Graduate Check-ins: Problems and Perks of Being a Mzungu Travelling the Tanzanian Way

I have recently been joking that I have many different hats here at Sega.  I’ve talked about my gardening hat and my art teaching hat… but one of my hats that I wasn’t really expecting to be wearing was my career counselor hat.  I’m not sure if this will be a permanent position for me here—it’s not exactly my cup of tea and it isn’t something I feel like I really know anything about—but it’s a big part of what I am doing for now.  Which lead to my most recent adventure—a weeklong trip all around Tanzania to check in with the girls that graduated last year.

First, a little background.

A huge part of what I’ve been doing is managing the continuing education scholarships for these graduates.  These girls are mostly in either colleges in a 1-year certificate program, or in “A-Levels” which is form 5 and 6. Managing their scholarships means I frequently have girls text me in all caps that they have run out of money and can’t pay for things like food.  Or toothpaste.  Or notes.  At first, this really stressed me out, as one could imagine. 

I’ve pretty much got the process down now:

1. Receive urgently worded text that they need money THAT DAY.  Sometimes at 6 AM or 8:30 PM.
2. Check the three different files we keep on these girls to see if one of those costs is covered somewhere or if we’ve already given them money for that thing.
3. Ask Pauline (the school’s counselor, and my amazing boss and officemate) if I should give the student money.
4. Ask Polly (the school director and my other amazing boss) based upon Pauline’s recommendation.
5. Fill out a form to request money from Geoffrey (the school’s accountant).  Probably have to redo it at least once because I consistently mix up what part of the form to write in the amount and what part to write in what it’s for.
6. Receive the money.
7. Go into town, and use a system called m-pesa to send the money to the girl’s cell phone at which point she can go withdraw the cash from a number of little shops in whatever city she is studying in.

I still would not say that it is something I enjoy, particularly when I have to tell the girls that, no, we already paid them and they don’t get another payment until X date.  But at least it doesn’t drive me to go on long, solo, stress-relief runs at the end of the day every time it happens.  It also takes a sometimes crazy amount of time and it has definitely limited my involvement in doing a lot of environment stuff which is pretty unfortunate, but that will hopefully be resolved within the next few weeks.

But anyways, at the end of October, Pauline told me one day that I would need to do check-ins with all of the graduates at their schools.  After convincing her that if I did it alone I would probably end up getting incredibly lost and never make it back to Sega, she agreed to come with me.  Which, seeing how our trip went, was definitely best.

It started off in much the same way that these things always seem to—ending up working out but in the most stressful way it could.

The Trip
The night before I was supposed to leave, my stomach woke me up at 2 am for an urgent trip to the restroom.  This had been happening a few times a week since about 3 weeks after arriving in Tanzania so, as uncomfortable as it was, I figured it would be fine by the morning.  And it was, except that I was exhausted from being up half the night and so I slept in late.  I had to meet Pauline at the bus station and had told her to text me when I should leave to meet her in the bus station in Morogoro.  I missed her first text and it wasn't until she called me from 10 minutes away that I realized I was supposed to have left already.  Thank goodness for one of the Sega drivers—he rushed me to the bus station and I literally ran and jumped on the bus just as it was leaving.  I was exhausted and would have slept, but buses in Tanzania do this fun thing where:

1. They drive insanely fast on not so great two lane roads and aggressively pass each other so you’re white-knuckling it the whole way
2. They play a fun mix of Justin Bieber, Jay Z, and Bongo Flava (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttdU19Kwce8) at earsplitting volumes
3. When they aren’t playing music, they show poorly dubbed, cinematic masterpieces like “Jurassic Attack” (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2303110/) at the same earsplitting volumes

It is definitely all part of the experience, but I was still really happy to get off that bus in Iringa.  Now, getting OFF the bus is an adventure in-and-of itself.  Because, waiting at the door of the bus is a crowd of people trying to convince you to buy soda or nuts or cake or a ticket on their bus or a ride on their motorcycle or taxi.  Basically, I would hold onto my bags tightly in one hand and Pauline’s hand with the other as we weaved through the crowd of people shouting “MZUNGU!”  Despite the shouting, which happens pretty much anywhere I go in Tanzania, I really enjoyed Iringa a lot.  It’s a bit smaller of a town than Morogoro, the people are pretty friendly, and the weather is a bit cooler so that you aren’t perpetually sweating.

