Phase One Complete!

Hi again, to all of our TEP followers, friends and families!

As we approach the end of the first half of my Tanzanian experience, I am extremely happy to report that Phase One (as Babu calls it) of Hydrate to Educate is complete! What “Phase One” means is that FANAKA is now fully equipped with rain gutters and water-holding tanks on various buildings on the grounds. The dinning hall, one of the girls’ dormitories, and the boys’ dormitory are able to gather and store rain water. This capability will provide FANAKA students with water for drinking, cooking, and bathing both during the rainy season, and for about four months after the rains end. Ideally, TEP’s goal is to provide water for FANAKA for the entire year, although this goal is still a bit futuristic. Until then, the completion of Phase One allows us to begin to collect water while we work out the financial details to get Phase Two underway (Phase Two of Hydrate to Educate will be to equip at least one of the classroom buildings with gutters and another large storage tank to extend the rain water for a few more months). As though some external observer was pleased watching our progress, the past few days (after Phase One was completed) have experienced rain and thunderstorms, and the beginning of filling the water tanks! Just Wednesday morning I was awoken by the crash of thunder and the pounding of rain on our tin roof and couldn’t help but smile at the idea that this rain was flowing through the gutters at school. Of course that is not the only benefit of the rain.

As may have been mentioned last week, midterm examinations began at school on Friday and go throughout this entire week. What this means is that for up to three hours each morning and three hours each afternoon, all of FANAKA’s students are seated together, in the dinning hall, taking their exams-picture the O.W.L. exams in Harry Potter 5. There are both advantages and disadvantages to this process. The main idea behind such a strategy is to spread out students in the same form to discourage laziness and cheating, and allow teachers to “persuade” one another in administering the examination process. It may be surprising to some people that we have issues with cheating at FANAKA. I realized this after talking to my family on Sunday and my brother expressing his thought that my students probably won’t cheat on their midterms, and I think this could be a common assumption back home. It is easy to imagine that these African students, who have faced far greater challenges than I ever have, would value their educational opportunities much more than their counterparts in developed nations like the United States. I’m sorry to say, that I am here to burst that bubble. While it is true that some of our students are extremely hard working and do put a great value on their educations, the full truth is that we teach teenagers, and if my experiences these last five weeks have taught me anything, it is that teenagers are teenagers no matter where you are. This is not a knock to my brother, or to the many others who no doubt believed similarly. If not for this experience I am sure I would have the same thought, because the only experience I have had with international students was at University where they always seemed very serious and dedicated. But if you think about that, you must admit that university students are, as a whole, more serious than high school students, and if an international student is in the United States for school, he/she has already proven him/herself to be above and beyond the majority in terms of dedication and hard work. Therefore these students cannot be compared fairly and we must look at my students in a different light.

So looking at them without these previous conceptions, as I said, some work very hard and value the opportunities their education can bring. However, there are just as many students who are not in the least bit interested in school and just want to get through it with the minimal effort possible, as well as the majority of students existing in some infinite middle ground. While these students likely know what their life would entail without a decent secondary education, you still cannot impress upon them that studying for midterms is more important than the high-jump-like contest that is currently going on outside the boys’ dormitory (which is where most of my boy students were this afternoon instead of being inside studying for tomorrow’s midterms!). But in the end, they all want to do well; this makes cheating sort of an inevitable part of the examination process for some students, meaning that Eileen and I (at times joined by the other teachers) are spending the majority of our school time this week walking up and down aisles between desks, keeping an eye on students and handing out extra paper for answer sheets. The extreme excitement this brings typically results in me occupying myself with thoughts of the lunch I will be eating after school, which in turn makes the last hour or so of the afternoon drag on at an exhaustingly slow pass increasing that oh-so-pleasant personality shift I can get when hunger strikes. With the completion of examination week so close at hand, I am increasingly looking forward to our next week off of school (four days of which Eileen and I will be traipsing around Zanzibar for a little holiday!) as well as when we return from break and I will be able to occupy my days with classes, lesson plans, and hollering at students to “get back in class! “ Until our next update, enjoy that seasonal shift back home, and hope for some rain for FANAKA!