Random Photo Collection #1: House

Turn left here...

Our house is behind the wall
that's behind the woven fence

The street along one
 side of our house

The road from the house to the village shops

A family plot just down the lane

Lemons on our back terrace

Banana trees:
lots to share soon

A gift of oranges from the tree next door

Struggling with Swahili: these
go in my purse with me

We find a dead centipede on
our floor
on an average of one a day

We have found only a couple of live
centipedes. That's what dust pans are for.

Shops are very creative: this bag is made from
a page in a child's notebook.

Saving cardboard for
teachers' activities

This onion bag is made from
stapled newspaper.

Recycling has a long
way to go, but our 
plastic and cans
give Hassan, our 
watchman (left)
 some pocket money. 

My best friends

Mosquito nets: a must

Traditional dining 
room sink. Hand 
washing before 
meals is expected.

Our house pet

A baby house pet

Our rechargeable lights are well used: 
our power goes off for an average of 2 
hours a day. We never know when. 

Reading in the dark 

View from the house

Small Steps
Note: Peter is planning a separate blog that will appeal to current and recently retired school and school system administrators who might also be considering this kind of experience.

Another Note: Photos will open up if you click on them.

The METHODOLOGY COURSE, funded by the British Council, is now finished, with much pride, celebration and relief to all 170 teachers of all subjects from the six secondary schools involved.

a school's lead teacher teaching staff

Group work

The course was meant for teachers who could speak and read at a high level of English and were able to understand and teach quite sophisticated grammatical concepts. It was very challenging for many. (Although all secondary level subjects are supposed to be taught in English, the teachers are not able to do so.)

Celebratory lunch

The teachers, the large majority of whom are   women, spent a good deal of their time outside of their regular day learning how to encourage their students to participate in their learning through a variety of activities and to take risks by attempting to answer questions without fear of the teacher’s anger, punishment or harsh or demeaning response.

Many teachers in Zanzibar have second jobs because they are so poorly paid. In addition, women do all domestic and child-related tasks: their willingness to participate in this course was admirable, to say the least.

a group of dedicated educators

 Our final ‘event’ was a GENDER EQUALITY WORKSHOP---a sensitive topic---to raise awareness of the 75 lead teachers and department, school , and assistant heads. The main speaker was Eliud, a Kenyan male volunteer whose job is to take this same message to Zanzibari villages. My role was part organizer and part ‘Vanna’. 

Adjectives arranged by gender

Eliud presented the activities in Kiswahili to ensure that everyone understood the message and participated with ease in the discussions. 

Clearly, this topic had not been addressed before: many took the opportunity to voice their thoughts. The message that change begins at home through setting examples with their own children was well-received by the women and, after some initial discomfort, a good number of the men.

Gender roles: social or physical  

Each school was given a package of workshop materials to use with its staff, and for the teachers to use with their students. I believe there’s a good chance of this happening.  Follow-ups are in order.

Facts

According to the Tanzanian Demographic and Health Survey, (2004/5), there are 5 reasons why men beat their women:

1.       Burning the food

2.       Neglecting the children

3.       Arguing with their husband

4.       Refusing sex

5.       Going out without permission

The DHS (2010) reports that:


48.9% of women aged 15-49 who were questioned said that their husbands made the final decision as to whether they could travel to visit family.


There is no law in Tanzania specifically addressing domestic violence. Domestic violence remains very widespread and severely under-reported due to stigma and pressure from family and the community to remain silent. Police are generally unwilling to interfere.


The minimum legal age for marriage is 15 for women and 18 for men, but the law allows exceptions for girls aged 14 years under 'justifiable' circumstances. (The law has been under review since 2008.)

The United Nations in Tanzania report (2011) reports that:


Tanzania ranks 125th out of 155 countries on the gender-related Development Index of 2009.


High drop-out rates for girls and gender parity in secondary and tertiary education remain a concern.


Maternal mortality remains high.


The burden of HIV is still heavy, with higher infection rates in women than in men.