I also liked Iringa because, despite my initial nervousness at the bus station there, people really didn’t try to mess with me too much.  I found out the next day that it was because of a story called Mzungu’s Bag.  Mzungu means “white person” in Swahili, and pretty much anywhere you go in Tanzania that isn’t on the tourist circuit you are guaranteed to hear a few shouts of it come your direction.  I wouldn’t say that it’s enjoyable—a part of me is tempted to respond with sarcasm and go “WHERE?!?!” and look around dramatically—but it isn’t threatening or anything.  Honestly, I think they’re just surprised, more than anything.  Pauline also informed me that they think that because I’m white, I have a lot of money and so I should be able to buy anything.  I told her the joke is on them—I’m a volunteer and spent all my money on the plane ticket getting here. 

But, anyways.  Mzungu’s Bag.  So, the morning we were leaving from Iringa to go to Mbeya a woman from one of the buses offered to carry Pauline’s suitcase, but gave me one nervous sideways glance and didn't offer with my duffle.  I was fine with that—it wasn't heavy and I was still pretty wary about my belongings.  Turns out I didn't need to be.  We got to the bus station and upon seeing the woman carrying Pauline’s suitcase and not mine the bus conductor busts out laughing and turns to Pauline to tell this whole long story in Swahili.  I stood there quietly, with no idea what was going on, as per usual.  At the end of it Pauline busts out laughing and as we get on the bus she explains it to me—

Apparently, about a year ago, there was an American travelling on the buses in Iringa and her bag was stolen.  She reported it to the police and the police showed up every day for 3 weeks looking for the bag, checking all the buses, and generally giving everybody a rough time and delaying things.  It’s now a longstanding joke at the Iringa bus station that nobody should ever touch mzungu’s bag.  It certainly worked in my favor.

Unfortunately, one bad thing about being mzungu is that I am not used to the germs here—our first night in Mbeya I got really sick again.  I was then fine again for a day, and got really sick again the next night in Dodoma.  At this point, Pauline told me that I really needed to go to the doctor as soon as I got back to Morogoro.  She was also nice enough to let me skip out on one of our interviews so that I could sleep in the hotel for a little while.  Unfortunately, this sleep was interrupted when one of the ladies from the hotel front desk came into the room and told me I had to check out.  She spoke about as much English as I spoke Swahili, so there was a lot of confusing gesturing and I ended up sitting on the front stoop of the hotel waiting for Pauline to return. 

When she got back she sorted out our room situation so that we could leave our bags at the hotel and have a room in Dodoma when we got back.  We then had to rush to get on a bus to Singida—it was only supposed to be a 3 hour bus ride and it was before 11 am at this point.  We were sure that we would be able to make it to the girl’s school and back without any problems.  But, when we got to the bus station, we found that the only buses for Singida weren't leaving for another hour.  So we bought tickets and cookies (which ended up being the only thing I ate that entire day) and waited.  One hour, then two.   Finally, at around 2, the bus shows up.  And the ride ended up taking closer to 4 hours than 3.  So we arrived at around 6, interviewed this poor graduate across the street from the bus station, and rushed back to try and get a bus that was returning to Dodoma. 

There was only one bus.  It was leaving at 8.  And there were no seats left.

