All the people you meet

One thing that I've just recently realized is that I have met some very cool people during my time in Zanzibar. People's whose stories make me laugh...make me stare and sometimes just leave me completely speechless.

I've probably mentioned this before, but while on safari over Christmas who should be run into but the President of Tanzania! Good 'ol Kikwete. Not that it was much of a meeting - we were basically told to stay seated while he was passing through the lobby of our hotel and to avoid making any sudden movements. And while we had to use the picture over the fireplace as a reference to figure out which one from the group was the President, he did say "Hi, how are you?" as he passed. To which we answered: "Hello, we're fine thank you".

Then I have this other friend, he's a volunteer teacher trainer in town. He's from Scotland and essentially, when he was 16 he dropped out of school and joined a gypsy caravan in Ireland. I had no idea there were still gypsy caravans. From there he's traveled, often teaching English as a second language in various countries around the world and now he's here.

The village of Jambiani is also full of interesting people. There's this couple down the beach. They're in their mid-60s I would guess and have just done the most amazing things. The wife is a potter and she's been working with the local women to start a women's pottery cooperative here in Jambiani - giving them support and training. She's also an avid collector of just about anything - shells, hubcaps (which she then decided to make into art by hanging on the cliffs on the side of the highway), and last week when I went by to visit she had a table covered in pumice stones that she had found on a nearby beach. But on top of all that they are currently learning to kite surf (their kite keeps crashing down over our fence), they snowboard, they biked from Cape Town to Cairo (or maybe it was Cairo to Cape Town but either way), they biked the Silk Route from Istanbul to Beijing, and they're leaving Zanzibar in a couple of weeks to stop by home, repack and then bike the entire length of South America (I don't remember which direction they're going in). I can only hope that I will have as many stories to tell someday as they do!

And has anyone ever heard of the Kilimanjaro Marathon? It's basically this crazy international triathlon thing where you have to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro in 6 days, then compete in a 2 day bike race around Kilimanjaro and then finish the Kilimanjaro marathon (42.2km)...well last year's winner happens to be my neighbour! Like out of almost 100 competitors from around the world he won. He's from the village, has no corporate sponsorship, until just recently was riding an old Chinese model bike that had no gears and weighed like 85 pounds or something like that and his current goal is to start a small company where he takes tourists on bike tours around the area - he's an incredible athlete, he won this huge international race, and no one knows who he is. It's kind of unbelievable.

So there they are: a small sampling of the people I've met throughout my time here. Hopefully there are many more to come!

It's not all Margueritas and Mai Tais...

This week I really had my students working hard – in barista class I tried their cappuccinos (which I must say have improved) and I also sat in on their bartending class and tested the marguerites and mai tais that the students are learning to make (best cocktails I’ve had in Zanzibar so far). But then I learned that trying to do up an answer key to a math assignment after testing the products of said bartending class can be difficult. And I learned that watching movies in class with my students is a great way to improve their English comprehension (we watch travel videos so they can work on their tour guide vocabulary). All in all, not a bad week.

But beyond the marguerites and mai tais, I did actually do some academic stuff. We did a lot of math – because I just know that my students just love it so much. But as frustrating as math class can be here, it really drove home a couple of points about education on this island. First, it’s not a priority – some of my students (and mainly in their 20s and 30s) only have the equivalent of around a grade 3 or 4 education level. But many of them have worked in hotels before, some are even managers. They left school early to work and have worked their way up. They’re smart, but in many cases their formal training is minimal. So this means that although they know processes and what needs to get done, many of them cannot multiply fractions…even adding fractions can be a challenge. We’re working with recipes (doubling, tripling, etc) and it can be slow going. None of my students know how to calculate a percentage – which means discounts and taxes are a bit beyond them right now (we’re going to address that next month because it’s kind of important if you’re going to work at the front desk of a hotel).

Now don’t get me wrong. In no way am I belittling my students and their accomplishments in any way. They are the products of a particular educational system and of a society that not even 50 years ago experienced a violent revolution. Some of them literally live in huts in the village – many have no electricity (which can make giving them homework a bit tricky), many have families to support and many have barely been out of their village.

In terms of education here, it’s just a fact that overall, the system does a poor job of preparing students for future careers (partly because they do not have the resources, partly because the teachers themselves have low education levels and are poorly trained and supported, partly because they are using methods and curriculums that were used in England in the 60s – or maybe earlier). First, it does not give them the skills and training they need (the saying around here is “chalk and talk”, aka the teachers write it on the boards and the students copy, memorize and regurgitate). Second, the schools here don’t encourage critical analysis and thought (for those of you with me in some of my classes at university we might be entirely tired of being asked to critically analyze everything but just think where we’d be without it). For example, we were doing decimal multiplication in class this week and I put a problem on the board: 4.1*1.3. My students did the multiplication right, arriving at 533 but were confused about where to put the decimal point. They kept wanting to make it 53.3…So first I’m like: no that’s not right…and they respond with: well that’s the rule we were taught. And I’m like: well think about it you guys…what if I asked you to estimate the answer. Does 53.3 seem like a reasonable answer to the question? My response was blank stares…like: well we did the math and applied the rules we were taught so why wouldn’t that be a reasonable answer? It was amazing. I’ve never encountered anything quite like that before.

But I had a super proud moment when I gave them a math review assignment to do in class on Thursday and, for the most part, sometimes after a bit of prodding, they could do the fraction and decimal multiplications. Some of them can even simplify the fractions (tear) and they now know (and this seriously took two weeks to drill into some of them) that 3/3 is equal to 1. The feelings of accomplishment were almost overwhelming.

