FIRST IMPRESSIONS III

ILBORU PREVIEW

Following my three-day trip to Tanga, I spent Saturday night quietly in Arusha and then went up the hill the next day for my first look at Ilboru Secondary School, my assigned home for the next two years. It seemed particularly appropriate that the taxi in which I rode was a Peugeot, since I had just said farewell to my second such auto after driving it nearly 300,000 miles in 24 years. The house in which I was to stay according to the original plan was not available since the new headmaster was living there until his assigned house atop the hill was ready; the Mtui family had only arrived in June. The second house which was, and still is, intended for my ultimate use is now unoccupied because the former occupant became headmistress of another school in Arusha, but she has yet to remove her belongings. So after enjoying a visit in the headmaster's temporary home with some of their family friends, I was taken to a small house near the dorms that I shared during my week's stay with a very pleasant and helpful young man who teaches commercial subjects. As a consolation Mama Mtui prepared dinner and breakfast for me, and their six sons, throughout the week. It is now about a month later, and little has changed in regard to housing; I am getting better acquainted with Tanzanian customs and procedures, however.

After breakfast I toured the campus and then talked with the physics chairman, who is the only teacher handling physics and chemistry at A–for advanced–level, the twelfth and thirteenth years of school for these “boys,” as I have been told to call them. Ilboru has enough A-level students, all assigned by the national government, for three classes– “streams” they’re called here–in form five and two in form six. Since each stream is to meet two periods daily, this instructor should be teaching 100 periods weekly, 10 in each subject for each of five streams. Of course this is impossible, since a week contains only 45 40-minute periods. His schedule shows him meeting these students 24 periods each week, but when I started looking for classes to observe, I began to suspect the truth. During my week alone at Ilboru I heard him lecture only twice, both times on chemistry. The next week, when all 13 of us teacher trainees were observing at Ilboru, he again managed two lectures, this time on physics. During the following three weeks–today is Wednesday of the last one–the physics classes were taught daily by Peace Corps trainees, so he presumably had only chemistry classes to miss. I don't know all the facts yet, but evidently teachers here routinely slight their regular classes in order to take on private students for pay–“tuitions” is the local term–and thus supplement their pathetic incomes. On first impression the educational system in Tanzania appears so arcane in structure and so underfunded as to be almost nonoperational.

My practice teaching assignment was with one of the form six streams; I asked not to be assigned one of the form five streams since I will be teaching all three separately when I return after our long-awaited week in Dar es Salaam. The first two days at Ilboru I spent just trying to find a congenial level for the students and for me. I do have to speak very slowly and simply for them to understand my English, and the level of physics has to be fairly basic and not too abstract. The best approach is to present an idea or two on the blackboard and then to pose a problem on which they work while I wander around the room offering advice, encouragement, and occasional prods. By midweek I felt comfortable with them, and the comments of my two reviewers were generally favorable. Unhappily, another of the trainees, an older teacher, simply can't adapt and will be reassigned; one young man left for home shortly after we arrived, so we are down to twenty-two.

During my week's visit I was asked to address two English classes on life in America, which task I found very enjoyable; those students were quite proficient in my native tongue and asked some intelligent questions. Each term they read a book or two, and later on I may join them occasionally for discussions. A history teacher here also seems quite friendly, so I may get some intellectual stimulation from that side of campus, but I think I'll be fairly isolated in my own discipline. The headmaster seems fine, and I expect some lively debates with him on the ills of Tanzanian education.

My most exciting accomplishment to date is finally to make some sense of the nighttime sky. The prominent southern constellations, Crux, Scorpius, Centaurus, Sagittarius, and Libra, have been obvious and spectacular since we arrived, but the northern sky has been a puzzle, at least partly since I don't have a good view of it from my home in town. But my last night at Ilboru stayed clear and windy, and just as I was finally recognizing Hercules, the Northern Triangle, Boötes, etc. in their unfamiliar orientations, the power went out, not only on the hill but all over town as well, and the moon was new. I have never seen the Milky Way so bright. I would have stayed out all night, but it was chilly, and I had been struggling with a cold for over a week; in fact I lost my voice after talking to the English classes.

A week later eight of us, the last of three groups to make the trip, filled the PC van for a very early departure to visit the Ngorongoro crater for a few hours; it was reassuring to see Orion and his neighbors a bit before dawn. The trip had several highlights for me. First the crater, really a caldera, itself is simply spectacular when viewed from above. It was also the first time I had seen the wildebeests–more commonly called gnus–and zebras so obviously in migration, with a long line of animals stretching from one end of the crater floor to the other. For the most part the animals were familiar from my visit to Kenya some years ago, but I was really excited to see a family of three black rhinoceroses together. The youngster was amazingly playful for his considerable mass, and the horns of the adults were spectacular. Finally, on our drive back up the crater wall, we overtook a bull elephant that necessitated our proceeding very slowly and cautiously until he finally entered the forest and allowed us to pass.