But, (A) our bags were in Dodoma, (B) we had already paid for our room there, and (C) neither of us had brought enough money to pay for a hotel in Singida.  We would have to go back that night.  And we would probably have to stand in the aisle the entire 4 hours.  After waiting for an hour and a half, a miracle happened—another bus had broken down en route to Dodoma, so they were sending a different bus from our station to pick those people up.  And there were seats on this bus.  AND it was a really nice bus.  So we boarded and off we went.  Now, if I thought being on buses in the day was terrifying, night is a beast of a whole ‘nother color.  I won’t go into it, but at one point I just put my head down and tried to sleep because flinching every 30 seconds was exhausting.  After around an hour and a half, we made it to the bus that had broken down.  It took about 20 minutes for those people to shuffle onto our bus, find their seats, and settle their luggage.  And then OUR bus wouldn’t start.  After another 20 minutes, they finally got the engine to turn over and we were on our way. 

I was pretty convinced that nothing else could possibly happen on that bus ride.  I was wrong.  At around 12, the police pull us over.  After some frantic conversations between the police and the driver, the conductors, and other bus patrons we are still stopped.  Pauline told me to stay in our seats as she went to figure out what was going on.  She came back and told me that the police said that it was too late and that the bus wasn’t allowed to be on the road this late.  They wanted us to pull over and spend the night on the bus in the middle of nowhere.  Meanwhile they let another half dozen trucks and cars pass through.  Pauline said it was probably because they wanted us to pay them off.  

At this point I was exhausted, hungry, delusional, and I needed to pee.  So we got off the bus and Pauline was nice enough to hold up her kanga (piece of Tanzanian fabric) for me while I peed.  I was not in any rush to get back on the bus (there were a lot of crying babies on there) so we stood outside and joked about how insane this trip had been.  As we stood there, I noticed the police officers kept glancing my direction and talking between themselves.  A few minutes later they went to go talk to the driver and they had changed their tune—we were allowed to leave.  Pauline looked at me and told me thank goodness I was there.  Turns out the police are a lot more worried about leaving a bus on the side of the road when there’s a mzungu on board. 

We were about half an hour from Dodoma at this point, but that didn't stop two more groups of police officers from trying to get us to stop.  We didn't make it back to our hotel until 2 AM.  We slept in late and headed back to Sega the next morning.  Thankfully, this bus ride was much smoother and incredibly uneventful.

Our meetings with students were definitely the things that made all of the crazy trips worth it.  Most of them were so excited to see Pauline, and a lot of them are doing really well and working really hard in classes.  Generally speaking, they are extremely grateful for the opportunity that they have been given and they really understand that Sega’s support is giving them a chance at a better future.  They’re motivated and driven to succeed.   Not all of the girls are like that, but enough are that it makes it feel like what I am doing is worthwhile. 

P.S.  In case you were worried about my health, don’t be.  On Monday I went to a really good doctor in Dar to try and figure out what was wrong with my stomach.  Upon hearing my symptoms, he told me I probably had giardia.  So I’m on the last day of these anti-parasitic meds that make my abdomen twitch and my pee highlighter yellow.   Good times.   

In the Art Room with Preform Students

My apologies for the long break in between posts—it’s been a busy and sort of crazy few weeks.  I wanted this next post to be a sort of “overview” of my daily schedule at Sega so I was waiting, hoping I would settle into a routine.  But, I can’t really say that I have a set daily or even weekly schedule—things come up last minute a lot and there is constantly something new.  Instead I decided I would talk about the thing I most enjoy here—teaching art to the preform girls.

Before I get started, I should probably explain a little bit about how the Tanzanian school system works and where the girls I teach lie in this.  First is seven years of primary school, which is taught in Swahili, divided up into what are called “standards”, and is mandatory for all children in Tanzania.  Because it’s mandatory, girls don’t usually drop out until secondary school, which is where Sega comes in.  Although Sega is technically a secondary school, girls are selected during their Standard 6 year based upon how likely it is that they might drop out once they reach secondary.  They arrive at Sega at the end of their Standard 6 year and take all of Standard 7 at Sega which helps them get adjusted to Sega but also ensures there isn’t a gap between the time they stop primary and start secondary school.  At the end of Standard 7, all students take a national exam which they need to pass to get into secondary school.  This exam is taken in September and, usually, primary school students have a break until the next January when they return to school. Secondary school is 6 years total, divided into what is called “forms”, and is split into O-Levels (Form 1-4) and A-Levels (Form 5 & 6).  Sega is an O-Level secondary school so (not including the primary school girls) there are students from Forms 1-4.

