Lost in Translation (And Lost at Volleyball) (Friday 7/17)

It’s Friday! My regular morning routine continued as normal before I headed to the office and went there a little before 8:00am. Just like yesterday (and the days before too), I blogged for about a half an hour to get me thinking and ready for the day. In all honesty it’s to help me catch up from the night before as in Bukimau I’m often too tired to write any of my blogs. I think it’s the combination of doing real work and exercising in the evening that gets me so tired. Once I finished blogging, I got to work on my Kolibri guide! The process I’m doing with my guide is quite repetitive, but makes all the difference. Before I add my red arrows and boxes, it’s hard to know what the directions are even talking about! The only problem is that I have dozens upon dozens of screenshots to add these features to…

Tea time came and I walked with Miraclin, Eli, and Gracie to Roza’s house! We always talk a bit with Gracie and it’s fun to hear what’s going on in her life. Her and Miraclin have become good friends and I’m glad that Miraclin has someone to spend time with! At Roza’s we ate bread. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this earlier, but I learned that without an oven you simply put red hot coals on the top and bottom of the pot you’re baking with to get an even distribution of heat. It’s definitely not as easy as an oven, but works all the same to make delicious and filling bread! The tea was fantastic too and I think I’m going to need to incorporate it in my mornings back home.

When we were finished, I went back to the office, and on the way, asked Roza what was inside of the building next to the education department. There were several people walking to and from the building from the education department when previously I thought that building was no longer used. To our surprise, Roza had keys and we were able to open up the rooms to peek in! The middle room that members of the education department were walking in and out of was the examination materials room. Inside there were dozens of boxes of paper that nearly filled the entire room. I’ve never seen this much paper in one place! 

The room to the left was full of textbooks and discarded cardboard boxes that would be used to transport the exams to all of the schools across Tanzania. I’ve noticed that there are several rooms inside of the education department that also are completely filled with books! It’s impressive how many resources VST has. The final room was on the right side of the building that was mostly empty but held left over construction materials.  

Finishing our tour, Eli went to the back of the building to use its bathroom and Miraclin and I waited out front. Many of the education department members were finished carrying boxes of paper back and forth when Rambo said to me,  “What’s up my n-word!” and shook my hand. I’m used to it as Mboje sometimes says it to me and frankly my high school experience. From what I know, it seems as if most people here don’t use the n-word. When I was in Madisi, my neighbor Peter mentioned that he’s confused why it’s used so much in America. Regardless, Miraclin was pretty shocked by it and made sure to tell Eli when he came back out. 

As we walked back to the front of the office we made sure to give her a hard time for her lack of exposure. At the front we basked in the sun and went to admire the fast printer. The moment I started recording it to document how cool it was, it jammed! Roza was able to fix it quickly, but I can see how a broken printer would be a massive headache out here. 

They are able to get printer service men out here, but it’s not an easy task. We also learned that there’s only one printer running at a time as they draw too much power and blow out the electricity if two are running! It’s a shame that only one can run at any given time as the education department would be so much more efficient if they could use their full arsenal of printers (they have around 6 more). 

Eventually we got back to work and I continued editing my guide. Today I focused on the front page of the Google Doc to explain the purpose of my “Master Guide” and how to navigate it. I also made sure to add a section that goes through the what, why, and how for Kolibri and the Google Classroom project so anyone can easily understand everything I’ve been teaching the last couple of weeks. When I finish my guide I’ll make sure to provide a link so all of you can understand what I’ve been working on better! I worked until it was time for lunch around 1:30pm. 

We walked to Roza’s house to find tea and spaghetti waiting for us! The spaghetti was great and even better when you smashed a piece of avocado into it and sprinkled salt on top. Roza only has three forks so she always gives them to us to use and instead uses a spoon or her hands. Alvin came to eat but didn’t eat much and left before making much of a ruckus. When we were finished with our tea, Miraclin treated us to some great coffee as we sat and sipped on the couch. Today we made sure to better guests and involved Roza into as many conversations as we could. It’s a little difficult as you’ll ask Roza a question and she’ll answer with one word and leave it at that! I pray that in the upcoming days she can open up more to us! We also are working at being kinder to Miraclin as Eli and I’s sense of humor is blunt and can sometimes come off as mean.

