School Days, School Days

School opened. Which means neither of the two things you're probably thinking it means. No, not all of the students have arrived, and no, not a single teacher has started teaching (except me). But it does mean that I am one happy Peace Corps volunteer, because the school is alive and noisy with activity, and for three hours a night, I can walk 70 meters to school and sit under an electric lightbulb run by a generator.

About two-thirds of our students have come back to campus; the others will be more than a week late, probably because they have not finished all of the farmwork that needs to be done. (Nearly all of my students, despite studying at one of the best secondary schools in the country and despite the fact that they will probably finish secondary school at all - a rarity and a huge accomplishment - will not continue on to post-secondary education of any kind. Instead, they will return to the farm.) Teachers have not started teaching mostly out of laziness, I think. Two classrooms are not yet completely constructed, so we are left with two fewer classrooms than actual classes. (Here, the students remain in one room all day while we teachers come and go.) That makes classes even larger than usual (90+ students in one classroom instead of the normal 50-60 students), and therefore more difficult to teach. Plus, the teachers don't want to reteach the material to latecomers as they arrive at school. I don't really want to reteach material several times, either, but I don't think I would manage to finish the nationally-regulated syllabus by the end of the school year unless I started more or less on time. And the school's opening was already delayed one week due to the (still unfinished) construction.

On the homefront, I am the laughing stock of my row of teachers' houses on account of my gardening laziness. I have hoed two beds while each of them has at least 200 plus a farm. I have yet to plant seeds because I am afraid they will get washed away by the nightly monsoons, and I haven't bought or collected manure to mix in with the clay soil (which is incredibly hard and heavy to hoe and apparently lacking nutrients). I guess my thumbs just aren't so green. I think I'll get some students to help me, because I have no idea what I'm doing. I do know, though, that thanks to a thoughtful aunt as well as the US and Tanzanian postal services, I now have in my possession 1.5 pounds of Miracle Grow. My Tanzanian neighbors are going to be blown away by my miracle vegetables.

I've realized in writing this that I've displayed a propensity to include many parenthetical comments...not sure why. Maybe writing about this culture lends itself to many explanatory and/or amused asides. That's all for now. Hope everyone is doing well in their respective countries!