Women continue to be more likely than men to be poor and illiterate, to be subject to gender-based violence and usually have less access than men to medical care, property ownership, credit, training, and employment.

Safari So Good!

 

Carolyn’s month-long stay with us here in Zanzibar gave us a  good reason to fulfill the promise we had made to ourselves: to take a safari in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, with a side trip to Tarangire National Park.  


The three of us did just that, over four nights and five days, starting with a flight to Arusha---Maasai territory--- in central Tanzania. Our driver/guide, Damian, met us with his Land Rover, which he took care of like a proud father---not an easy thing to do on the rough park roads. He was extremely helpful and informative. Without offering an endless list of animals we saw, I will say that we did see two rare black rhinos and our guide spotted two well-camouflaged leopards in trees. The only animal we did not
manage to see was a cheetah. Zebras, lions, elephants, cape buffalo, gazelles, wildebeest were...everywhere!

 

We witnessed an exciting episode where, at the side of road in the Ngorongoro Crater, a lioness with two cubs was guarding her dinner: a carcass of a zebra she had recently killed. We---and she--- watched the cubs go over and eat as more and more hyenas circled her. It was quite nerve-racking for the spectators: a TV documentary, live! When a couple of hyenas came close, she ran at them; they would back off a short distance. Eventually, after the cubs and the ever-watchful mom had had their fill, they moved away, exhausted and thirsty, and watched from the tall grass across the road as the hyenas moved in and stripped the carcass clean. Her hopes of saving the leftovers were lost.

A photo taken in the Serengeti is included,showing masses of hippos submerged in any deep water they could find. The upcoming rainy season was badly needed. The photo 

should be especially appreciated in light of the accompanying smell from large numbers of hippos pooping in small pools of water!

We highly recommend your making this trip.  Please include Zanzibar in your itinerary!   

Streets of Stone Town

 If you come to Stone Town, you will get lost. You will find a shopkeeper who speaks English. He will want to be helpful, but his directions may or may not be correct. You will not have a map that indicates the names of the lanes: it seems that only the storekeepers know some of them. Eventually you will see a landmark, or the water--- something that you will show you that you have been going the opposite direction from where you intended to be. You will decide that it was all worthwhile.

Introducing Moses

We’d like to introduce Moses, our Masai  (or ‘Maasai’) night guard (‘askari’). The VSO office in Dar es Salaam suggested we should have an ‘askari’, and our housemate, Niki (who is back in Alberta now) learned from a Ministry of Education school inspector, Ramla, that Moses was available. Ramla, along with a young Masai friend of Moses, called Losaro, who speaks English, acted as interpreters.

Moses is on the job from 6:00 pm to 6:00 am, with a day off each week.  Of course, these times are based on ‘African Time’: it might be better to say sundown to sunrise. He has never missed a day, and takes his job very seriously. He sits in a chair in the shadows, with a small pile of rocks and his ‘eremet’ – a spear/walking stick that every warrior is given at a young age---on the ground beside him. He is up at the door in the wall to check every sound. VSO is paying his salary of Tsh 80,000 (Tanzanian shillings, about $50.00 a month, which is the average monthly salary in Zanzibar), but we have padded it.

Masai villages are all on the mainland, in northern Tanzania and Kenya. Our landlord spoke to him and learned that he has no place to live or sleep.  With the landlord’s help, we bought him a bed and mattress. He now sleeps on our covered porch during the day. He has Masai friends in similar situations he meets with during the day for tea and talk. We provide water by filling large plastic containers for drinking and washing, and a bucket for washing his two clothing items and a blanket. 
  

The Masai culture makes fascinating reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people

When we go to Sri Lanka for two weeks over Christmas, Losaro will be our daytime askari. He has made it clear that he feels strongly that Moses and he should not and will not take days off while we are away. It turns out that he was right.

Added the following morning:

We came back from Stone Town about 9:00 pm, to a very agitated and excited Moses. From what we could surmise from the few words we could pick out from his long explanation, and his gestures, two boys or young men on bicycles had climbed over our wall and were very surprised to see Moses approaching them, swinging his stick and beating it on the ground. They scrambled back over the wall and rode away quickly. He ended his story with a laugh, so we think he was amused that they took him seriously. We have no concerns about our personal safety.

