i have malaria

Sorry, I don’t have malaria. Neither does Vanessa. Nothing that exciting...yet. But read on. The rest is anticlimax.
Already two weeks have passed in Kahunda and much has happened. Our neighbours, the Andersons, have been gone for almost 5 days now to Kenya, to visit their children at Rift Valley Academy (RVA), a large boarding school where many missionary parents send their children from ages 8 to 18. So no internet for us, hence, no blog updates. I can’t imagine being 8 years old and shipped miles away from my parents to live in a dormitory with 30 boys in a school of over 500 students. I’m sure it would be scary, overwhelming, and quite fun. Maybe like that new show Kid Nation, or that older book, Lord of the Flies. Still, I can’t imagine it. However, the alternative might be harder to imagine: being sent to one of the local Tanzanian schools, such as the Secondary one I’m teaching at, or the Primary one I visited.
Caleb, the Anderson’s youngest child and my new 6 year old friend, invited me last week to sit in on his first grade class. Like his two older siblings, Caleb will go to the local primary school in the mornings and be homeschooled in the afternoons before going off to RVA. Of course what is on the forefront of a 6 year old’s mind and my mind are completely different. When Monday arrived, or was on the verge of arriving, Caleb was up (according to his mom) at 6 AM asking his mom to cook breakfast and get him ready for school because "Doug is coming." Thankfully Margaret is quite in tune with the disparity between a 6 year-olds frame of mind and a 23 year old’s, so she quickly gave me a call, reminding me of my obligations.

As I lay dreaming of non-instant coffee and non-powdered milk (luxuries in Canada...believe me), my peace was interrupted by the phone call of duty. It was 7 AM, still dark, and Monday morning. But, having nothing really pressing to do that morning I walked over to Caleb’s. We picked up his friend Juvenati (unsure of spelling) and proceeded to hike up the hillside to Caleb’s school, which is actually right behind the secondary school I am teaching at. As we neared the school, we passed groups of little boys in tan shorts, white collared shirts (some ripped, some buttonless, most not too white) and zebra striped knee socks and groups of young girls in green knee-length skirts, white collared shirts and the same zebra striped knee-socks. Behind the students were what I believe are 7th grade shepherds. They wield long switches of bamboo and herd the children towards the school. Stragglers are quickly whipped into shape.
Coming from a small school, I was shocked at the amount of children here. There are, Margaret told me later that day, over 1200 students. And the day I came to visit, there were 4 teachers. Given this ratio, the pandemonium that ensued was relatively mild. The day begins with a run. Each class lines up in four rows and begin a jog around the entire property. When they finish, the classes reassume their position in rows and two of the older boys begin to beat out a rhythm on a large drum in the center of this "Parade" (what we would call an assembly at home). The students start to march on the spot to the beat and kick up red dust. The shepherds, known as monitors Caleb informed me, kept students in line (literally) with their switches. After the students sing the Tanzanian anthem (while marching), they march in rows to their respective classrooms.

The whole time this is going on, I assumed my position as objective, distanced, bystander, the unseen seer. Impossible to do when you are only one of two white people in a crowd of 1200. A little aside, I am (and Vanessa will concur) quite sick of being stared at. I am also quite sick of being referred to as Muzungu and then being stared at. It’s enough to make one crazy. On the streets, in the church, and even on our property, we are followed by intense stares. People will stop what they are doing and just stare and stare and stare. At first I ignored it, then I stared back (which usually did the trick), but now I just say Habari? (what’s up?) and go on my way. Now some people may think I now have an inkling of what it feels like to be a minority. Hardly. I find it annoying enough to be segregated and gawked at when my skin colour is associated with something positive (knowledge, wealth, power.... however far any of these may be from the truth of who I am). I can’t begin to fathom what type of person I would become if all these associations were negative (lazy, corrupt, primitive...however far from the truth that may be of who they are). Both can drive one to a complex, whether it’s one of inferiority or superiority depends on circumstance and the prejudice-du-jour, but either can make one into a devil.
But back on topic. Caleb’s class had no teacher that day, so for the first 20 minutes I sat and watched as ninety 6 year olds wrote on the chalkboard, ran around, screamed, shouted, fought, cried, and (a few) made a mad dash for freedom and a day of hooky. The teacher-to-be in me debated with the amused-spectator-that-is in me about whether to stand up and try and impress some form on this chaotic matter, but my role as the mornings Demiurge was quashed by my desire to see how things would transpire. Sure enough, as I kept my guilty silence, the Kindergarten teacher came in and whipped these students into shape in a way I knew, even if I spoke Swahili with her commanding voice, I couldn’t. The students are old-hands at this game, apparently, and the appointed guard of the day had given the boys ample warning that the teacher was coming. She strolled in and started singing the grade one songs of numbers, letters, days of the week, months of the year, etc. Then she started the math lesson of simple addition by getting the students to count out numbers on their home-made abacuses. She put ten questions on the board and then left the class to their work. Surprisingly though, most of the kids sweated over these sums and you could hear "Kumi...Sita....Moja...Nane..." being murmured throughout as the kids did their work. To supervise the student’s work, the teacher sent a group of older girls as monitors. They have red pens to mark and bamboo canes to hit. The hits are not done with mean spiritedness, but to see a girl repeatedly beat over the head with a stick and have her homework thrown onto the ground because she failed to understand why 6 and 3 makes 9 is a bit much. In tears many of the children left the monitor’s desk. The next lesson was reading, which was quite amusing given that the letter they were learning was "R." See my earlier post concerning most Tanzanians inability to differentiate between R’s and L’s and you’ll see why a group of Ninety prepubescent voices chortling out "La, Le, Li, Lo, Lu" from a board reading "Ra, Re, Ri, Ro, Ru" is comical. The humour wore off after about fifteen minutes of this mind-numbing chorus, but that is what rote learning is....and actually, what I think it does.