With lunch over, I got back to the office close to 2:30pm to teach! I went in with a clear head, feeling energized, compassionate, and excited to teach. I started off class by apologizing for my attitude yesterday and explained that I was proud of them and excited to see what they could accomplish today. To give them a little bit of a challenge, I gave them a Raspberry Pi Computer and router model they had never seen before. To my delight, everything went swimmingly. Through the entire set up process there was only one snafu that happened that I was able to fix by simply unplugging the router from the Raspberry Pi computer. The group still took a while, but it was so much faster than yesterday. Instead of taking 90 minutes to get to the server set up page, today in an hour they were able to completely set up the server. I still kind of led the process today, but on Monday I’ll make sure to be completely hands off! After today’s performance, I have some more hope for the longevity of this program even though it still needs a lot of work.

With the teaching over, I went and sat with Eli for a bit. He’s been listening to a lot of jazz music lately and it’s brought back all of the fond memories of playing jazz in high school! Sometimes songs would play that my band played and I could still remember the notes. Perhaps I’ll finally get that alto saxophone out of the closet and get back into playing again! For the entire day, Eli has been trying to download a video editing program that will simply not work. The download will get to 50% and then completely reset it. He told me that he’s done this around a dozen times at this point! The WiFi here is frustrating when we are so used to the blazing fast speeds in Madisi. Here you’re lucky if you can even get a couple dozen kilobytes a second while in Madisi we were complaining about only getting a couple of megabytes a second (1 megabyte = 1,000 kilobytes)! 

While sitting with Eli he loves to stay up to date on what’s happening in the world and updated me on the situation in the middle east. Tensions keep rising and falling so it’s hard to say if it’ll be safe to fly through Qatar. Just this week there was a bombing in Qatar that led to some deaths… Praying for safe travels! Nonetheless it was time to pack up around 4:45pm and head to the shop. Today we wanted to get to the grounds as soon as possible as there was a Science vs. Art department volleyball match!

When we arrived I wanted to buy two water bottles and four glucose crackers. At this point I knew all of the prices and grabbed three 1000 shilling bills to pay. What ensued was a little bit of chaos… When I paid for my items, the shop keeper took the money with a blank face and immediately started to bring out a notebook. As a reference, when I was shopping with Paul whenever I saw a notebook come out at a shop that meant there was a debt for Paul to pay/debt to write down. Here in the villages you can take things on credit and pay later if you ever forget your cash or simply don’t have enough for everything you want to buy. Therefore, the moment I saw the notebook come out, I thought the store keeper was writing down my debts! In my mind I was freaking out as I thought I paid the right amount and the last thing I wanted is to have debt at this shop. Since the shop keeper spoke no English there was no way to communicate with her. I immediately told Eli that the debt notebook was coming out and that I needed to pay more. I proceeded to pull out a 10,000 shilling bill and handed it to the shop keeper. She looked confused and asked, “ya nini?” and repeated it over and over again. Eli and I had no clue what she was saying. Eli thought that she wanted us to get her a gift, but that made no sense either. I thought I had to buy more stuff so I picked out an Azam Embe, two lollipops, and a drink for Eli. At one point I was almost behind the counter to point to the things I wanted as I didn’t know how to say lollipop in Swahili. Everytime I picked out a new thing I said “safi?” in my mind meaning “good?” and she just looked at us with a blank face. I didn’t want any more things and she finally went to get my change. She came back with 8000 shillings and proceeded to pull out the notebook again! What more do I have to do? We decided to be patient and watched her write in the notebook. Was she writing the debts I owed? No! She was simply keeping track of inventory! 

