Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Beaches

Wednesday, June 26th 

Yesterday we took a bus to Nungwi. It is a local village with awesome beaches. We are staying at Magologolo, Jemshed's friends hostels. Eva and Sara were here already so we met them here! Our room is basically a tree house! 

Then, we spent the day at the beach! 

At night we watched the sunset on the beach. Jake played some futbol with the locals as well! 


While laying on the beach, a guy convinced us to sign up for a snorkeling excursion that we went on today. Only $17 for a 9-3:30 snorkeling beach trip with fresh lunch. 


The fish were awesome. My favorite was a giant blue starfish. It felt like real life Finding Nemo. It wore us out and Jake and I are pretty sunburned! Better than those previous farmer's tans I suppose. 






Dar to Zanzibar

Sunday, June 23rd

We took another eight hour bus ride back to Dar on Sunday morning. When we arrived in Dar, we took a taxi auto Tom's house to drop off all of our huge suitcases. He and his family were so nice! Jake and I plan to stay with him the night before our flight back to the states. From there, we stayed in a hostel right on the Indian Ocean! It was very close to the ferry, so we could leave first thing in the morning for Zanzibar. 

The ferry was awesome, it only took about 1 and a half hours to get there. W stood outside for most of the trip. Jemshed takes the ferry often, so we got VIP they said, we got to sit on the top in the most comfortable seats we have had yet. Jake was ecstatic that his legs fit in the seat. 

The ferry took us to Stone Town. It is a historic city that was the site of the Eastern Slave trade. The architecture is beautiful (Heidi you would love it!). All of the streets were so narrow. It reminded me of Delfino Square in Mario Cart :) 


We stayed at a hostel in the center of the city that Jemshed recommended. Coco De Mer, it was only 20 per person including breakfast. It also had real toilets! It felt like luxury.


After checking in, we went on a spice tour. Stone Town is known for making many different spices. 

Here was a great one, it is lipstick fruit, used to make lipstick! 


Aloe Vera:


This is pepper. The same plant is used for black pepper, white pepper and red pepper. I thought that was really interesting. 


Then, the gifts began!


This guy climbed a giant coconut tree while singing an African song, picked a coconut for us to try.


These guys led us the whole way, made us gifts, and taught us a lot! 



Then, more gifts! 


Another fun day !

























Change of Plans

Saturday, June 22nd

So this morning Jake and I decided to change our plans completely. Here is why:

When Jake and I arrived, Gasaya took us to get our CTA Visas that I mentioned earlier. We paid an immigration officer, and have the CTA in our passport. Well, we found out later that Gasaya told Aga, Kim and Sara that he would get theirs, so they gave him the money. He returned their passport, and they assumed that their passports were just registered as having a CTA; until they saw ours and Eva's (who had also gotten hers at the immigration office). They asked Gasaya,and that is when things got complicated. He ignored them, yelled at them, threatened them and refused to help them. He basically stole their money. They went to the immigration office and they began to help them. Two of the girls got their money returned. The guy who is in charge of the entire school (primary and secondary) also got involved. He said that none of our placement fees ($200) went to the school. It was all basically a scam, so this morning Jake and I decided we are leaving with Kim and Aga in the morning to travel. 

We never had any direct confrontation with Gasaya, so we decided to ask him for our money back that we paid ahead of time for the hostel for four weeks. He agreed, but said he was in Dar. We said he would meet him the next day when we got to Dar. He ended up lying about being in Dar, and has ignored our texts and calls ever since. It is all very unfortunate. We plan to report him to the school fund so that his scam stops. The immigration officer is also still working to get some money back. 

We came here to volunteer, teach and try to do something good. It is sad that we were unable to do that because of a greedy person. However, we are very excited to begin traveling Africa for an entire month. We will travel with Aga, Kim and Jemshed to Zanzibar until Sunday, June 30th. Then, they will go home and Jake and I will travel more. Our plans are to see more of Zanzibar, go on a Safari  and see Mount Kilimanjaro.  

Wish us luck!

Neema's

As I have previously mentioned, Neema's is a craft shop and cafe where they have wifi and delicious food. It is generally where white people visiting or who live in Iringa hang out. We usually go after school to get a snack or lunch and meet up with the other volunteers. 



