First day of working at the school and it....was a bipolar experience. Parts of it were incredible and other parts completely overwhelming and discouraging. When I got there it was wonderful! The kids are just like you see in the commercials, running up the side of the van waving with huge smiles on their faces.  The minute I stepped out of the van there were 6 kids clinging to my skirt, hands, arms, waist, anything they could touch. They would look up at me and say "teacha, teacha!" with their cute little accents. It can actually get aggressive for which kids get my hands. It's like king of the hill. One kid will try to cling onto a hand while other kids are trying to pry one of my hands from him/her so they can hold it. I tried telling them to "share" or "don't hit!" but they didn't understand what I was saying so it was really no use. The best I could do was take my hands away from them entirely. The school is in terrible condition - I guess I should have expected that. It consists of two small buildings, one with the classrooms and the other the lunch room. There are 4 classes & 4 teachers, each with about 30 kids ranging from ages 3-6. Today, though, 2 of the teachers didn't show up. Apparently a common occurrence. Wonderful. So we had to combine 2 of the classes to make it almost 50 kids a classroom with one teacher in each and then us, the volunteers (me in one classroom and Andrea, the other volunteer in the other classroom). Inside the kids have a simple 2-person desk setup with cement walls and only the windows to provide any cooling or light. The front is a messed up blackboard which is made of I don't know what, but it works. They get 3 different sessions of recess including lunch during the 2nd recess. For lunch each kid gets a child-size plastic cup filled with porridge. That's it. One cup and they are done, and the porridge comes from a huge pot that is cooked throughout the day over a firewood fire. They do not waste, either. If one kid doesn't finish theirs, the teacher asks which kids want more and the quickest are lucky enough to get a portion of the extra porridge poured into their cup. They have three balls to play with - a soccer ball, tennis ball, and air-filled bouncy ball - to distribute amongst the 100 kids. Otherwise they have to entertain themselves with the dirt, grass, and each other. As you can see, they are in terrible conditions. It is so sad and it just adds to the overall depressing atmosphere of Tanzanian poverty. 


The overwhelming and discouraging aspect of my experience begins and ends in the actual teaching, though. The teacher spoke only in Swahili the entire lesson, so I had no idea what was going on. At one point during the lesson she asked if I would take over when we got to the English part where they would be learning about plants. I got excited because I would actually be of use, but when we got to that part of the lesson she forgot she had asked me, I guess, because she just kept cruisin through. She would say the English word "tree" for example, and would follow it up with a big long explanation in Swahili about what that English word she just said meant. It was then that I realized that even if I had tried to teach it & she remembered she asked me to do it, how could I explain anything further than pointing to the tree and saying "tree" with them repeating what I say? I couldn't explain anything more in depth than that and they might not understand it well enough to really learn it. The only thing I DID do today was check the students' work. They have pencils and workbooks (meaning books with specially spaced lines to guide where to write the letters and normal lines for math) and after the teacher would write a bunch of "today's" letter (which was P), they copy it in their workbooks. They would line up in front of my wanting me to check their work. The biggest problem, and I had the same problem when I was checking the addition for math, is that if a child got something wrong, how do I explain to them what they did wrong? The only thing I could do was point to their mistake, try to write out how to fix it, and tell them to try again. They would look up at me with confused eyes. I couldn't ask for the teacher's help because she was helping other students. This was also confirmed when the kids I had told to try again would come back 5 minutes later and had made the same exact mistake they had made before, they had just written it twice now.


Basically I felt worthless. Most of the lesson consisted of me listening quietly as the teacher jabbered on in words I did not understand, and then confusing the children as they're trying to do their exercises right and I'm just making matters worse for them. As you can imagine my first day of school experience was not so great. 


It got better afterwards, because after we got home a guest speaker came and talked to us about health issues in Tanzania, and afterwards had a lesson on Swahili at the home base. Following that we drove to a Women's Center for a "cultural night," consisting of dinner and performances by local youth. They did acrobats, classic hip-crazy African dancing, and had us join in at the end while they did the electric slide. It was fun to interact with kids more my age so I was able to see that age-group of Tanzanian culture. For some reason in the villages it seems to be only little little kids or older parents and grandparents. 


I really hope that tomorrow school will be better. I will make more of an effort to learn simple songs that I could teach the kids and maybe even be a little more insistent on playing a part in the lesson. If the kids only learn things in Swahili they'll never know English past one-word descriptions of things. Overall it was a great day, just a little overwhelming. Love you all! See you soon.