Work Finally Begins...

We hope that this entry will be interesting to both our
educator- and non-educator- family members and friends.

Note: *Photos: Descriptions at bottom. I haven’t figured
out how to label photos yet.



OK, time to work! An intensive secondary teacher training program is ready to go, beginning next week. Why not sooner, you may be wondering. Secondary schools have been open only infrequently since we arrived. Here's why.

This year, the period from mid-October to mid-November included:

-  the celebration of the religious holiday, Eid of Al Adha
Schools closed.  

-  exams for Form 7 (14 yrs of age, the last year of Primary school.  Q: How did that affect volunteers in secondary schools?  A:  Secondary school teachers invigilated (to ensure that the primary teachers did not influence the marks). Schools closed.

-  one week of classes. Schools open.

-  two weeks of secondary exams at the Form 2 Level (Grade 10), the last year of compulsory education in Zanzibar.  On this occasion, secondary teachers from one school invigilated at schools other than their own, to protect the integrity of the exam process. Schools closed.  

Our roles as volunteers: 

Peter will be working with Heads (Principals) of three secondary schools in the Stone
Town area to help with the development of leadership skills. Jane will be working with a few English teachers in the same secondary schools with teaching strategies other than the commonly used teacher-centred /rote learning method. They will then model some of the new teaching techniques to others and so on...(‘Cascading’) with volunteer support.

During the couple of weeks when the schools were open, Peter met with heads to introduce himself and to learn about each school and how it operated. In both cases he had a chance to read, and learn about,  the school’s annual plan in preparation for further discussions.

We have met with a couple of Ministry of Education people. We were aware that it was a small staff with a lot to do and little money to do it. They took time to meet with us and discuss, over cups of tea, our roles here. We look forward to meeting with and updating them periodically.

Jane has met with two of the lead teachers and spoken with lots of students! Most were too shy to ask questions so, aware that their written English was much stronger that their speaking and auditory skills, she talked to them about strategies for listening to and practising spoken English. Most of their questions focused on how to get funding to go to university outside of Africa. She has told them she would look into it, but really, she doesn’t know where to start. They are all so serious, so hopeful, desperate to succeed, and poor.

Critical issues related to our roles: 

(This list, abbreviated and reworded, was found in a 2007 document from the Zanzibar Ministry of Education, Education Development Program)

-        acute shortage of teaching and learning materials including textbooks, reference books, library books, computers and laboratory equipment

-        emphasis on National examinations, conducted at the end of primary, basic, lower secondary and higher secondary education, encourage rote learning-based method of teaching.  Failure rates at all levels are extremely high.

-        a great shortage of qualified secondary school teachers, particularly in science, math and English language

-        about 50% of teachers at the secondary level under -qualified or unqualified

-        low teacher morale and very low pay

-        weak leadership and management capacity,
     including centralised decision making, insufficient number of qualified managerial staff at the Ministry, Regions, Districts and in schools. Most heads of secondary
     schools have not had training on educational or
     school management

-        English language proficiency of the majority of
     students well below acceptable levels, hindering
     their ability to succeed academically and increasing
     their dropout rate

-        low level of English of most teachers

-        acute shortage of classrooms and subsequent use of double shift system, resulting in reduced instructional time

-        average of 60 students per classroom

All of these factors will make our assigned roles very challenging!

Photos notes:

Exterior wall paintings at Mtoni  by a primary school volunteer, Wendy, who devised this solution for the combined  problems of high humidity preventing anything from sticking on walls, and the lack of textbooks. ‘Parts of the microscope’ is always on the Exam, but the school has no microscopes. The other photos of students, classrooms, grounds open to the public---and to ox carts---the water pipe, and the school library where the meeting is taking place, were taken at Kiembe Samaki Sekonderi. The conditions
and facilities of a few urban schools such as these are considerably better than those of most Zanzibari schools as described in 'Critical Issues' above.