A few days ago I was finally given access for a quick inspection of the house in which I'm to live–the woman has finally removed her belongings–and it will do quite nicely. It is built on the same basic plan as the house I shared during my previous week on campus, but this one has three bedrooms, each with two single beds. The kitchen is very modest, but so is my culinary intent. The greatest virtue of the house is its location on the hillside above the school looking out over a cultivated valley toward Mt. Meru. The kitchen lacks a stove, which the school has promised to provide, but they did bring in bedding for one bed, including the very same sheets that I had used earlier.

Last Sunday several of us went to nearby Arusha National Park on one of those sightseeing trucks that have become popular in this part of the tourist world. I was quite skeptical beforehand of how enjoyable the ride would be, but we were all very impressed with its quality and the good visibility afforded by the open sides. We saw a bit of game on the ride in and back, but the most enjoyable part of the day was the four-hour walk we took in the company of Freddie, an extremely pleasant park ranger who was armed with a 30-0-6 rifle for our mutual protection. He seemed most amused at our bantering with each other in primitive Kiswahili. I was really impressed at my first sight of Colobus monkeys flying through the trees above our heads and at several good views, I think also a first for me, of some very colorful white-fronted bee-eaters. It was a great day, and we all really appreciated the efforts of one of our fellow trainees in arranging it; nothing is straightforward or simple in Tanzania, which is why I'm spending big Wazungu bucks to take my first serious safari in mid-September.

The inappropriateness of our training program, its childish restrictions, and the total inadequacy of its administration, have left us all dispirited, confused, and in near revolt. Yesterday we gave our practice exams under circumstances too bizarre to describe in public, and tomorrow we return them to our classes during their final meetings. On Friday we pack for our Saturday departure to Dar es Salaam, where, after a few more days of training activities we are to be sworn in as Volunteers. Because of my age and experience, both the director of training, on the one hand, and the younger trainees on the other, occasionally confide in me, and I remain more than a little afraid that we may yet have an ugly confrontation with one or more of the officials above us before it's over.

September 7 is the day specified for travel from Dar to our teaching sites, and at Ilboru the one-week midterm vacation starts on September 14. I plan to use the three or four days that I'll be here that week getting acquainted with my students, assessing what they have done during the first two months of the term–I'll be the fourth physics teacher one stream has faced this year and the third for the other two streams–and purchasing a few things I'll need for living on the hill. Then I'll do my best to forget PC and to enjoy fully my own private safari to nearby points of interest in a Range Rover driven by an old Africa hand whom I know because he does some work for PC House here in addition to dabbling in the travel business, as do about half of Arusha's residents it seems. In addition to arranging travel for me, he will hopefully become a friend and source of information on life in Arusha for non-Tanzanians. And, if my house in Ellensburg is still unsold by then, I may have to approach some of you for American foreign aid.

I apologize for the discontinuities in the preceding narrative, but it has been written in piecemeal fashion during rather unexciting times. Despite the negative comments regarding PC training, I remain very much in control of my own life and aspirations and will not be at all discouraged by whatever happens. There are still many more exciting things to do in life than I'll ever find time to experience. During my brief exit interview on Monday, I told the director and his assistant that had I known how dreary and pointless training would be, I would never have come, and that I would recommend to others like me that they seek organizations other than PC to sponsor similar work.

On rethinking that discussion and all that led to it, I recalled my last class meeting, on Friday morning. I had expected another, on Monday, during which I had intended to finish the assigned material and also to give the students some idea of what their test would contain, but the headmaster canceled that class. Sending the boys off to work instead of attending class is a common procedure here, and generally no warning is given in advance; it's just done on the spot. That Monday morning, for example, I had spent nearly an hour walking up the hill from town, had watched the end of the typical preclass “parade,” and had begun to suspect the truth when the headmaster dismissed all sixth formers; the class leader came to give me the official news.

Friday morning's class was not a good one, but then few of the previous nine had been either. A few of the boys are organized and get their work done, but most just sit there doing nothing, even when I've given them a simple problem to do at their desks. As I walk among them to offer advice and assistance, I suggest gently that they would be wise to do something, but they only look back silently at me. I ended this class as I had several others by saying I would just wander around the room helping anyone who asked me. Three guys showed me a problem they said had come from a previous exit exam, the national one students must pass with high marks in order to gain entrance to the university. It was relevant to what we had been doing, and with some questioning and prodding, I was able to help them and the others who thronged around to watch them make a little progress. When it was time to make way for the next teacher–each stream of students has its own classroom, where the boys stay for all their classes except the “practicals,” as laboratory work is known here–I made a comment to the effect that I really doubted the value of my presence at the school. Two of the boys immediately broke into broad smiles and between them said, “Oh, you're doing good, you're appreciated.”

I think I'll stay awhile.

W. Vance Johnson

26 Aug 92