A (quite random) list of things you might find interesting about Tanzanian secondary schools (as opposed to American high schools):

• The entry grade level is called Form I, not freshman year. Likewise, sophomore, junior, and senior years are referred to as Form II, Form III, and Form IV, respectively. Form IV, the eleventh year of formal education, is not the end of secondary school. At the end of Form IV, students take a nationally standardized test called the NECTA, the results of which determine who is qualified to continue upper-level studies. If a student scores highly enough on his or her Form IV NECTA exam, opportunities to finish secondary school – to continue to Form V and Form VI – become available.
• The classrooms belong to the students. Here in Tanzania, it’s not the students who leave the room when the bell rings at the end of the period. It’s the teacher. I teach three streams of Form III students. I’ll enter the Form IIIB classroom, carrying my books and my chalk, and when the period ends, I collect my books and my chalk before heading to the Form IIIA classroom, where different students are waiting for me to enter and for their math period to begin.
• The bell rings at the will of a student called The Timekeeper. This title and its accompanying responsibilities are awarded to a trustworthy student who is capable of telling time, and, at my school, who is also exceptionally short (for reasons as yet undiscovered). The bell resembles a gong, which The Timekeeper bonks three times with a stick at intervals of one hour and twenty minutes. Sometimes, The Timekeeper will make a stick-on-gong racket for several ongoing minutes. This means that all current classes and activities must immediately cease because there is an urgent assembly to which the entire school community must report. (Most often, these assemblies are arranged on a whim and involve the second headmaster hitting students with sticks.)
• Corporal punishment: As far as Tanzanians are concerned, there is no alternative. Hitting students with sticks is the only effective method of disciplining them, and, yes, of course it leads to behavior change. When my coteachers heard that corporal punishment is illegal in America, they broke into riotous laughter. Recently, though, I gave my first punishment that was considered harsher than hitting the students. I teach my Form IIIB class on Monday mornings, first period, and they are always late. The period is supposed to start at 7:40am, but normally, they don’t enter the classroom until at least 8:00am. Until they rearrange the desks and settle in, it’s 8:20am, and more than half the period is over. So, last Friday, I warned them not to be late. I used a really threatening tone, I shook my index finger, and I even told them directly that if they were late, they would be punished. Well, don’t you know they were late again? So I assigned a writing punishment: 1) To write five hundred times, “I will be in the classroom and ready to study on Monday morning.”; and 2) To write a ten-sentence letter in English, explaining why they are always late and promising not to be late ever again. I told them that if the assignment was not in my hands by 3:00 that afternoon, I would take ten points off of their final exams. My coteachers were impressed that only three of twenty-eight failed to write the sentences. One even mused, “Maybe I should try a punishment like that.”
• What’s a dining hall? Students take their meals outside, rain or shine. Currently, my school is building a sort of lean-to shelter under which the students will be able to eat.
• All secondary school students, at public or private schools, wear uniforms. Skirts for girls, slacks for boys. Collared shirts and sweaters for all.
• Cleanliness! Inspections are not just for military schools. Every Wednesday morning, the students gather for a huge assembly on the “parade grounds” (a dusty square lined by the school’s academic buildings). They sing the Tanzanian National Anthem, the School Song, and a special song to warn listeners against AIDS (this song, for reasons which are still fuzzy, instructs students not to share toothbrushes). Then, the teachers walk among the students, checking for dirt under their fingernails, untucked shirttails, unshaven heads (All students, even girls, shave their heads!), and the like. This is followed by dormitory inspection, for which teachers enter the students’ bedrooms (they sleep about fifteen to a room) to check that they’ve mopped the floors and made their beds.

And, another list of perfectly normal things I do, which get me laughed at relentlessly here in the Tanz:

• I own bug spray and use it often.
• I claim that actually teaching is more mentally challenging than grading tests.
• It takes me more than “one minute flat” to bathe myself properly and thoroughly.
• I buy toilet paper.
• I read books.
• I sometimes lose my temper when my teaching schedule is changed for the eighth (no joke) time in ten days.
• I call students to my house to kill those mammoth web-dwelling spiders that Tanzanians just leave to hang in the doorway or over the bed.
• I think I’d like to know someone well, maybe even date him for awhile, before I marry him. (Or, more accurately translated, before I am married by him. In Swahili, only men marry in the active voice. Women are married by men, in the passive voice.)
• I feel awkward when I’m asked to punish other people’s children (small children, not students). This has a lot to do with the fact that punishing them involves hitting them with sticks.
• I get lazy and don’t mop my floor for days at a time.
• I always carry a flashlight when I go out in the pitch-black night.
• I exercise.
• I claim that exercise is good for your health.
• I don’t wear a heavy winter ski coat when it drops to sixty degrees Fahrenheit.
• I sometimes nap on my couch.
• I continue to be white.