All of the waiters are deaf. To order your food, you fill out a slip of paper and take a wooden sunflower with a number on it, and they bring you your food. 

Downstairs is a craft shop which basically has one million things that I would love to buy. It is slightly more expensive than the rest of the shops in Iringa, but the proceeds go to the people who work there who have different disabilities. 

Today, we took a tour of the workshop where all of the products sold I the store are made. They take people off the streets who  are struggling and give them free training with a sewing machine for eight months, and then they can take the sewing machine and start their own work in town. 



These are beads made from recycled paper :


Here is how they make paper : 


This guy is making scarfs:

More artists:



We also were able to see the hotel section at Neema's. if you ever go to Iringa, you should stay there. It was beautiful. 



Mapinduzi


 This week we have been teaching at a school called Mapinduzi English Medium Primary School. Eric took us on Monday and introduced us to Musa, who has been in charge of helping us there. The first day was extremely unorganized, and he kept telling us to wait for him in an office. Then, he had us grade papers. We finally took it upon ourselves to explore the school. We ended up playing hand clapping games with the preschool children. They were absolutely adorable, and all wanted to play with us. Well, Musa found us and told us to wait In the office again. After what seemed like forever, we left on our own and asked a third grade math teacher if we could observe his lesson. His teaching was the best I have seen. He was kind to the kids, and allowed them to come to the board and work out problems. He did not get angry if kids made mistakes. As we walked out of the class a boy reached out and touched my arm, the teacher said ' he wants to touch the white'. Very interesting. That was the end of the day, they are on a holiday schedule, so school is over at 12:30.

The next day Jake taught grade 7 science on alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. After that Musa took Jake to grade 6 to teach math. He taught about degrees of a line. After the lesson, Musa told Jake that he was going to make the exercise but Jake had to grade it. There was no preparation, he was just told 'go into grade 6 and teach degrees of a line'. He did the same with me and English. I taught grade 6 and grade 7 with no materials, so I taught fun things like onomatopoeias and antonyms and synonyms. The kids were so eager to learn. There are about 80 kids in each 6 and 7, and it was incredible how well behaved and quiet they were. 

Here a a brain break! 



 Musa gave Jake a science textbook and told him to teach anything from it tomorrow, and did the same with me and English. Wednesday was better because we could prepare a lesson. It felt kind of foolish to come up with anything from the textbook because we had no idea what they had learned previously. Jake had a fun lesson about gravity. The kids would drop different things, jump around, and draw pictures. I created a lesson on idioms where we learned many different idioms, what it would mean if it was taken literally, and then what it figuratively means. I had the kids draw pictures and they loved it. They thought the idioms were hilarious. 


 Something we were not prepared for is the punishment. The teachers threaten the children with punishment. There is absolutely no positive reinforcement, only negative. If a child misbehaves, is late, forgets supplies, etc, they are hit with a stick. It is sickening. We tried to talk to them about it, and they say there is nothing we can Do. 'You are in Africa, we are not civilized here'. I couldn't believe they said that. Aga told me that at the nursery, if a child hits another child, the teacher will hold them down so the child who was hit can get revenge and hit them back. They are teaching violence and It is awful. It is amazing how well the kids respond to positive praise, they laugh and smile so much, and try to continue to get praise from jake and I. I wish the teachers there would listen to our suggestions. It is very hard. Tomorrow (Friday) is our last day there. I hope Umma Salama is more open to suggestions. I don't see why a school would accept volunteers if they do not want to listen to them or let them help to improve the school. It is disheartening. 

A great moment today was when I was sitting outside waiting for Jake to finish a lesson. A small preschooler named Rachel came to sit by me. She barely spoke English. I took a stick, and drew a picture of the sun in the dirt. She took a stick and copied my picture. I erased, and did the same with a flower. This went on for forty minutes. She was so precious. (You are lucky I didn't steal her and bring her home ma :) ) the kids just crave love and attention. 

Rachel is in the blue jacket. 


 This school has made me feel extremely lucky to work where I work in America. We make kids the priority, which I assumed was something all schools did. I work with kind, caring, positive people and I am so grateful for that.  

However, the kids are adorable.