Wednesday, June 5, 2013

A Day In The Life...



At 7:15 a.m. I begin my mile walk to school.

By 7:30 a.m. I am at school. Our school day lasts from 7:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

On Monday and Friday we have morning assemble from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. where we read the gospel for the day with a short prayer, sing the national anthem, and hear announcements. After midterms and finals it is also a time where we reward students who have done well on their tests.

Most of my day is spent in the library. We have one of the nicest libraries in the region, with about 8,000 books. Most of the books are textbooks, but we do have a few novels to read for fun. Many of the students love to read, and will read anything they can get their hands on.


The library is open to students from 10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and from 2:50 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. The students are also welcome to come if their teacher is absent.

From 10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. is tea time (Tanzania was a British colony). At school we call it uji break after the thin porridge that is served with the tea. During this time you can buy various fried snacks such as a chapati (like a fried tortilla) or vitumbua (fried rice cakes).


On Thursday and Friday I teach classes after uji break. I teach Bible Knowledge for form one and three. My biggest challenge in teaching is that for the form one students this is the first time they are learning in English (primary school is taught in Swahili while secondary school is taught in English). I have about eighty form one students. In the beginning I was confident that ten of the students understood the majority of what I said in English. To help them understand better I have tried to incorporate artwork with the Bible stories we were reading in class.

From 12:40 p.m. till 1:30 p.m. we have a lunch break. For lunch we get a vegetable, beans or meat, and rice or ugali (flour and water mixed together, that looks like mashed potatoes but has no taste). My favorite combination is cabbage, beans, and rice.

On Thursday and Friday I teach classes after lunch break. My form three class is much better at speaking English, and we are able to have discussions in class. For form three we cover The Gospel of Matthew and Acts of the Apostles.

On Wednesday we have clubs from 2:50 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Many of our students are very artistic, but they do not get many chances to express themselves. There are no art classes and art supplies are very limited. This semester I have started an art club. The last couple of weeks we have had a former student come and teach us how to draw Tingatinga, an African style of abstract animals.

By 4:00 p.m. we are headed home from work. When we get home we have some time to just relax. I enjoy spending a lot of that time reading. The Kindle was one of the best things that I brought to Tanzania. Now I will always have a book to read. In the last ten months I have read seventy-eight books. It is nice to have the free time to read. I have always been busy with my own school work that I have never had much time to enjoy reading things that were required for class.

Around 6:00 p.m. I start making dinner. I have not learned how to cook any Tanzanian foods, so our meals our Western style. Pasta dishes are the most common meal.

After dinner I get on the computer to check my emails and Facebook. We are fortunate to have a USB internet stick that works most of the time. It tends to work best if we raise it on our lantern.

Around 9:00 p.m. I am getting ready to go to bed so that I can start all over again tomorrow.

-Lauren

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