Eli and I grabbed the items, said “asante”, and walked back with our heads low. We really need to learn more Swahili! My assumption ended up being incredibly wrong and I in fact did not owe any debt. Nevertheless, I only spent 5000 shillings and was glad to have that experience. We walked back to get changed and were told that everyone was waiting for us at the grounds! Due to the confusion at the shop, we forgot we had a big match waiting for us! We ran to the grounds and they were in fact not waiting for us. There were a million students around filled in our spots. I felt bad kicking them out, but the adults were adamant that we played. Since there were so many people, we rotated teams in and out while the winner stayed. When both Eli and I were out, we ran our regular warm up laps where Eli sprained his ankle on the first turn! He continued to run the rest of the four laps while we laughed and talked the whole time. Eli wasn’t feeling too well and needed to go back to his house to relieve himself after the run while I stayed to play. At 6:00pm it was time for the department match as all of the kids left.

We got destroyed. Eli and I were on the same team for the Arts department as no one else who was there for the department had any substantial volleyball skills (we’re both technically a part of the science department). We had a full six while the other team had four and we still only won one set! Rambo and Rastaboni were kind of in worlds of their own the entire game, Mateyo is new to the game (but still had some amazing heart), and Moses wouldn’t pass the ball. It was fun, but frustrating. I think the Art department needs to spend some time on skills to learn how to set, pass, and hit the volleyball with correct form. If I or Eli weren’t the ones receiving the ball, it was either sent right back over the net or blasted into oblivion! 

My team of course took down the net before we had our little debrief. Since the performance was so low, today ended up only being a “practice match” and on Sunday at 6:00pm we will have the official department game! With the hope of a victory in the near future I walked back home. I passed by Roza’s house to grab some cold water but no one was home so it was a cold shower for me. I enjoyed it, got dressed, organized my room, and headed to Eli’s house! On the way to his house Eli was on his way to Roza’s to pick up warm water and I had to tell him the bad news. We decide to go check for sure and Roza and Miraclin are back home!

Inside of the house we learn that they were at the village to buy eggs, butter (margarine), and some other things for dinner! Godfrey was there, but left shortly after. We had a quick talk with him and joked about what he would be having for dinner. Ugali and beans! For context, Godfrey was just recently employed at the department but was signed on the day after pay-day. Therefore he hasn’t got his first paycheck yet to start establishing his life in his room. This means that he has to go to the village for his meals where the only thing he can buy right now is ugali and beans. And like any normal person he’s sick of it! Thankfully Roza is generous and has been giving him an avocado to go with dinner so he has a little bit of variety with the meal.

With the ingredients bought at the village, we’re making pancakes for dinner tonight! I helped mix the batter some but it was hard to incorporate the margarine chunks as the batter was cold! When the batter was finished, Roza cooked the pancakes while we talked with her about a bunch of things: Alvin being an easy kid to steal, Roza’s work, and past volunteers that have come. When we were having a conversation about little Alvin, it turns out last night he wasn’t supposed to go anywhere yet I basically stole him and brought him to Eli’s house. It explains why he was snatched by the ear when his mother found him! This brought up the conversation of kidnapping and how it used to be kind of a problem here. There were either two reasons a kid got kidnapped, either there was an adult who couldn’t have children and wanted the child for their own or to kill the child for witchcraft. For a while witchcraft used to be quite a problem out here in the rural parts of Tanzania until the government cracked down on it! Thank goodness!

Eli still wanted to shower with warm water so Roza put some water on a stove to boil while she managed two other stoves to cook the pancakes two at a time! When the water was ready, Eli left and came back in no time where it was time for dinner. The pancakes were amazing and quite filling. The tea greatly added to the meal and in total it was a fantastic feast. 

We continued to have good conversations with Roza where I remembered the invitation a week ago for us to go to Justin’s farm. I reminded Roza and she immediately texted Justin who responded right back that he would be leaving for his farm early in the morning (around 7:00am)! No sleeping in, but I’m excited to see what the farm is like!

I still had the Embe in my pocket from the shop confusion and decided it would be a great time to crack it open and relax (I’m trying to conserve the consumption of my Embe as I would like to bring some back home with me). I played on my phone a bit before leaving to go back home for the night. I walked home, locked up the house, got ready for bed, blogged, and hit the hay to rest for an exciting farm and cleaning day!