Ups and Downs

These past two days have been like roller coasters. On Wednesday, my class went so well! The students were full of energy and just absorbing everything I was saying. It was wonderful. I have never felt so accomplished or so proud. We did parts of speech (finished nouns, verbs, adjectives, and started adverbs). I also taught them what an acrostic poem was and they agreed to write one each to turn in to me the next day. A few days ago, Nana Bashir had asked me whether or not being a young female was a factor detrimental to my classroom control. I find it has actually worked to my advantage. Mohammed Abbas and Mohammed Rahim have been coming to class with me so they can continue teaching it once I leave. They are two of the volunteers from COEJ and both excellent people. I find that I don't get tired of their company; I wish I could say that about everyone I am working with! Anyway, if I don't have a pen, half the class gets up to give me theirs. If either of the boys don't have a pen, the boys hesitate and one of them eventually reluctantly gives one up. They are so eager to speak to me and answer questions correctly. I believe little things like that work to my advantage. Long live gender!

On Thursday, we began adverbs. Class was difficult. Many of the students kept confusing adjectives and adverbs, and I was running out of ways to distinguish between the two. I am hoping to try again today. Insha'Allah, we will knock adverbs and adjectives dead soon and move on to conjunctions and prepositions soon. I also found out that there are only three Kiswahili-English dictionaries on the entire campus and they are all in the girls' secondary library! How does that make any sense?! When I was learning Spanish, my Spanish-English dictionary was my most indispensable lifeline. I am going to talk to Nana Bashir and Jabir and see if something can be done about this. If the administration cannot help, I think I'll send some to Kibaha from either Dar or the States once I get back.

On Wednesday, I had to cancel the interviews I had scheduled for the afternoon because Neelam signed me up for sports from 4 to 5:45. I don't understand some of the people here. I am totally booked from 2:30 to 7:00 every day. It's on every calendar / schedule in this building. Yet, somehow, I still manage to get double-booked unknowingly. Anyway, I rescheduled my sponsorship interviews for the next day and went over to the primary dorm to get Grades 6 and 7 and head over to the futbol field as I had been instructed. Upon arrival, I was told that Grade 7 had exams the next day so I should take Grade 5. The kids took half an hour to get ready. As we were leaving, I realized I didn't have a ball to play futbol / kickball with so I stopped by Neelam's office. I was informed that we don't have an inflated ball available. Then why schedule games that require balls?! I grabbed jump ropes and frisbees as well as the deflated ball (in case) and headed over to the field with the girls. Within ten minutes, I had received a phone call from the matron informing me that I needed to bring them back because today was their wash-clothes-and-read-Qur'an day. What a total waste of two hours. This is also something I was referring to in my previous post. There is so much micro-managing that we are wasting precious hours. They spent three hours the night before making this sports schedule and then forty five minutes today over-reminding everyone that they had to take the kids out. All for nothing. Complete inefficient use of time.

Anyway, I've created my own sports schedule with the kids. I don't understand why it took so long. I think it took Sabira, Ilham, and I twenty minutes to sort it out with the matrons. Sabira and Ilham are two of the COEJ girls. They are both very sweet and great workers. I enjoy their company. Sabira is an optician and is hoping to run an eye clinic sometime next week to check the eyes of all the girls on campus. I hope it takes place before I leave the country. I'd like to be here for it. Ummi, another one of the volunteers, and I talked to Shirin Bai (the head land / garden person around here) about having the kids in primary plant their own pea plants to sort of have their own garden to maintain. There are 190 kids total so we asked for 6 plots which can hold about 32 or 35 plants each. Yesterday, we went to go see them. I am so excited for this project!! Ummi is hoping to get it started by next week. The third project that is currently underway is building a sandpit near the orphanage. Ali Kanani (COEJ) and I are working on this one together. Yesterday, while I was interviewing sponsored girls, Nana Bashir, Jabir, and Kanani went out to the orphanage and marked out a 6 m x 4 m area where we can build the sandpit. We will start digging tomorrow. I'm so excited. I haven't dug since my last Habitat for Humanity build in Massachusetts last Fall. It will feel good to be sore the next day.

I am also almost finished with the sponsorship interviews! This is such a good feeling. When I arrived, we had next to no information about these children. Now, I think I only have three girls and two boys left to interview / compile profiles of out of about seventy five. I have also created a database of all the sponsored children, what classes they are in, continuing records of their academic performance, the amount they have received from their sponsor, and what their remaining balance is. I need to figure out a way to sort the kids by sponsor so that, when sponsors request profiles of their children, no one has to scramble and figure out what kid belongs to who. I will be working on that this week. I also need to confirm balances because it seems these numbers are changing all the time. Mohammed Abbas's father works for Zainabiyya in London and he was telling me that numbers when it comes to the sponsored education of other children are always trouble to find. That being said, I'm sure we can sort it all out if we put our heads together.

Let's see. What else? Oh. On Thursday morning after Fajr, Mohammed Abbas, Nana Bashir, and I went on an hour long walk out of WIPAHS's territory. It was fantastic. I got to see the sunrise from the balcony in the administration building. I took pictures, but they definitely do not do the view any justice. I do believe that this is almost always the case but I wish I could have captured it to show everyone once I am back in the States. The walk, however, was beautiful. We went to a few neighboring government schools. Some of these classrooms have 90 children in them! Can you imagine a Kindergarten class with ninety students in it?! I cannot. That would be insanity. How do you teach nouns, verbs, and adjectives to a group of ninety kids and ensure that they have all absorbed the information?! Wow. None of the classrooms had desks. Desks. I know I have always taken desks for granted. I have never walked into a classroom hoping that it would have a desk in it ..

