Classes: Creatively Controlling Chaos

Main points of this blog update:

• I survived my first week of teaching at Loyola High School
• My first English lesson:

Hello, my name is Mr. Patrick. I am from America. I am 23 years old. I stay in Mabibo, Dar es Salaam. I go to Loyola High School and I am in HDP.

• I am teaching 25ish lessons a week with about 40 students in each.
• Student profile
• 12-15 years old (except for 4 nuns in their mid-twenties)
• Three sections or classes of Pre-Form One (middle school age) and one section of Form One (like freshman year of HS).
• Pre-Form One is called “The Human Development Program” (HDP). This is a year to prepare students for High School. Mainly to learning English because government run primary schools are taught in Kiswahili and all Secondary/High Schools are English speaking.
• Differences between Loyola HS and my HS experience:
• Good differences: mandatory tea and snack break at 10am, AWESOME outdoor assemblies twice a week, free lunch and much more.
• Challenging differences: corporal punishment, learning/teaching students in their second or third language, exam based evaluation over performance/competence, knowing no one, being an OBVIOUS minority and SO much more.

Rather than boring both you and me with a class by class, day by day reflection, here are a few insights into this week that will hopefully paint a picture of what I saw, heard, felt and attempted to teach:

1. Babysitting or Classroom Support? I am a class teacher for HDP “C” which is the equivalent to being a homeroom teacher where I take attendance, check uniforms, answer questions and support the class in whatever they need. On Tuesday I was teaching English to HDP “A” when two girls from my HDP “C’ walked right in and stated explaining how someone had stolen money out of one girl’s back pack totally interrupting my class and fully expecting me to drop everything and conduct a thorough investigation to find the thief. Barely able to hide my laughter at the ‘seriousness’ that was in front of me, I asked them to come to my office at break time to figure it out. When they came to speak to me later that day, we were unable to find the culprit and unfortunately he or she is still at large.
2. Game Face. Wednesdays the students have two periods where they split up into Catholics, Muslims or Protestants and go to Religion Classes. I was told to teach Form One Catholic Religion. On Wednesday at 9am I was given a syllabus with five bullet points and then at 10am I went to teach the first lesson. I walked into the classroom (which seats 45 students) as it began to fill up. About fifteen minutes later, there were almost 90 students in this classroom. At this time the head of the department walked in and said, “you may need a bigger classroom… or another teacher to help you…” I thought: REALLY!?! Someone is playing a trick on me. This is my first week. I have no idea what I am doing AND there are 90 students staring at me. Thanks.
3. Let’s Make a Deal. On Thursday a student walked up to me and said:

“I heard a rumor that people from your country only stay for two years”

“Well, the people that come with my program stay for two years, that is true”

“This is not fair” She responded, looking angry and very offended.

“Why not?” I said.

“Because, I will be at Loyola High School for the next 6 years and you have to stay” She was getting rather heated at this point.

I then tried to explain that I would want to see my family and friends after two years and she gave me a very frustrated look then said:

“Let’s make a deal, you can go see your family in two years BUT then you have to come right back and stay until I graduate!”

Feeling trapped, I told her: “I will think about it”.

Of course I could continue on with stories from the week about mispronouncing names, students staring blankly at me, my inability to understand the student’s accents and their inability to understand mine, administrators/fellow teachers informing me or introducing me to ANY Caucasian visitor to Loyola (and referring to or asking if we are related, colleagues or from the same place), sexism in the work place, homophobia in the classroom, an amazing sense of school pride, an inspiring tradition of work by Jesuits and Jesuit Volunteers, the start of new friendship with staff and students alike and on and on and on…

In the classes, amongst the chaos and with a little bit of creativity on my end, Loyola High School has welcomed, shocked, challenged, shaken and inspired, yours truly, Mr. Patrick.

Unexpected Challenge

The other weekend while celebrating the coming of a New Year with fellow volunteers I danced, laughed and enjoyed the company of wonderful people. The next morning I woke up with twenty-six bug bites on my right hand! World record? Probably not, but still quite the feet! My hand a was an itchy, swollen mess of raised, round, red bumps. I found humor in it, however... I mean, leave it to me to get that many bites in one night.

