tucker, we're not in bellport anymore...

My job is anything but easy. When I met the director of the school the other day, they told me that I would be a teacher’s assistant and would be observing the first day, but when I got there I was, as they say, “thrown to the wolves.” I have my own class of 10 nine year olds who not only do not listen, but they also don’t understand any English. Half of my first day was spent figuring out how to get the kids to stay seated and pay attention. We hardly got through one math lesson before the “break” which was spent playing ‘ring around the rosy’ and hand games. After the break, we only had about 45 minutes till the end of the day. I attempted to teach them how to do a word search with the Swahili sounds, but they barely understood the concept. I think my students have a potential to learn, but there are too many distractions and barriers, including their teachers. They bring their own children to the school and allow them to run wild through the classrooms. Also, the teachers do not speak very much English, nor did they ever attend school to learn classroom management or how to teach in a classroom setting. So, if the teacher is not knowledgeable on the topic of teaching, how is a child supposed to learn from this adult? The teachers in use corporal punishment to discipline there children. While I don’t agree with this type of punishment, I’m certainly not here to change their cultural ways. The main problem with this is that me raising my voice or telling them “no” means nothing to them; they practically laugh at me. The school also has a serious lack of resources. It is located on the top floor of a barn about an eighth of a mile from home base. My classroom can’t be more than 10 by 5, with 3 benches, and absolutely nothing on the walls. I don’t have a chalkboard either, and the amount of paper the school provides is limited which makes classroom lessons a struggle.

it’s interesting; I came here thinking that I would go back to the states encouraging everyone to volunteer the same way I am currently volunteering; teach, work in an orphanage etc. But all that being a volunteer teacher here means is that a Tanzanian teacher doesn’t have to come to school for three weeks. The teachers here get paid less than 50,000 schillings a month, which is about $50.00 in the states. Even without volunteers, the teachers might be absent from class sometimes a couple of days a week.

I know that this is rather counterintuitive for me to say, and against what I’ve been preaching for most of the beginnings of my adult life, but this type of volunteering is not promoting a self-sustainable life style. Like I said earlier, by me volunteering as a teacher, I am only giving the Tanzanian teachers the weeks off. Think of my volunteer work like substitute teaching in the states. A teacher calls in sick and a substitute teacher is called in to “teach” the class for the day. For the most part, the kids don’t listen and take the new teacher for granted, knowing that their actions will have less of a consequence because of the sub’s short teaching period. The lessons and rules the substitute will attempt to teach and implement might be conducive to their learning environment, but as soon as the student’s original teacher comes back, all of that will go out the window. While this kind of experience might have a positive impact and give the substitute teachers a new perspective, like the volunteers in , it has a negative impact on the students, or Tanzanian children we are trying to help.

And so we, as CCS volunteers, agree that the Volunteering phenomenon needs a new approach. Tracey, a fellow volunteer, has started a sustainability project in another Tanzanian school called The Promise Land. Instead of volunteering as a teacher, she has asked for permission to help the teachers and staff learn and implement skills important to a conducive learning environment that also incorporates s cultural customs. As a university professor, she is more apt to teach teachers, than to teach young school children.

This type of project is exactly what villages like Boma need. Other examples of sustainable developments we brainstormed for future volunteer work would be educating other Tanzanian workers on how to improve their businesses and infrastructure; access to clean drinking water, helping to build irrigation systems, “how to classes” such as fundraising ideas to support research and resources involving some of the countries most prevalent problems; for instance, malnourishment, the AIDS/HIV epidemic, the lack of clean drinking water, etc. We believe that this kind of help would be more beneficial regarding sustainability and allowing and countries a like to be more dependent.

An important aspect of development that might improve developing countries sustainability is free trade. The first President of Tanzania introduced and pushed for socialism. He wanted his country to be self-sustainable with their own resources and did this by jacking up import and export taxes so trading became impossible. When was taken over by took out a load from The World Bank to help them get back on their feet. This put them in debt, asking TWB for more money. They responded with a proposition. The World Bank would give them a loan if they reopened their trade again and encouraged capitalism instead of socialism. agreed and because of this, government spending was cut, including schooling. Education about AIDS and HIV was scarce increasing the percentages of people infected. Food crops, banana exports became huge, became cash crops and bit by bit they started to sell themselves off to countries with whom they traded. More debts lead to more loans which lead to the selling of all of their own resources as trade commodities. For example, one of the biggest Gold Mines is located in and they were forced to sell it in order to repay their loans taken from The World Bank.

sorry, that was more informational than a contemplative journal, but it was just easier for me to copy and past my notes onto this blog.

having the time of my life, though!