We walked through the "wilderness" almost to Mili Moja (the market 1.6 km - if you take the main road - from WIPAHS) and then took Morogoro Road (the main road that goes from Dar to Tanga, Moshi, etc and also into the south) back to campus. Along the main road, we saw a lot of what locals call "Mama Ntiliye" (again, apologies on the spelling). Ntiliye means "put for me." How awesome is that? Little huts called "Mama Ntiliye" where you can load up on mandazi, bhajiya, chai, chapati, etc before starting up your day. Nana Bashir was in Dar yesterday but Mohammed Abbas, Frankie (one of my unofficial students - well, he's more a friend than a student, I think - here), and I still went on our nightly walk. I don't know what is wrong with the girls out here. They don't want to do anything! Instead of going on a walk with us, they ended up sitting in the conference room and chatting for three hours. Oh well. I suppose I shouldn't worry about it as long as they're not stopping me from going. We spent an hour walking and two hours sitting on the football pitch near the boys dorm (aka Ali Center) and watching the cloudy sky and getting small glimpses of the stars while we talked about how to make the most of our time here.

I really don't even want to think about leaving. I don't think I'll go to Dar for 15th Sha'baan. I'm really considering staying here through the 31st of July. I am sure that I will regret not spending as much of this last week here and don't want to have to live with that. Not sure if I've blogged about this already, but we are making breakfast for all the kids on campus tomorrow morning (Saturday). I am so excited. Then, Naima (one of the gardeners here) is taking Mohammed Abbas, Mohammed Rahim, and I "slashing." We see her cutting the grass with this machete like rod (aka "a slasher") every day. On Wednesday afternoon, I ran into her on my way to lunch and she asked me if I wanted to try it. So I did. It's harder than it looks! I set up a date with her on Saturday in the late morning to do some slashing before salaat and my afternoon craziness begins. It should be fun. We are also going to milk the cows on Monday morning at 5:30 since we are not free at any other time during the day. I'm not sure who wants to go, but I hope the group isn't too large. Maybe we can split into little groups and spread ourselves out over the rest of the days during the week as well.

I am going to miss the kids. Last night, after closing everything in the office up, I realized that it was about 8 PM and that I had about half an hour before prep. I went to the orphanage to see the kids as I hadn't seen them all day. I have no service in there and my phone basically stops working. When I left the orphanage and looked at the time, it was 10. I had unknowingly missed dinner and spent an hour with the kids and an hour with the matrons that live with them instead. They treat me as one of their own. I suppose that's because I treat them as one of my own. Although I am starving because of it and have had to save my malarone for lunch (in fifteen minutes), these are definitely what my best memories here in Kibaha are like. Just spending time with the people who live here day in and day out. I have learned so much from them. They are so warm, so accepting, and rarely have strings attached to the statements they make. They are genuine.

Last night, I had class with Moulana's wife as usual. She is so funny that woman. We spend half an hour reading and then half an hour discussing any topic of her choice. Yesterday, her topic was comparing "insaan" (humans), "haywaan" (animals), and "fereshtah" (angels). We talked about arrogance and self-righteousness. She told me two very interesting things. One is an argument that she read in a book once (I think): Why do we have to take out ghusl after sexual intercourse? Because sperm is najis. If we each have come from sperm and sperm is considered najis, then we have all come from najasat. If this is true, and it is, who are we to be arrogant?

I laughed. The second story was about a man who was riding a horse in a valley near a stream. The stream was fresh and clean. He was trying to move his horse from one side of the stream to the other, but the horse ignored his rider and stayed on the side that he was on. As he was struggling to move his horse, the rider came upon an elderly man who advised, "Dirty the water and then move your reigns to signal to the horse to move." When the rider dirtied the water and urged the horse to move, he moved. The rider asked the elderly man, "How did you know to do that? Why did I have to dirty the water?" The elderly man responded, "When the stream was clear, the horse could see his reflection in the water. When you see yourself, you cannot see another."

Class with Moulana's wife (Ejaaz Aunty) is always fun. It pushes me to try different things primarily because the things she needs to learn how to say in English are so different from those things that the kids need to learn how to say. She wants to perfect her English and teach Islamic law / shari'ah / fiqh here at WIPAHS. It is good practice for me as well and I get to hear fun stories. I also enjoy hearing about her life experiences. She is from Kashmir, as is her husband (who is an equally lovely human being) but did her master's in Iran and spent many year living there. Both her kids (Mohammed Haider and Mohammed Ridha) were born there and miss it terribly. Kibaha is a big change for anyone regardless of where they are from, I think.

This is a very long post so I should cut it off soon. It's also almost time to eat since Salaatul Jum'ah is almost finished. I love that the khutbah is on loudspeaker and in Kiswahili. I can hear it from anywhere and I learn a whole bunch of really fancy words. The boys from COEJ are not here today. They have gone to the cancer unit in Dar e Salaam and will be back in the evening. So, I will be teaching my class of 50-60 and finalizing stuff for the orphanage sandpit solo today. The males have been great company. The women not so much. They are funny creatures, women. When they all get together, there is so much loud gossip. I don't understand how they don't tire from that. To each their own, I suppose. I have been looking for secluded spots in the building to get my work done today. Not sure why I'm in an "isolation" mood. I think it will be different tonight once the group is reassembled. When we first met the group, keeping the boys' names straight was so ridiculous. We have Mohammed, Mohammed Abbas, Abbas Ali, and Ali Abbas. Seriously khojas / Shi'as need to venture out of their comfort zones a little bit and figure out some new names to put to use ..

Okay, I need to get some paperwork into the accounts department and get my laundry sorted out before lunch. More another day :)