Tourist Time

Dearest TEP donors, volunteers, and friends,

Eileen here once again, reporting to you during the middle of a lovely break from classes. As we have told you, last week brought us many days of stress with monitoring the examination process. I’m sure, however, that our stress was little compared with how the students must have felt preparing for their exams. There were last-minute problems with copying and having the correct exam ready on the correct day, but these were all solved at some point and the whole process went off (relatively speaking) without a hitch.

During my last trip to Tanzania, I was very focused on volunteer work and had not budgeted myself any extra money to do “touristy” things in Tanzania. On the first go around, I thought this was a plus, and there was a certain amount of patting myself on the back thinking I was a “real” volunteer and not just in Tanzania to see the sights and build my resume. However, thanks to my students and director Cassie, I came to realize that Tanzanians, despite lacking the means to visit their own country’s most beautiful sights, are very proud of their homeland, and expect that visitors from other countries will do typical tourist things. Additionally, aside from the cement industry, tourism really is the only other major industry in Tanzania. By patronizing TANZANIAN-RUN tourist companies and facilities, a visitor is doing a lot to support the economy (I emphasize “Tanzanian-run” because many companies come from other countries and simply exploit the resources here and funnel the profits back to the US, er, other countries).

In this spirit, and in light of having a break from our teaching responsibilities for a few days, Kristina and I decided to visit the island of Zanzibar for a short holiday. This was a wonderful trip and Zanzibar is a beautiful place. Though a part of Tanzania, in many ways it is drastically different from mainland Tanzania. And though I enjoyed the trip, I really do not like feeling like a tourist, and I was glad to be home yesterday.

However, now that we’ve taken a bit of a break, its time to get back to work. We have a lot we will be doing in this coming week, so look forward to a more extensive blog update next week. This week, we will be writing up assessments of the projects we implemented last year (ELA Nursery, Olof Secondary School and Orphanage, Hope & Joy Primary School, and Fanaka Memorial Secondary School libraries, Fanaka Stationary shop, etc), as well as writing assessments and proposals for upcoming projects. These will include the Hydrate 2 Educate (H2E) Water Project, Raising a Future the chicken coop project, and the Garden-lunch program. We’ve had the luck to observe a sort of “experimental” version of the chicken coop project, so we will be able to assess the pros and cons of such an investment, as well as investigate what executing such a project would entail.

In addition to these project assessments, we will also be trying to make some decisions on finding a librarian for Fanaka’s library as we have an extremely generous donation to cover a portion of his/her salary. Right now our colleague Mwende (who assisted us in the building of libraries) is running a book lending system for the textbooks at Fanaka, but currently there is no reliable system for students wishing to borrow fiction or nonfiction books for pleasure. Mwende is doing an excellent job, but as of now, he is untrained in library science. He is interested in attending a Librarian’s College in nearby Bagamoyo, but if he decides to do so (which would be good for Fanaka in the long run), then we would have to find a librarian to supervise the library in the interim.

I’m sure that many of you are also interested to hear about the progress in finding a primary boarding school for Father. Father’s mother, Ana, has heard of a few schools that she is interested in, and while we are at the internet today, I will be researching some of these schools and try to visit a few during our break. I want to find the best possible school for Father, one that is a boarding school with an excellent reputation and in good standing in the community. It is also vital that there be a teacher or an administrator at the school whom the TEP can trust as a reliable contact, to keep us updated on Father’s progress as a student. Currently, though he has just recovered from a nasty bout of malaria, Father is in the top of his class, despite how large the classes are. He remains an affable and utterly brilliant child, and it astounds (and frankly, disturbs me a little) me how happy I am when in his company.

Side note to my family: Don’t worry about my affection for Father, it in no way makes me want to reproduce any time soon; it merely makes me weigh the problems an international kidnapping may stir up. JOKE.

Well, friends, we’ve got a busy week ahead of us and I had better get to work. I hope all is well in your respective homelands, and you are bearing the grim early-spring weather well. I can’t say I envy you the crappy late March/early April slush and sleet. I’ll stick to palm trees and a constant mustache of sweat droplets, thank YOU.

As always, may the Force be with you.

Love,
Eileen