Dave in Tanzania: July 2011

Just finished up a big week! Halfway through internship teaching, took my mid-training oral and written Kiswahili exams, and got a weekend vacation to Mikumi National Park. Where to begin?

I guess with teaching. Our training class of 39 has split up into groups of 4 or 5, and each group is assigned to a local seconday school near Morogoro. Monday through Thursday Tyler, Brie, Marielle, Becca and I each get to teach several classes, and spend most of the rest of our time learning Kiswahili with our language instructor, Majid. It's a good group; everybody in the training class is getting to know each other, but the five of us are especially close. I've been teaching two English classes and one Math class a week. Teaching here presents challenges different from those in the States. Most classes are bare except for desks, chairs, and a chalkboard. The classes are open air buildings, which makes them subject to outside dust, noise, and smoke from burning trash piles. Many of the students here are very bright, but they have generally not been encouraged to use critical thinking skills in school, so trying to involve them in interactive teaching takes a lot of conscious effort on both my part and theirs. Still, internship teaching has been building my confidence a lot; I feel much more prepared to go out to my site than I did a few weeks ago.

Speaking of site, the day is drawing nearer all the time! Site announcements are next week. All 39 of us will know where we'll be living for the next 2 years! A month from today I'll have been sworn in and I'll be heading to my site with my school's headmaster. Lots of buzz and excitement as we get close to the date. Lots of different places to possibly end up; the Southeast can be arid and very hot all year, the Southern central highlands can be pretty cold, some volunteers get placed near Kilimanjaro, and there's even one or two on the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba.

And then there was this weekend's Safari! (In Kiswahili, Safari just means "trip." But we actually went to a park to see wild animals, so it was a safari both in the Kiswahili sense as well as the romanticized version that most of us English speakers think of). Saw tons of animals! Giraffes, baboons, zebras, wildebeest, birds, impala, hippos..... But the real kicker was coming upon two female lions who were eating a giraffe. Got great pictures too!! It was really nice to get away from training responsibilities for a day or so, and a good chance to get to hang with all the other trainees. All in all, awesome weekend!