Digital Guides, Math Club, and the Bachelor Pad (Tuesday 6/2)

Interestingly enough it was harder to fall asleep with the hum of the loud music. Isaac played none and the house remained quiet all night. I awoke to the beeping of my watch and got ready for the day. I was the only one awake so it was eerily quiet in the house that always has some sort of good tune playing. The goal today was to prepare our projects further so when we go back to Bukimau we are ready to start them as soon as possible. 

After getting dressed, I grabbed my backpack and project and walked to the main office. I should note that I have been extremely particular about how I treat my clothes so I don’t have to do much washing. I have not been taught how to wash clothes by hand, but I hope when that opportunity comes around I don’t have to wash a bunch of clothes. I’ve heard from Henry it’s quite a time consuming process. 

photo of school on hill 

I think back and remember when I was young and would put a shirt in the laundry basket if I even tried on the shirt. To do that here would be inconceivable! Most people don’t own that many clothes here, one part because they are expensive and another part is that it takes a lot of work to clean a lot of clothes. There is very little excess here in Tanzania which is so different from back in America. It’s amazing how much simpler life is when you don’t have tons of stuff. While I did bring a lot of stuff on this trip, it feels like a breath of fresh air to be responsible for only two suitcases and a backpack worth of stuff. 

Regardless, at the main office I met everyone there and we went our separate ways. Henry and Michael to training and Eli, Miraclin, and I to our projects. We were simply in the main large room of the office sitting in a couple of chairs and desks. We had plenty of power that morning and I was able to charge up all of my devices. My main goal was to continue work on creating helpful guides on how to use the program. The idea is that when I leave anyone could pick up my guides and understand the basic operation of the entire system. 

In order to get this work done that meant finally getting my phone! To be clear, it’s not because I’m a screen addict and excited to get my next fix of my phone, but rather excited to finally get to take some pictures of my experience and get to communicate with those who love me! I got connected to the wifi and my phone blew up with all sorts of notifications. 

WiFi here is very different from back in America. At any regular house, our wifi is connected physically through lots of cable infrastructure to servers (servers are where the internet is like Google or YouTube). Here in rural Tanzania, there is no such infrastructure. In order to get general wifi, their routers do not connect via a cable infrastructure but rather over the air with a SIM card like a phone would. Imagine the router as a phone that’s only feature is to have a hotspot to connect to the internet. This means that this router is extremely portable. You can take it anywhere as long as it has a good connection. Often times at night Paul would go and grab this router from the main office building so we could have internet down here at his house and listen to music that he has not yet downloaded or watch a movie. Being connected to the internet met I could finally send an update that I was alive and get some work done! 

Creating the guides was tedious and time consuming work as I took many photos of the physical equipment and screenshots of the software. It’s hard to know how much background knowledge any one person can have so I must assume that my audience has none. It was difficult to take myself out of my own tech savvy shoes and jump into shoes that only kind of know how to work a computer. I made some great progress and worked up until tea time. 

We had fruit, tea & milk, break, and hard-boiled eggs. It was fantastic and since there was a lot for our small group I got to eat a ton. As Mzee says and truly means, “you never know where your next meal will be out here. So eat food when it’s in front of you!”. 

Afterwards, we were to try Jonathan’s new project. To make a long story short, math is the worst performing subject across every grade in Village Schools. Similarly, English used to be the worst performing subject until Village schools developed their “Intensive English Program” where over the course of four months, students can work extensively after school to get better at their English. All of this material was created by Mzee’s wife over COVID and inherently takes a very long time to put together by hand. Jonathan wants to create an identical program, but with math. However, we don’t have 14 months of being locked inside of our houses to develop the entire program, we have one month. 

Jonathan showed the higher ups of VST and they like it enough to want it implemented in every VST school across Tanzania when all students come back from holiday (one month summer break, the students only vacation) which is July 6th. Thankfully, the developments of AI have progressed far enough for us to take the syllabuses for all of the grades of math and develop lessons and practice problems for students to do. The AI generates the documents and then we review them to make sure they’re correct (AI isn’t perfect and still requires babysitting to make sure it gets things correct). Once we have all of the documents generated, they will be sent to Bukimau’s printing center where over 500,000 sheets of math will be sent all across the country for the start of school. The program is called Math Club and will be our side project on top of the work we already have. It sounds like it will be a lot, but I’m sure divided among a good amount of people it’ll get done before the deadline arrives! 

Before I explain the next part of the blog here is a helpful table to understand how school works here in Tanzania. It should be noted that many grades will have a wide variety of ages as students start late, pause for a year, or may repeat a grade. The national exams are difficult and essentially determine the future of each student’s education.