And because, after all, this is Africa: we just finished a semester and I now (after 2 weeks of work) have a week’s holiday. Lots of time for marguerites and mai tais on the beach.

Teacher! Teacher!

So as most of you probably know I've finished my contract with the Aga Khan Foundation in Stone Town and after a week off where I learned to scuba dive (very fun!) I have moved to the village of Jambiani on the east coast of Zanzibar to teach for a few months at the Jambiani Tourism Training Institute (JTTI). The Institute is a project of the Hands Across Borders Society which also runs a small clinic on the property.

Now I have never taught before. I have no experience whatsoever in this area. But the timing worked out and I felt that this was an opportunity that I could gain a lot from and so I decided to try it out.

Jambiani is a growing tourist destination and the idea behind the school is that if local residents are given the right skills and training they will be able to take advantage of the jobs that are becoming available. In fact, Jambiani already has a bit of a reputation as a village success story in Zanzibar - one of the few places where the village is actually benefiting from tourism in the area. Some reasons for this include the fact that infrastructure was late to arrive so there are very few big hotel chains and most of the hotels here are locally owned.

So JTTI provides a two-year diploma course in tourism training and students tend to come from the village of Jambiani itself or from nearby villages. Initially, I was going to teach short courses - designed around the core courses to give current and prospective students to opportunity to improve the skills they'll need (mainly English and computers) to complete the diploma course. This being Africa though, of course nothing can go as planned. So upon my arrival I found out that two of the teachers had had to leave unexpectedly and instead of short teachers it would be really great if I could teach the classroom component of the diploma course (there's the classroom component: English, math, computers, Front Desk Agent and Local Tour Guide and the practical component where they do work experience learning service and cooking in the Institute's training kitchen).

Stressful as this was, it was also a really interesting challenge for me. I had never taught a class before and I have to admit that this was something that I was really nervous about. But my first day actually went quite smoothly...I liked teaching and helping students. Of course it helps that none of my classes are that advanced. We're learning (for some) and reviewing (for others) fractions in Math class and we learned to use MS Word in computers last week but in fact the hardest part is keeping up with the lesson planning and making sure that I'm ready for class every day.

The students are engaged though (at least as long as they get to learn on the computers). The first day of the MS Word tutorial it was: Teacher! Teacher! (I think that this is a habit they pick up in school here) every 10 seconds. By the end of the week when I stopped to ask a student how they were doing with their tables and charts I was usually answered with a distracted: yes yes we're fine...we don't need help with anything.

My first day of Math I was asked by a student what 0.75 meant - he understood 0.25 as a quarter and 0.5 as a half but didn't know where 0.75 came from. We're currently re-learning fractions and decimals in that class but it's amazing to see how they pick it up as soon as I make it practical (triple this recipe, here's your shopping list, etc). I think some of them are actually looking forward to learning to calculate percentages because it will help them to calculate taxes and discounts.

In Front Desk Agent (learning important skills for working in hotels and working with guests - kind of like a customer service class) we reviewed the important attributes of a Front Desk Agent. One student told me very seriously that it is important for them to practice their ear contact. I almost asked him to demonstrate but then thought that would be mean.

And so we are learning together. It's really fun to watch them learn new things and then to use them. Sometimes it's a bit sad when you realize that all of the students are in their 20s and 30s and don't know what a fraction is. Sometimes overcoming cultural obstacles is the focus of ongoing work and you're never really sure you'll get there. One student in class has a really hard time looking at me (never mind making eye contact) when he's talking or answering a question because he has been culturally conditioned to never look a woman in the eye when he is talking to her.

I feel that I have as much to learn from all of them as they do from me and this program and after just a week I can already feel the determination building to work with them as much as I have to to make sure they have the skills they'll need when they leave the school to find jobs and I can already feel some the anxiety building that I won't be good enough and that I'll let them down (I'm reading math books in my spare time to learn how to teach fractions - how sad is that?).

When I told people here that I would be moving to Jambiani, the two main comments were: what will you do in the shamba (rural area) and lucky you you're moving to the beach. And yes, I live right on the beach, at high tide the ocean comes right up to the gate. But somehow I don't think this experience is going to be as relaxing as some people (including myself) had thought it would be!

P.S. The picture is the view from my balcony - it's low tide so the water is way out there and you can see people in the tidal zone seaweed fishing.

Changing Seasons

Well, the seasons they are changing here in Zanzibar - we are getting some crazy humidity spikes accompanied by some very promising sounding thunder that really get my hopes up...rain usually brings cooler temperatures. So far though, there's been thunder but very little rain but all of that is about to change. We are entering in Masika, or the rainy season, here in Zanzibar and hopefully this will bring at least some relief from the crazy temperatures we've been experiencing the last couple of months.

And with the changing seasons I changed jobs here in Zanzibar. I've finished my contract with the Aga Khan Foundation and the NGO Resource Centre and I've moved out to the village of Jambiani on the east coast of Zanzibar to teach for a few months at the Jambiani Tourism Training Institute before meeting up with my parents for a bit of safari and then going home.

Almost finished my first week of teaching and so far it's been quite a surprising experience. It's been crazy busy though, learning to teach and getting to know the students, the school and my new environment.

But, for those of you who are interested (and my Mom does tell me that it's more than just her and Dad who read this...) I will continue blogging from the village and give you my impressions of a more rural perspective as well as all the details from this new job. It's barely been a week and I already have stories so that's promising in terms of blogging material. I'll need a couple more days though to get everything sorted and to organize some of my first impressions before writing and solid post but it is coming. (I can just hear you all holding your breaths!)