Friday!

We are off to safari! Hope to be able to post personal pictures of the Big Five animals. Back on line Sunday night unless I find an elephant with a satellite dish.

The generosity of those who have nothing

Today we visited an orphanage - hardly a standard Dickin's one. The man was a climbing driver and guide when he found a street child, parents dead, no family, no social system to care for him. So he brought the child home to raise him. When we were there 35 children were in residence - all in school. His small hut had been rebuilt by an Englishman who was on one of his treks and decided to help. Now there are rooms for the girls inside and the Boys have an outside bunk. They cook over a wood stove in a separate hut. The man still guides climbs and at various points random people drop off food and various toys and clothes and they survive.

Of course they sang great songs of thankfulness and there was a soccer ball. (Although yesterday we saw the kids at school play kick the plastic bottle and it worked fine.) So we spent some soccer time and came back to home base that seemed palatial. 

At the touch of a switch!

Of course we have water and electricity here! But it takes a little effort,

Picture 1 is the hand washing station by the dining table so you are sure to wash and then touch nothing until you get your plate. Someone fills the top with hot water, it goes in the bowl which has holes punched he'd in the bottom and then drops to the lower bucket. It is used to water the lawns. I think.

Hot water for showers is available if you remember to turn on the water heater switch 40 minutes ahead of time. And remember that the taps are reversed - red is cold, blue is hot. Maybe below the equator...

Electricity comes from an outlet if you have an adapter and turn on the electricity switch - but there is no warm up. See Picture 2.

Astonishingly there is terrific WIFI everywhere including outdoors!

Cultural observations without comments

Driving to work in the van this morning I saw

A woman carrying wash water to her house and setting up to do laundry in a bucket at the base of their satellite dish.

A woman selling blue jeans off the mound balanced on her head.

A church so open to the elements that rainfall and birdsong drowned out the preaching.

 A guy in a lime green hoodie that read: Marco Island.


You can't make this stuff up!

Value of English

Today I taught English which consists of watching the kids ages 4-5-6 point with a giant stick and recite "capital letter A and little letter a" through the alphabet and then letting the next one start, we jazzed it up with a few animal noises. After 45 minutes of this I asked the teacher if there was anything else she wanted to cover. She sent them all to the bathroom and my partner did maths for the same amount of time and again asked to stop. Out buddy in the next room did not get the memo on asking to quit and talked about animals for 2 hours- counting feet, wings, horns, tails.

But our speaker on education today explained it somewhat. He said understanding did not matter. The sounds and the exposure to English matter. English speakers learn from the cradle the sounds in rhymes and songs, long before they can understand. Most Tanzanian children are raised in home where the traditional tribe language is the norm. They at age 7 they switch to totally Swahili.  At 14 if they pass a test they switch to totally English. So for ultimate success, they need to build on any English they have heard.

On the play ground, I did a Hokey Pokey AND Mulberry bush!

Afternoon glimpses

We went to tour first restaurant today and on the menu was "cupcake - ask flavor."
 So we asked and were told "Plain."
"Plain vanilla?"
"No. Just plain."
We opted for coffee flavored milkshakes which were fantastic. Each was 4500 Tsh - doing the math that is ....less than $3.

In other news we had a speaker arrive today at the same time as a large and scary insect. We were totally focused on the latter so I asked the speaker to identify the bug so we could stop being jumpy. He told us "not to worry! It is a large toxic bee."
"Toxic like kill you?"
"Not right away. Just don't let it sting."
Order was not restored until we were bee-free.

Presbyterian school

What a perfect assignment!

I am at aPresbyterian run school for ages 3-6 on the church property. We start with staff devotions. The pastor speaks Swahili, but of course if he says John 3:16, I know what he is talking about! The words to the songs are printed. But since they were not written down until the English did, they are completely phonetic making them a snap to sing. One was Jesus Loves Me but to...apparently...an alternative tune.

Then we have devotions with the kids who do praise, worship and prayer. The kids sing with enthusiasm.  Amazing wear-you-out excitement about Jesus. It was energizing to be a part. In the little purple uniforms they sat at desks, even the 3 year olds. No free play and discovery. Call and repeat, numbers 1-100, letters and words. Then the Big Stick came out and teeny little children went up to the board and, hardly able to reach the board, pointed to the numbers and letters. And the class repeated, with decreasing enthusiasm and increasing wiggling. But still. It is just a different way of learning more based on oral work than written.

Because there was virtually no paper, very few and uninspired signs, none of the learning equipment I used to teach 3-6 in the library. Not even power point! They each had one Blue Book type notebook, no work sheets and if there we're color pages, there were no crayons. But the kids were clean and attentive and completely adorable.

Tomorrow I am up to teach English - the letter D. Dr. Seuss said, "Big D, little D, David Dunkin DOO dreamed a donut and a duck dog, too!" That won't translate well.