Thursday November 8th
I realise I will not receive, nor do I expect, any sympathy
from my readers in the frozen UK, but today was the hottest yet. When the Tanzanians start flaking out and
complaining about the oppressive heat, what chance does a simple mzungu have? I
know I’ll regret this statement as soon as I get off the plane at
Leeds/Bradford, but at least when it is cold you can add a layer, I had no
options left.
Today was my Kiswahili day and I broke the rule straight
away. I've said many times how hard the
kids work and how their discipline is excellent but I am afraid that they do
have the ‘pole pole’ (slowly slowly) habit. You've seen Dixon and his bell and it’s certainly loud enough, but ten
minutes after the lesson was due to start, they were still drifting back in
from break. The same happens at the
start of the day and in fact at any change of lesson and there is no excuse
because they have all their lessons in the same room. I had another growl, did the maths to show they
wasted 22 days a year and then we settled down to a lesson of total Kiswahili ‘ila’
(except) ‘maneno’ (words) mathematical as they need to know these for the
examination. I prepared the lesson in my
planner as normal and then tried to pre-guess what words of Swahili I would
need. (Sorry I should have said,
Kiswahili is the Swahili word for Swahili).
Some words I learnt, mainly the verbs I needed, others I wrote on a crib
sheet and between them, and a dictionary I have downloaded onto my Kindle,
things went well. We were doing Arithmetic
Progressions, if that means anything from the dim and distant past, and my
numbers and ordinal numbers (1st , 2nd etc) are good, so
I had to learn the words for add, subtract etc and as I knew a lot of the basic
classroom words like listen, sit down, get on etc it wasn’t too difficult. In fact the students were slipping up more
than me and needed reminding. My little
game must be having some effect though because the next double lesson they had
no teacher and, as I can hear them from next door, I was intrigued to hear
Fatumu delivering a lesson in English and insisting that all questions and
contributions were in the same language.
 |
| Fatuma on the left, with Tumaini (a Masai) and Luiana |
Mr Masui invited me in to his office for another Tanzanian
delicacy made with maize flour and some sort of pea this time, but I grabbed my
water as we went in and politely turned down the offer of a cup of ‘chai’ to
accompany it.
Got back home and, surprise surprise, there was no
electricity, but this time the fault lay with the centre and not with the electricity
board. They seem to be on some sort of
pay as you go meter, and once again the mobile phone comes into its own. As far as I can work out, you go to a finance
office, like the stationers where I print my pichas, pay your bill and a text
arrives with a 16 digit number. You go
home, punch this code into the keypad on your electricity meter and the power
comes on.
Spag Bol for dinner tonight. Wow!! After my successes of the day, as I sat
recovering outside my room, I shouted across to Vicky, who doesn't speak
English, to ask what the options were for food tonight, and she offered
spaghetti! They have no grinder but I
suggested they cut the beef as small as possible and with a mixture of tomatoes
and garlic in the sauce with a garnish of julienne of peppers, it was certainly
a positive addition to the menu and a very good attempt. The big Masai turned up whilst I was eating
so I was at least able to salve my conscience and return the offer of a drink,
which he readily accepted.
All bills paid so no need to go to Tanga tomorrow therefore
I am hoping to slip along and have a look at my little ‘canaries’ in action at
the local primary school. It certainly
has good reports and Mr Bakari informs me that his two go there, so it should be
worth a look. I’ll let you know.
One final though for the day. I’m glad I didn't do any more experimenting
with language at my friendly barbers. I
must admit I do sometimes tend to add an i to the English word and test the
water to see if that is acceptable, but on scanning through the dictionary in
my Kindel, I note that ‘kutahiri’ actually means ‘to circumcise’. Ouch!!
Baadaye
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