Caleb picked up on my boredom and realized that his 6 year old games of stealing chalk and running around the room without a teacher were too advanced for me, so he decided to skip out early, which his teachers let him on account, I think, of being white. I have only been to one class and cannot be the voice of the injustice done at Kahunda Primary School, but I bet Caleb is one of the few children not hit by the monitors, and actually, when I was there, the monitor wrote in every answer to his homework. In the long-run this is probably doing him a disservice, but when you are 6, this is VIP treatment. Anyways, it was hot and sticky, and if the colour of my skin was a get out of jail free card, who was I to complain. Caleb’s real education takes place at home in the capable hands of his mother who is a teacher. Some of the other student’s are fortunate enough to have tutors in the afternoon, but this is maybe 2 or 3 students at most. The rest, well the rest get what this Primary School can give them. Numbers and letters by rote, and soon ideas, theories, and solutions, by rote. Understanding, which some, but not all, students attain in their formative years here, is an unnecessary by-product in this system of education that I think, in some ways, eerily reflects what our education systems in the west is becoming. I recall a discussion with one of my Professors at Ottawa saying how students no longer come to his office asking how to research a certain thesis, they ask him what thesis he would most like to read. Code for "what thesis will you be most likely to give an A grade."
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?"
-- T.S. Eliot.
As much a prophecy as it is a lament I think.

To date, I have run my first two basketball classes somewhat successfully. I think I was a little misinformed as to how Tuesdays, the Sports Days, are run. I came expecting to see the four different forms involved in various drills and exercises, the classes being used to study muscle tension and healthy diets, but what I found was that Tuesday is more of a holiday for the teachers. Most of the students were hanging out in their dormitories or under trees, some were getting a game of volleyball underway, and others were out swimming in the lake. This is probably why the twenty guys I met on the court Tuesday afternoon, suddenly turned into four when I told them we were going to go over some Basketball jargon in the classroom. Fortunately, one of the students (who is now my favourite student) had some pity on me and used his popularity to get about 20 guys into the classroom. (P.S. I will definitely be one of those awful teachers who has favourites, but any teacher who says they don’t is lying or a robot)
I cut "Basketball Theory 101" short, and discarded my ideas of doing a history of basketball altogether (just joking...I have no books or access to anything that would remotely help me do this anyway) and went straight to the practical stuff. Right and left hand dribbling, crossovers in front and behind and through the legs and with spinning, the concept of a pivot foot and what it means to travel, chest and bounce and lob passes, with the three-man-weave to cap off a good afternoon. As a first time basketball instructor I don’t think I can ask for anything more than 20 guys who are quite naturally agile, quick to pick up drills from someone who speaks about 30 words of Swahili, and passionate to work. Well, maybe I could ask for one or two things. Nets might be nice. They were supposed to be here last week, but still no sign of them. I fear if they are not here soon I may have a mutiny on my hands. Also, the court is quite rugged. Get any notion of concrete or asphalt out of your minds. Since I cannot download pictures anymore I will have to rely on words. The court is a bit smaller than standard size, but it is made up of a clay type soil called "Muram" that bad students have wheel-barrowed from some distant field or other. It is reddish-brown and quite clumpy, but the students have tamped it down with boards attached to logs. Once this gets very wet and then dries, it hardens like a brick, but we have not had the right combination of weather yet to work this out. So basically, we are playing on a basketball court-shaped dust field that is rutted, starting to grow weeds and really slippery.

Some people say necessity is the mother of invention, but they rarely tell you that the father is cash and the lack of a mother, literally and metaphorically, is rarely the source of family problems in Tanzania. I can think of a few nice ways to improve this court, but without money not much will happen. I think this is true on a larger level here as well. People see the state of some African countries and say they lack imagination, but I don’t think that’s the case. They have as much imagination as anyone with the imago Dei. What they do lack is money, which may be, in part, to a lack of entrepreneurial imagination, but I think that imagination is like a plant that must be cultivated in a certain socio-political and religio-philosophic climate. An interesting study would be to look at some of the world’s most influential inventions and try to analyse not only the external context, but also the internal beliefs and driving factors that prompt men to invent. Who knows, such a study probably already exists.


Vanessa is busy working with Mary Jane, the South African midwife here. They are doing clinics with children, pregnant mothers, and HIV aids patients. She has a very interesting means of spreading the gospel through her clinic and is a great woman to know here. But for the details Vanessa will write a blog, or at least I’m trying to make her.

Until then, life keeps on going. This week the students are writing mid-term exams, so I will be going to Ikuza, an island somewhere out on Lake Victoria, with Dale Hamilton to help set up a clinic. We will be painting and putting up a ceiling and building cabinets. I’m pretty pumped because I can stay busy for the next few days while the students are writing tests, and I think this may be a chance to get a ride in Dale’s plane.