The Preform students (the ones that I am teaching) are girls that already took their Standard 7 exam but are waiting for their national exam results.  Because secondary school is taught in entirely in English, Sega uses these few months for an English-intensive program which is mostly taught by me and the other U.S. volunteers.  This is both good and bad.  Since most of us speak very little Swahili, they’ve definitely been completely immersed in English.  However, there’s no curriculum for these girls, a lot of them are at very different levels as far as their English, and they don’t really have any exams to study for so they can be pretty undisciplined.   It’s been a challenge for a lot of us.  

Although I had taught a lot of craft classes via girl scouts throughout middle and high school, teaching art to 31 34 middle school aged girls who don’t really speak the same language has been… well it has been a lot of what you would probably call “trial-and-error” teaching.  This basically means that I have been figuring out how to explain things using mostly gestures, what skill level they are at, and how to manage supplies.  It’s also a lot of remembering that these girls have really never had any art classes and probably have had really limited access to supplies.

It can be stressful, but it’s also really rewarding.  The girls do some really good work and many of them seem to really enjoy it.  Some things work better than others and it’s always sort of a surprise as to what works and what doesn’t.  Here are a few of the projects we’ve worked on:

Learning about primary, secondary, warm, and cool colors.

This was a really messy first project, but definitely fun.  We put different primary colored acrylic paints on each of our hands and then rubbed them together to learn about mixing primary colors to make secondary colors.  Also I had two visitors from the U.S. who came to help out in the class which was pretty cool.  I think they enjoyed the class and they took some pretty incredible pictures (some of which I already posted to Facebook, but here they are again).

As for warm and cool colors, the girls traced their hands and drew lines through them, breaking them into geometric shapes.  The object of the lesson was to do warm colors inside the hand and cool colors on the background, butttt that kind of got lost in translation and they just ended up painting them all different colors.    They still turned out pretty nice and they look really good hung up all together, in my opinion at least.

Learning about Value, Highlights, and Shading

This one was definitely tougher to explain with the language barrier, but I do think they turned out really nicely and they look pretty neat.  I also think that the girls got it by the end and I have seen some of them apply the things we talked about in this project to later projects.  Basically, I had premade sheets with different 3D shapes and they used colored pencils to shade their shapes depending upon the light source.  Then they used black sharpie to create a pattern in the background and pencil to create shadows on the background once they pasted on their shapes.  They turned out sort of like “op-art” and, again, looked pretty good all hung up together. 

“Stained Glass” Flowers

For this I was really just trying to figure out a way to re-use toilet paper tubes.  This was definitely pretty tough for them and probably too complicated of a project, but I still think it turned out okay.  I had the girls draw a series of geometric shapes onto tracing paper in colored markers and then trace them with black sharpie.  I had cut and put together all of the cardboard tube flowers earlier that week, so the girls just had to trace around the flower, cut them out, and then we taped them together.  Taping was definitely a challenge and required me to help everybody individually which is always problematic with such a big class.  I think they look cool, but maybe better suited for a Pinterest-y DIY preject than for an art class.  You live and learn.

 

Figure Drawing

In our most recent class we practiced figure drawing.  Again, not an easy concept to describe to the girls.  Despite that, they really enjoyed the lesson.  I think their favorite part was getting to be “models” for the rest of the class.  We had 8 different models come up and I gave them about five or six minutes to draw each person.  They didn’t really get it at first, but I stressed that you focus on drawing the general pose or position of the person and not on the details and they seemed to catch on by the end.  

Student modelling for figure drawing practice.

Despite the challenges, I really do enjoy teaching these girls and I do enjoy teaching art.

Until next time,

Carolyn