Tanzanian Level	American Grade Equivalent	School Phase (US)	Typical Age	Primary Instruction Language	National Milestone / Exam
Standard 1	1st Grade	Elementary School	Age 7	Kiswahili
Standard 2	2nd Grade	Elementary School	Age 8	Kiswahili
Standard 3	3rd Grade	Elementary School	Age 9	Kiswahili	English lessons officially begin
Standard 4	4th Grade	Elementary School	Age 10	Kiswahili	Standard 4 National Assessment
Standard 5	5th Grade	Elementary School	Age 11	Kiswahili
Standard 6	6th Grade	Middle School	Age 12	Kiswahili
Standard 7	7th Grade	Middle School	Age 13	Kiswahili	PSLE (Primary School Leaving Exam) — Required to enter secondary school.
Form 1	8th Grade	Middle / Junior High	Age 14	English	The Language Shift: All subjects switch to English.
Form 2	9th Grade	High School (Freshman)	Age 15	English	Form 2 National Assessment
Form 3	10th Grade	High School (Sophomore)	Age 16	English	Students select specialized subject combinations.
Form 4	11th Grade	High School (Junior)	Age 17	English	CSEE (Certificate of Secondary Education Exam) — Major exit point for vocational school or workforce.
Form 5	12th Grade	High School (Senior)	Age 18	English	Highly specialized study in selected combinations (e.g., Physics, Chemistry, Biology).
Form 6	"Grade 13"	College Prep / Freshman	Age 19	English	ACSEE (Advanced Certificate Exam) — Determines university admission.

By the time Jonathan explained the project, it was lunch time! We had rice, beans, greens, and a very spicy pepper that Mzee is convinced will kill him if he eats it. After lunch I mostly finished my guide and was asked to spectate the English Club (similar to Math Club) with a teacher named Mr. Chesko. The whole group and I went with Mr. Chesko to the first class which was a Form 2 class of around 80 students (this happens outside normal school hours. All of these students are here by their own accord and drive to get better at English). These students were very happy to see us. 

Class etiquette is very different in Tanzania, or at least at Village Schools. The students are extremely respectful of their teacher and stand (for the boys) or bow (for the girls) when the teacher enters the classroom. Additionally, it is amazing the control he has over such a massive class. The Form 2 students are studying Form 1 English in order to sharpen their skills and ensure there are no gaps in their knowledge. 

The Tanzanian government by law requires all secondary schools to be taught in English. The problem is that primary school (K-7) is taught in Swahili with little English. When a student goes from primary to secondary they are hit with constant English they don’t understand. In order to do well in class, you must understand English. English Club will often be taught by a student who is already very proficient in English and the teacher supervises and steps in if needed. The class first reviews what they did last class then learns a “new” concept (this information should be familiar) and then they are quizzed. The quiz questions are written in chalk on the board and the student’s answers are written on a small piece of paper with their name on it. After the class is finished, the teacher leaves first! The same process happened for the Form 5 students as well, but they were reviewing Form 4 English. 

An additional aspect that I thought was very interesting was the fact that the students are the ones responsible for cleaning the school. This creates a sense of belonging to the school and dedication to take care of it. After all, they would be the ones cleaning up any mischievous mess. The reason I spectated this all was to see how helpful my project will be. Instead of having a student teach the class and manually input all of the quiz grades, my project will automate everything with computers which will be extremely helpful. I helped Mr. Chesko put in the grades and with me going very fast it took me an entire hour! I should also note how neat every student’s handwriting was. You’d think some would be illegible but every single quiz was written with flawless handwriting! 

After I was finished manually inputting all of the grades in, the work day was essentially over and we packed up our stuff. Paul came to pick me up and we went back down to his house. This morning there was only Isaac and me, but now there were a ton of guys here. For a lack of better words, a bachelor pad! Very interesting to say the least. The moment I set my stuff down, it was time to go to dinner. Considering there were a lot of us men, we needed to go up the hill where there were several women cooking for us. 

Before we walked to dinner, Paul hopped on the back of a motorcycle and drove off (motorcycle taxis are called “boda boda” in Swahili). I have no idea where he went! I stuck with Andrew, as he was the only guy I knew, and all of the other guys and I went back to the main office. There is a large shed opposite from the main office building where we do all of our work that has several women cooking in there. Dinner was not ready yet so we sat at the front of the main office building where there happened to be one of those portable routers active. That meant that everyone was on their phones. I made sure to wait before I got on my phone to make sure it was good to go on my phone. We all played on our phones for an hour while there were several motorcycle deliveries to the school (it was impressive to see how much stuff these guys could put onto their little 150cc bikes). 

Eventually dinner was ready and it was rice, beans, and cabbage. The cabbage is shredded and cooked with many other vegetables making it extremely delicious to mix with the rice and beans. I ate a TON. The three women cooking for us are absolutely amazing at what they do and I made sure to thank them extensively! “Thank you for the food” is, “asante kwa chakula”. I’m still confused by the strict gender roles here, but I always think it's the right thing to thank someone for cooking you a meal, especially if that process here takes hours upon hours. 

Regardless, I ate my dinner by the fire and spent time just observing conversation. The moment that I stop eating I’m always told to eat more and to continue my meal. Once I’m stuffed I must convince them that I can’t eat anymore which is always funny to me. The food is delicious enough that I would gladly eat more if I could!

Once we were all finished with dinner we went back to the house. Andrew told me that we will be in Madisi more than likely until Saturday 6/6/2026 so it looks like I’ll have a lot more time here to work on my project! That is definitely an answered prayer from God as I need all the time I can get to prepare for my project. I spent some good time writing. It’s almost 12:00am and the other guys are still awake and having a good time with each other! I’m hoping for a restful night with no visitors and a productive day tomorrow!