All last week, the Duke students, Katie, and I worked at Meru Primary School doing LTP activities with the students during class. Katie and I were fortunate enough to be able to work with the deaf unit. We were able to observe a class earlier in the program, so it was great to be able to return to do LTP projects with the students. LTP works so well with deaf students because they naturally use pictures and visual interpretation in their learning.
During the week, we worked with standards 6 and 7 (age 11-13). Some of them seemed older, however, which we learned was because there isn't really anywhere to go after primary school for deaf students. In addition, some of the students also have intellectual impairments, so they stay at primary school for extra time. To go beyond primary school, a student would have to
"struggle a lot", I was told. I'm guessing this means that deaf
students who go on to secondary school either have to lipread or the
family would need to hire a personal assistant to sign for the student
during classes. Both would be very hard!
Even at the teachers college that specializes in teaching special needs in Arusha, they are just now starting to accommodate teachers with special needs (i.e. deaf people who want to become teachers of the deaf). There are 2 deaf teachers in the deaf unit at Meru, and I wish I was able to communicate with them to know more about their path to becoming a teacher.
One of the student's self portraits by Mwajuma
Over the course of the week, they put together some amazing self portraits, which included a picture of their personal sign (which they use to quickly identify people instead of spelling out names), a drawing that describes them, and a picture of something they like to do. They turned out really awesome!
Another self portrait by Fredrick
Another day, the students came up with a list of vocabulary words. In groups, they taught each other how to use the cameras and then photographed each other making the signs to match the vocab words. They then assembled them into posters, which will make great visual aids for the classrooms in the deaf unit.
A visual aid the students made
Some of the students pulled me aside to teach me different signs. I practiced basic greetings and signing my name in sign language, which the students gave me the last time I came. It was fun to be able to communicate with gestures and signs and not have to worry about knowing Kiswahili. I loved watching the teacher interact with the students and was amazed at how fluidly and quickly they were able to communicate.
The teacher giving direction to the students
Me doing my personal sign that the students at Meru gave me. I think it means I have big cheeks :)
I have been going to a gym while I have been here to stay in shape for an upcoming Mt. Kilimanjaro climb with my dad. They have many various weight machines, free weights, cardio machines including a stair master and rowing machine, sauna, showers, restaurant/bar, and a studio area for classes.
It has been so fun to see the culture at the gym, which has been very refreshing compared to those in the US. Here are some things I have noticed here:
1) A lot of men attend the aerobics class (in addition to many women)
2) There are many overweight men and women confidently working out at the gym
3) The personal trainer is eager to help anyone at anytime, regardless if you've signed up for a session. He has been recommending some workouts to me specifically for strengthening the lower body for mountain climbing.
4) The water cooler is environmentally friendly in that it has real cups, which are washed and reused.
5) It's a safe place to express yourself, generally free of the peer judgment that you often find at the gym in the US. I have been walking in my hiking boots on the treadmill with it set to the highest incline. Which also means I look pretty cool as I stomp in my boots, huffing and puffing "uphill" on the treadmill. No one in the gym questions me or looks at me disapprovingly. Instead, the trainer pulled me aside to do some additional workouts.
To give another fun example, the gym plays music videos a lot with very upbeat and active songs. Today, the man next to me was literally dancing on the treadmill, waving his hands back and forth and moving his feet with the beat. I joined in with him for a refrain, and then went back to my stomping and huffing and puffing.
Just another day at the gym....
Here's a sampling of some of my favorite songs they play:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY2H2ZP56K4&feature=relmfu (Beautiful Onyinye by P-Square ft. Rick Ross)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSnkWzZ7ZAA (Whistle by Flo Rida)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTUIlOudlHI (Azonto by Fuse ODG ft. Tiffany)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17vC8qZILJE (Chop My Money by P-Square ft. Akon and May D)
On Sunday, I took the Sustain Foundation Sakina Scholars that I worked with in 2009 on safari to Lake Manyara National Park. None of the scholars had ever been to the national parks or seen any safari animals in real life before. They were so excited!
We took a
mini bus (with 4WD) and squeezed all 16 of us into the mini bus for the 2.5
hour drive to the park. Lake Manyara National Park is situated on Lake
Manyara, which was pretty low due to a lengthy drought here. Lake Manyara
was named after a plant called emanyara, the Maasai word for
"finger". The plant looks like fingers and when it grows the
fingers wrap together to form a natural fence that the Maasai used around their
bomas and to protect their livestock from predators. The plants also have
a milky substance inside the stem that is poisonous to all animals, including
humans. Thus, emanyara worked well as a natural fence to keep out
unwanted animals.
