classroom to not take too much of an authoritarian approach and have them end up hating us, yet we can't just continue the lesson when we know no-one is listening and let them just walk all over us. This secondary school situation is improving though, as the module becomes more involved and interesting - for example no-one wanted to listen to Jacob and I talk about menstruation in a class where all the girls would have already started, but we got some great discussion going last week when talking about healthy and unhealthy relationships. We even over-ran one lesson by 40 minutes discussing the merits of masturbation with the class!

Unfortunately, last Sunday I began to feel unwell so the next day I came back to town to get tested for the usual illnesses out here - Malaria, Typhoid and Amoeba. It turned out I had malaria with two parasites, so I've spent the whole week recovering in a hotel in town. I didn't go to the hospital because I've already experienced that, and observed the level of competence of the doctors there - it's scarily low. So I just went to one of the reputable laboratories in town to test, then picked up the medicines from the pharmacy and have spent most of the week lying in bed getting my health back. I've tested again and the parasites have now gone, so in the next day or so I'll be going back to work in Ukumbi. I've had great support from both Jacob and the SPW office though, and am hugely grateful for their frequent visits, care and phonecalls. The office are being especially careful since the recent death of a volunteer - David, a Tanzanian volunteer working in Zambia, from Malaria.

Sorry for writing such a long entry, congratulations and thank you if you made it this far! I think I'll spare you the crazy news from other placements now, you've probably had enough by now... but don't worry, I AM happy, things are on the up again now, and I'm looking forward to getting back into the work this week. I always knew there would be challenges, and I'm still just as motivated to do a good job.
See you in September, and no earlier!
Take Care,
Love,
dipak

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