A Typical Day – Part I

Welcome to Ushirika – the university campus where Give A Heart To Africa is based. The roosters get started early here – as early as 2:30am sometimes, but usually more like 4:30am. No, I don't get out of bed at that time, but I usually listen to them for a while (not because I want to) before dozing off again. Unfortunately, any chances of sound sleep are lost at this point. Often, the call to prayer joins the chorus, and, if we're extra lucky, music from the surrounding housing (not always university students). I usually give up on any further sleep by the time 6am rolls around, but have even had a few 5am-ers (in fact, it's 4am now, my time, and in a half hour I have to leave for the airport to greet our next volunteer). The sun continues its slumber, however, usually until about 11am or so (Moshi is a cloudy place, perhaps because of  Kilimanjaro). Don't be fooled…I'm not always the first up in the house; often, Beverly (who is filling in for Monika) is already in the kitchen making coffee by the time I arrive on the scene. Once I've made myself some Kilimanjaro tea, I usually go over my lesson plan for the morning and perhaps try to study a bit of Swahili, and even sometimes attempt to connect to the Internet—note the word, "attempt." At about 7:30/8am I go to my classroom (which is in a small annex attached to the house) to write as much of the first lesson as possible on the blackboard.

 

School starts at 9am, and we open the front gate for the students at about 8:50am. Beforehand, usually Beverly or I check out the students' toilet, which, over the past two months has been broken one out of every two days. By broken I mean, either someone has torn off the flushing handle (in his/her zeal for cleanliness I assume), or the floor is flooded (with exactly what, we're never quite sure). Often, our night watchman (who also uses the toilet) has not aimed very well (sometimes with the seat down, sometimes with the seat up)--despite many demonstrations of proper toilet etiquette--so you can guess what that means… Most Tanzanians have drop toilets, which probably explains the problem.

 

We no longer let any students through the gate after 9am, unless they've given us prior notice or have a good reason for being late. We used to grant a 10-minute grace period (i.e., we locked the front gate at 9:10am), but the students started arriving later and later, so we did away with it. It's not very pleasant having to send late students home, but it's the only way they will understand that we are serious about the education here and that they must be as well.

 

As I think I've mentioned before, school hours are from 9am-12pm. During that time, I teach two business classes (1.5 hours each) with the help of my translator/co-teacher, Herman. Herman is a former student of Give A Heart To Africa and is also one of my two Swahili teachers. He is THE BEST! All in all, I have four classes of students: 1A + 2A on Mondays and Wednesdays, and 1B and 2B on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The 2s go at a slightly faster pace than the 1s and have a better grasp of English, so Herman doesn't need to interpret everything I'm saying for them. However, for the 1s, everything needs to be repeated in Swahili. Since we don't use any textbook, we (the teachers) have to write everything on the blackboard. For the business class, this means in both English and Swahili – that's a lot of writing on the blackboard! And since the two classes a day don't always go at the same pace, we have to rewrite everything on the blackboard for the second class. Though we only teach for 3 hours, it's pretty tiring!