The Seminar Shuffle! (Wednesday 6/10)

A packed house means a busy bathroom when there’s only one toilet in the entire house! From around 5:00am, it was loud outside of our door from people constantly coming in and out. I have no idea how they stay up so late and proceed to get up so early, I don’t think the house was quiet until around 1:00am! 

Someone randomly came in at 7:00 am which was funny, we said good morning to them before trying to fall back asleep. Michael and I slept in till 8:40am! At this point the house had quieted down and was pretty empty. This is pretty late all things considered here and I admittedly felt guilty getting up at this time. 

We couldn’t find Paul’s kettle so there was no shower for us this morning. Micheal and I got organized for the day; he went outside to do his laundry to prepare to leave (allegedly someone is coming to pick him up today to live at another house) and I folded my laundry and organized my stuff. When we finally left around 9:30am we knew that the large meeting had already begun in the main room of the office. Frankly Michael and I were too afraid to just walk through the middle of the meeting and interrupt it. So instead of walking into the building he walked around the perimeter of the building before seeing an IT guy we knew waiting for us named Allen, with a router in his hand. We were greeted, handed the router, and were told to go walk through the middle of the meeting! Hesitantly we sped through the center of the meeting and to the back to work. There was no one else back here as the work day unofficially starts at 8:00am so the others were off teaching at the school

(photo of seminar being set up)

We worked until tea time arrived where we were met with a new custom that I was not used to; the guests eat before everyone else! There was a massive line (again, there are some 50 people here for the meeting/seminar) and we just got to cut in front to be the first ones served. All of us guests were all extremely hesitant, but to not argue, we simply agreed and got our food. We had the regular! I’m not sure how the three women prepared all of this food but I’m extremely grateful to have something to eat!

I was informed by Mr. Chesco that I was going to present videos to Miraclin’s English class. At this point, the Kolibri project I was working on was on hold due to the fact the students didn’t have access to the school’s computers. To not be completely useless, Mr. Chesco is leveraging my technical skills to get videos of educational content downloaded for the students as that’s something they really enjoy. Of course this means all I need is my laptop and the projector that VST owns. 

It just happens to be that the projector is locked behind the one door that we have the key to and Michael has it; or at least I thought he did. He told me it was back at Paul’s house and to not let down everyone that was waiting on me, I ran down to the house, did not find the key, and ran all the way back. Turns out the key was in his backpack the entire time! 

I grabbed the projector and sprinted straight to the office Mr. Chesco was in. The reason we were in an office is that the classrooms don’t have electricity in the sense that they don’t have outlets. There are lights in the classroom but nowhere for me to plug in a projector! I taught Mr. Chesco how to set it all up and made sure the room was ready for the students. 

Here I realized how fortunate American education is with all the technology we have. The use of a projector is so habitual that it never occurred to me that every classroom I’ve ever been in has had a fancy, expensive projector. The efficiency and access to materials a projector brings is insane! Students here at the school have to decipher a teacher’s handwriting on a chalk board from 20+ feet away and teachers have to rely on printed lesson plans. Beyond my Kolibri project adding more technology into the schools, I think that the implementation of projectors could be even better!

After setting everything up I watched Miraclin teach her English class different types of nouns. It’s funny how much English we know but don’t at the same time. I didn’t know that there are five classifications of nouns! 

When class was over, all of the kids brought their chairs to the office to watch the video I had downloaded for them. I was asked to download a video that would assist them in what they just learned. The only problem is that every YouTube video out there that covers this level of English is for young children and the students in front of me are high school aged. I thought they would be extremely disinterested in the video but were actually very attentive and participated the whole time. Perhaps it was the novelty of watching a video in class or the fact that the pictures looked funny to them. Regardless I’m glad they enjoyed the video! What they didn’t enjoy afterwards was me putting up two quizzes they needed to do. To me this is where the projector really shines. I can make the questions large enough for every student in the classroom to clearly see the projection while in a regular classroom it’s quite difficult, even in the front, to read the questions. 

Before I knew it, it was time for the students to go to another class and it was time for all of us to go to lunch. Once more we got to cut in front of everyone to have the regular spread of rice and beans. I was very pleased to see that they were serving Embe, my favorite drink. With all of these people here we didn’t eat until 2:30pm! Here at lunch I finally got to formally meet Godfrey and Immanueli. They are directors of VST and both very nice men! I believe that due to their high position of leadership they get their food served to them completely separately from everyone else which is interesting. In other words they don’t eat with all of us outside and stay inside of the office. Again, extremely impressed with how good the food is when these three women are cooking for 50+ people! 

The meeting/seminar is for the entire construction department of VST. VST builds a lot of schools after all so it only makes sense that so many people are needed for this endeavor. I have no clue what they were learning as I never was a part of the meanings nor know nearly enough Swahili to understand anything! 

I went back to work and this time the stint was all the way until 9:00pm! The internet was extremely slow today (it’s slow here compared to America but is fast enough to get general work done easily) which made what I needed to do more difficult (downloading resources for classes). Eventually I got done what I needed to do for the day and worked on my laptop creating an AI model locally (some really cool stuff I didn’t think I would ever do in Tanzania). When Mr. Chesco finally came in, we all played Cardi again; lots of fun!

Time goes by fast when you’re having fun and everyone has to go back to their own houses for the night. Henry is now living with Mr. Chesco which makes sense as Henry is there to be a teacher after all! Michael and I don’t have a family to go back to so we just stay at the office for dinner. I read a lot of my book, 1984, and I’m already half way done. It’s fantastic so far! 

Dinner came and we again went to the front of the line for ugali with beans and greens! Some of the employees here brought their kids with them and it was so cute to watch a child eat ugali so perfectly when I’m over here dropping all of the beans I just scooped up with my ugali. We finished and Michael and I grabbed our things and walked back to the house. I tried to see if I could get back without my flashlight and was humbled immediately! It is dark here! 

The house was extremely busy when we got back: some listening to music, some talking loudly, others singing, and so on. I suppose this rowdiness is preparing me for the frat house in the fall lol! Michael learned that he received a 99 on the exam he was stressing about, which meant the 8+ hours a day for the past 4 days paid off. We both relaxed and went to bed (or at least tried to, it was hard to ignore all of the noises at first)!)