beware of slashers

3-10-09
2:03 pm



okay, for real this time i am going to try to be as concise as possible. ready, go.


saturday/sunday: very relaxing. saturday night, jenaya and tait (an american social worker) had a party at the guesthouse next door. it was definitely nice to hang out with people who live outside our bubble. sunday we went to church with many of the same people, then went to hang out at a guy-from-church's house. it was jenaya and me, tom from new zealand, will from sydney, dennis from sweden, and jake (aka bullocks-longbottom) from england. hearing everyone speak in swahili, but with different accents, was definitely entertaining. we sat on the porch just talking and eating jackfruit. if you're never tried jackfruit, seek one out the next time you're in a tropical location. they're bigger than watermelons, grow on the trunks of trees, and taste like a pineapple/banana hybrid. pretty much the strangest fruit ever.



monday: yesterday was one of the longer days i've had here. it started with morning meeting, where everyone gathers around the flagpole... teachers, social workers, students, etc. i don't know how often they occur, but this was the first full campus one i've seen (they also have student morning meetings every morning. one or two teachers goes to give announcements basically). first the students were scolded for not standing properly during the national anthem. apparently you're supposed to ball up your hands into fists, jam them down at your sides, and stand as straight as possible. then the headmistress got up to announce that one of the students had wanted to commit suicide the night before. yes, she announced it in front of the entire school. her main advice to students? "stop all love affairs." literally, her announcement went, "last evening one of the students wanted to commit suicide. you need to stop all love affairs." instead of privately trying to deal with this, she scolded the girl in front of the whole school. while the girl's name was never mentioned, there are less than 200 students here. it doesn't take long for news to travel. apparently the girl had broken up with her boyfriend and had tried to drown herself in the rain water tanks or well or something of that nature. here at school, romance and relationships are strictly forbidden. so instead of trying to work through problems, this poor girl was embarrassed and blamed for even getting involved with a boy.

after that uplifting message, 2 members of journalism club got up to make announcements. announcement number one: "the netball team played in a tournament last week. they lost their games because they are lazy." announcement number two: "a girl tried to commit suicide last night. HAHAHAHAHA." i kid you not, the boy giving the announcements snorted as he was saying this, leading the entire school to begin laughing with him.

sometimes... okay, frequently, it's difficult to be here because you want to just overhaul the whole system and way of thinking. you look at parts of the school, the curriculum, the teaching methods, the extracurriculars, even parts of the culture and want to say, "no! look at how WE do it! do it OUR way! it would go so much more smoothly and everything would work out so much better!" while handing out antidepressants like candy and forcing them to teach the way we do isn't necessarily the answer, it is definitely frustrating at times. things in tanzania move slowly. while i've adjusted to things never really starting on time, i sometimes want to look at people and tell them to just hurry things... their way of thinking... life... up. patience takes on a whole new meaning here. things do not just take days... they take years. sometimes ideas and practices seem so outdated that you wonder how people are still surviving with them. it has definitely been one of the greatest challenges i've faced here.

after lunch, it was back out to the netball court. peace house is having a big open house on thursday--people from other schools, government people, business people, neighbors and friends have been invited to come out and see what peace house is about. acrobatics club, choir and drumming will all be performing. the clubs will all have little exhibits to show what they do. and, netball, rugby and soccer will be playing games against other schools. therefore, the kids spent the afternoon doing "cleanliness." they are dispersed throughout campus to clean classrooms, dorms, the dining hall. many of them are assigned to "slashing." most of the grass is cut by hand, oftentimes by students who are being punished. they are handed a contraption that essentially looks like a giant metal spatula, except the end is thinner. actually, some kids are given giant knives/swords to hack the grass away with. you lean over and swing your arm back and forth. i got four slashers (female) and 3 guys assigned to help me with the netball court. i had already finished 2 of the 4 lines of the perimeter, but still had to measure out all of the other lines on the court, lay chalk, and slash the grass.

man.