After saying goodbye to the other volunteers and as we set out on long, long bus rides home, something in me changed. There was something new. A new year's change, you might say....

Malaria.

After a day of feeling off and then a sleepless night with a fever and cuddle-party with the toilet, my community mate, Gretchen, took me to the hospital. It was am experience in health care that I had not expected and was not ready for in my sick/delirious state.

The crowded lobby had dozens of people scattered about with symptoms and issues ranging from missing limbs to screaming children. After trying to give my information, the man at the front desk handed my my file (a piece of cardboard with the name Patrik M. Shey) and ushered me to a seat. Looking around there was a pharmacy, a labratory, an empty swimming pool blocked off, two bathrooms and about six doors with a row of chairs outside each of them (I came to realize that each door was an office of a doctor and the chairs outside were the 'waiting rooms'). After about 10 minutes of nurses and patients coming in and out with no system or order or succession of patient, Gretchen thrusted me into the room just as an old man was rushing out encouraging me to ask for both a malaria and typhoid test! My relief and excitement to finally see a doctor was short lived. He was about 25 and knew very little english (strange because english is the langueage used in education from high school and on). After listening to his desire to move to America and an awkward conversation about 'why would you live in Dar es Salaam and teach in Mabibo' I finally said: "MALARIA and TYPHOID TEST"

He laughed at me and then we started playing a game of charades to try and describe my symptoms. It also became a Kiswahili lesson as he figured out what I was saying and then taugh me (in a call and response form on teaching-game) the words in Kiswahili. One word that he did not translate (and I appologize and slightly regret writing this already) was diarhea which he began to chant loudly, I would even venture to say that he was yelling it at me with a large smile on his face. Maybe he found it ammusing? I do not know. I was exhausted and annoyed at this point. He then scribbled down a few words and said: "you. go to pharmacy. go to lab. go to here."

So, I took the scribbled on piece of paper, faught my way to the pharmacy, elbowed my way into the pharmacy, bought the items needed to preform the tests, traveled to the labratory, gave blood, was sent to the bathroom for a urine sample, back to the lab, waited for my results and then went back to the row of chairs to wait in line to go over my tests. (I sat next to a beutiful Massi woman in her 70s or 80s and her husband.) People kept cutting the line and we just kept waiting. Finally the man at the front desk came, spoke a lot of Kiswahili and got me into the doctor who said.. "two parasites. Malaria. Take this to the phramacy, take pills and drink water, bye".

About $15 and a few busses later, I was home, in bed and being taken care of by my two wonderful community mates.

The days that followed were boring. Me on the couch, drinking water and trying to read a book. We had no electricity and it was hot, per usual BUT I made it through.

Days later I am feeling as good as new! My tolerance to malaria is stronger and while I do not feel ready to start teaching in two days, I am happy to say that my spirits are high and I am excited to truely begin both living AND working as a JV!

Overwhelmed by Karibu Culture

Welcome. Welcome to Tanzania. Come in. Come into my home. Feel at home. Find comfort here. Sit. Enjoy. What I have is yours. Share this with me. Eat. Eat more. Here is a Coke for you. A beer for you. A cake for you. A mango for you. A gift for you. Welcome. Karibu Tanzania.

This is what I am feeling one month in. Tanzanian “Karibu Culture” has provided an overwhelming sense of welcome over the past few weeks. That welcome has come in the form of home stays, meals sharing, greetings on the street and even the purchase, slaughter and cooking of a celebratory goat! Longstanding friendships with Jesuit Volunteers have established a name for the program and those who have served making this transition a bit easier and significantly smoother.

My days in Tanzania are not void of challenge, frustration, fear or discomfort, however. I have officially been immersed in a place that does not look or feel or smell or sound anything like the first twenty three years of my life has been overwhelming to say the least. That sense of immersion is kind of like the feeling of cannon-balling into an ice cold pool on the hottest day of summer… in that you feel everything, your body is in shock, your senses are confused and all you want to do is adjust, adjust, adjust so that you can enjoy the swim, have fun and move on with your day basking in the sun and sharing laughs. Immersion in this Tanzanian pool party of sorts has been interesting.

