Seasonal Changes

Lake Eyasi

The Rift Valley

No, I don't speak Swahili

I spent one and a half days at school during this trip. And with so many students working on their English, and more specifically their questioning techniques, I would ask to be interviewed a lot. The basic format of the interview, regardless of which grade level I visited, were the same. It went something like this:

Student 1: Where are you from?
Me: The United States.
Student 1: Oh...you look Tanzanian.
Me: Really? Huh...well, I'm from the United States.
Student 2: Do you speak Swahili?
Me: No, I don't speak Swahili. I speak English because I'm from the United States.
Student 3: What tribe are you?
Me: Uh...I'm not part of a tribe. I'm from the United States.
Student 4: Where is your father from?
Me: He was born in Haiti, but I was born in the United States. 

Now this back and forth wasn't a language comprehension error although, I think many of the students I met feared that it was. The problem was far broader than that. It seemed that throughout Tanzania, the people I met had a very narrow image of what an American looked like, and I didn't fit into that mold.

This is not super surprising given that as the United States exports tons of films, music, books, and other cultural media to the world, we are simultaneously exporting our troubled relationship with race. And so those of us who don't look like Jennifer Aniston or Julia Roberts, well we can't really be American. Or maybe more precisely, people who look Tanzanian - people who are black - we couldn't possibly have access to the wealth, glamor and power that is associated with the United States. It was total cognitive dissonance to the students that someone who looked like them could be from the land of opportunity.

I did my best, traveling from class to class to give them a real life example of a black American to shake up their prior worldview. And through patient responses to their questions, I thought I might actually have gotten through to them.

At the end of a day, a student went up to one of the teachers named Lani. He said that he liked meeting me in class that morning. "But," he said, "I'm just confused about one thing. Where exactly was that girl from?"

Back to School!

My friend Lisa teachers English at a private secondary school in Monduli. The mission of the school is to bring a rigorous education to under-served communities.

 All of the students at the school are there on scholarship, and the vast majority belong to the Maasai tribe, a semi-nomadic people who live in fairly remote areas like deserts and scrublands.Some of the students walk more than two hours each way to get to school each day.

And for kids who have never left Tanzania, or even been to a big city like Arusha, English class can be a powerful way to "visit" places  that they have never seen.

They recently read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, and in this lesson, they got to hang the paper cranes they had made last week. They also were able to experience a little bit about Japanese culture by having a hand in making vegetarian sushi.

I can't emphasize enough what a big deal it was for them to make, and more importantly eat, sushi. In this dry region, where most meals revolve around corn and beans, and eating anything other than fruit raw is pretty much unheard of, trying s seaweed wrapped rice ball that had uncooked (!) veggies in it was an incredible adventure.

It took some heavy pressure from Lisa to get them to take even a single bite. But once she argued that she had tried mughali - a common polenta-like dish that hardens fast when not eaten immediately - most of them relented.

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