the three boys were awesome. they knew what they were doing and were exceptionally hard workers. the girls... not so into slashing. i don't blame them as it's boring, blister inducing, and hot, but we really needed to get the court done. plus, they insisted on standing right next to each other so they could chat. normally i would agree that chatting makes life better, but when you're swinging a huge metal blade around, you probably want a little space of your own. so i have 3 boys pick axing and 3 girls slashing and one girl hacking away at the ground with a sword straight off a pirate ship, all within about a 20'x10' area. i was cringing and trying not to look for most of the time. needless to say, a pickaxer got slashed across the hand partway through. yesterday afternoon was one of those moments where i wanted to say, "hey, let's do this MY way. as in, with a bulldozer." we only got about 1/6 of the court slashed and we only finished the perimeter. so irritating.

this morning it was another early start at the netball court. this time i had 4 boys and twice as many slashers. the slashers lasted about 7 minutes and then sat down. the boys on the other hand were INCREDIBLE. they had a system going and had assigned jobs to each other, so it was quick work. measure the string. measure the area. lay down string. pick ax a trench. mix chalk. pour chalk. done. they even carried the nets (which are stuck in tires filled with cement) across campus from the old netball court. there is still the minor issue of there being a small cactus in the middle of our court, but pish posh. you can always play around the pricklies, right? especially in flipflops? also, i learned that you're supposed to mix the chalk with water before you pour it onto the ground. no wonder i had gotten it all over myself when i worked alone. the boys looked at me as if i were the dumbest person on the planet-- what? you don't know how to build a netball court? aren't you the COACH?!

hopefully the team will get a practice or two in before the big game on thursday. we've got some serious pride to regain. a couple of the girls did their "physicals" (exercises) on the new court today. the problem is that they're used to a teeny tiny court, so by the end, they were so winded they could barely talk. a girl stumbled into lunch and was so incoherent, i was convinced we'd have to IV her.

after we finished the netball court and i did a celebratory dance throughout campus, art club and i decorated a welcome banner for the open house. i had bubble lettered "welcome to peace house secondary" and told them to color the letters in and decorate the sign. here's what we ended up with on the poster:

-a giant moose
-a giant yellow balloon
-a rose the size of my face
-the letters "abcwxyz" stenciled on
-the phrase "peace'n'luv"... yup, luv
-some gray men doing acrobatics
-a big pot leaf

i swear, you turn your back for one second and the drugs get drawn. we had to color over it and turn it into a brown flower. then i had to give a lecture on the importance of not doing drugs or drawing them. then we all sang and danced to high school musical.

even though it was a long couple of days, the NETBALL COURT IS DONE. i never thought i'd be able to say that :)

3 days. now that my time here is ending, i would love it if time could just slow down for a while. for the first time in four years, i can finally say that i'm in the right place at the right time. it took 4 schools, 5 cities and 3 states, but i'm finally where i'm supposed to be. usually i get to a new place and am immediately thinking about where i'm headed next. even though i'm going to fiji, which has to be one of the most incredible places on earth, in a couple weeks, it's hard to even get really excited about it because it means i'm leaving africa. it's the first time i've allowed myself to just settle in and be in one place, without thinking about past or future places. i'm learning what it means to fully live in the present and it has given me the most indescribably wonderful high. i think that because of that (and of course many other reasons), tanzania will always be special to me. i will always remember it as the place where i realized that, oh hey. i CAN actually make good decisions every now and then.

ps-this wasn't short at all. sorry!





i can't really say why everybody wishes they were somewhere else. but in the end, the only steps that matter are the ones you take all by yourself. --the weepies

i've got my memories. they're always inside of me but i can't go back, back to how it was. i believe it now. i've seen too much... and i've got my heart set on what happens next. i've got my eyes wide. it's not over yet... yeah, this is home. now i'm finally where i belong, where i belong. yeah, this is home. i've been searching for a place of my own. now i've found it... and now, after all my searching, after all my questions, i'm gunna call it home. i've got a brand new mindset. i can finally see the sunset. --switchfoot