I feel as though I have jumped into this pool, I am still waiting to find my place in the pool party, the sting of the water is cold enough that I want out but at the same time refreshing enough to keep me in. This the party may feel awkward for a while but as I adjust to the language, the gender roles, the foods, the goat eating, the cockroaches and buffalo spiders, the drop toilets and bucket showers, the instant coffee and all that is new, I will slowly shift from being overwhelmed to being overly-enthused, overly-embraced and overly-excited!

Since jumping into the pool party that is my life here, I have seen a lot and felt a lot. Many of the emotions were expected (I miss check-ins with family and friends… and Panda Express orange chicken) while other experiences have shed light onto new realizations, new understandings and new definitions of life, love and literally everything. For example, I have realized that children are the same where ever you go in the sense that they are goofy, loving, excited, interested and ADORABLE. The children here, however, have one other quality: adaptable. These kids make soccer balls out of used socks and race cars out of cookie boxes and bottle caps. They spend hours playing and fighting, talking and running with seemingly few cares about their conditions in the heat, the dirt and the poverty BUT then there is a total switch and all of the sudden they are running fruit stands, carrying jugs of water twice their size and all of this with a greater understanding of community and what it takes to be a child, be a member of a family and be a part of the Tanzanian people. Children are just one example of this redefinition and re-appreciation.

Throughout the past four weeks I have been very fortunate seeing and experiencing new people, foods, places and aspects of Tanzanian life. As the second year volunteers prepared to head home to the states, I was able to experience goodbyes that outlined just how impactful and meaningful their roles in this community are. Relationships with students, coworkers, families throughout our neighborhood, Jesuits, parishioners and even random strangers on the street displayed how integral and meaningful those two have become. I then went on a home stay, met an amazing family, cooked some Tanzanian dishes, attended a surprise birthday party and started to see how those JVs were invited to and were able to form such genuine and beautiful relationships with those around them.

Two weeks in, we said goodbye to Dar es Salaam and the neighborhood that we live in, Mabibo, and traveled to Tanga for a retreat with the greater JVC-TZA community. There volunteers from Dodoma, Moshi and my community shared in stories, meals and reflections that outlined ways to support and grow together as one larger community spread out all over Tanzania. As a large group we also spent Christmas in Mabibo and New Years in Dodoma with adventures in between including movie watching, beach chilling, botanical garden picnicking, cultural museum visiting, ice cream eating and so much more. It was also with this group that I partook in eating a goat that was given to us in thanks for our work and commitment of two years. While overwhelming at times to be surrounded by, reflecting with and discovering our places within Tanzania, we grew a lot as a large group and even more in the one-on-one friendships. I love these volunteers.

Returning home to Mabibo, charged with a new energy, excited to start a life here and feeling held by my community and the network of JVs that I just left, Cat and I embarked on our first real adventure using Kiswahili to purchase food and materials to then make a whole dinner from scratch. It was the first time that I truly felt like a Jesuit Volunteer in a different country. Amidst handfuls of people simultaneously laughing at my Kiswahili and helping me along, I felt like I was a part of something greater, something growing, something that is both mine and theirs, something that is what it is and will become something that I will love simply because it is. This is it, a communion, a process and the start of Tanzania and me growing one step closer.

Looking forward:

Possibly my greatest challenge and ultimately greatest purpose here begins in one week. I start work. My first time to be up  in front of students, to be in charge of students, to discipline, to lead, to be inspire learning. Next week I will begin working at Loyola High School teaching in pre-form one Oral English, pre-form one Values and form one Religion. What does that mean? I am not sure. I have several outlines of past JV curriculums, a very helpful network of teachers and administrators and A LOT of excitement. All in all, I am sure it will be great but the task of teaching English to children who only know Kiswahili is daunting. Schooling in this country mandates that high school and beyond be taught in English while primary secular schools teach in Kiswahili. These children are being pushed into a new school, a new degree of schooling and a new language. As one who has experienced the reverse (Kiswahili immersion as an English speaker) I feel for these students. It is scary. While I am working to achieve a level of competency that will allow me to communicate my basic needs, they are working to further their education, their possibilities and their potentials in an academic arena. Both of these are daunting, both will require a lot of patience!