On the way to the park, I got a taste of some Tanzanian legend. We passed
a small village on a hill that is supposedly inhabited by one man and his many
wives and children. From the road, we could see many huts, cattle, and a
small school building. The man, a witch doctor as the rumors go, gives
each wife her own hut where she can raise the children they have
together. He has so many children that the government recently established
a 2-room school in this village and will be sending 2 teachers to teach in the
school. A nearby village, Mtu wa Mbu (Mosquito River), is dependent on
the milk produced by the cattle from the witch doctor's village. Not sure
how much is truth and how much is legend, but all of the scholars had heard of
this man
Top: Felister and Iddy at the picnic site looking over the park. Bottom: Damian and Manase looking out over the vista of the lake
Once inside the park, we were greeted by some monkeys hanging out in the
visitors center area. We then drove our mini bus, which had a retractable
safari roof for standing, into the park area and started looking for
animals! Lake Manyara is more of a forested area than the other parks, so
you really have to keep your eyes open. It's much easier for the animals
to blend in with the trees and bushes. Over the course of the day, we saw
many animals, including giraffes, impala, warthogs (pumba!), monkeys, baboons,
hippos, flamingos, swans, zebra, and elephants
Bottom: Elephants crossing the road behind our safari car
Top: Group picture! Back row (from L to R): Elias, Iddy, Felister, Emanueli, Manase, Gerald, Dominiki; Front row (from L to R): me, Omary, Eva, Wiliam, Irene, Damian, Patrick.
On the way home, we saw a
number of Maasai youth on the side of the road.This in itself is not unusual, but these youth were wearing black
clothes instead of the usual checkered red/purple cloth and their faces had
white paint on them that made their faces look somewhat skeletal.I learned that these young Maasai men had
recently been circumcised and the dress and paint were a symbol that they had
now entered into manhood in the Maasai community.Young
Maasai boys help their family tend the family livestock.When they reach a certain age (not sure what
it is, but sometime during the teenage years) they are sent out into the land
(as boys) and have to live on the land for a period of time.Then they get circumcised (where they can’t
cry or make any facial expressions) and afterwards, there is a celebration and
these boys return as men to the village.They are then able to have their own herd of goats/cows to tend after
and participate in village life and Maasai culture as men.Pretty cool!
It was a very successful day at Lake Manyara, and I was so thankful to be able to share that experience with the Sakina Scholars!
The Duke
students, Katie, and I are running some after school programs at Arusha School,
an English medium primary school where Pelle taught for 25 years.The after
school programs are: theater, origami, Chinese language, soccer, drawing,
dancing, singing, LTP, and inventions.Can you guess which one I’m doing?Inventions!!
When we first
started the inventions class, my primary school students didn’t know what an invention
was.They understood the word
“discovery” a little better, so I used that the first few days.We spent the first week playing games about
creativity and imagination and exploring the idea of inventions in the context
of where we can find them in Arusha and where the need for different inventions
come from.
Since the
students will be inventing their own creations starting next week, I had a
local Arushan inventor, Bernard Kiwia, come to speak to my class on Tuesday.Bernard is the head engineer for Global Cycle
Solutions (http://gcstz.com/), a social enterprise business that was started by
a group of MIT students after meeting Bernard at the International Development
Design Summit at MIT in 2007.
Bernard and I with my Inventions class. Front row (L to R): Latifa, Adelfina, Collins, Joseph, Pius, Derek; Back row (L to R): Janifa, Zakati, Theresia, Debora, Evelyn, Mary, Michael (Jackson - haha!), and Raymond
Daniel, the
outreach coordinator for Global Cycle Solutions, also came with Bernard.A former MIT student, he helped organize the
International Development Design Summit where he first met Bernard, and has
lived in Arusha for 2.5 years now.He is
fluent in Kiswahili and translated Bernard’s presentation into English for
me.
First, Bernard used
his laptop to show the students pictures of some of the inventions he has
created.Since he used to be a bicycle
mechanic, many of his inventions are made out of parts of bicycles.There were many, many inventions, but they
included: a chair made out of bike parts, a bicycle phone charger (run on
bicycle power), a bicycle powered corn sheller, solar powered water heater, bicycle
powered clothes washer, etc.He even
showed a video of the bicycle corn sheller in action.
Bernard showing the students some of his inventions.
Next, Bernard
used the problem of “long time spent shelling corn by hand” to demonstrate how
he could solve the problem with a simple invention.Often, families will buy a large amount of
corn from a local farmer.Then they will
spend hours hand shelling the corn onto a tarp.After shelling the corn, they take the corn to a miller, who grinds the kernels
into cornflour.The families then use
cornflour in their cooking, especially to make ugali.
Joseph shelling a cob of corn with his fingers. Students waiting for Bernard's secret solution!
He used a strip
of metal from a pot and, using a machine created in Tanzania, created grooves
in the strip.He then used pliers to
bend the ends of the strip and clasped the two ends together to make a circular
piece of metal with grooves in it.He
gave the students a cob of corn and asked them how long it would take to shell
the cob by hand.2-3 minutes was the
answer.He then took the grooved,
circular metal tool that he had just made and shelled the cob in about 5
seconds.The kernels went flying
everywhere around the classroom and the students squealed with excitement.His demonstration was such a great example
that highlighted a very relevant problem and a very realistic solution in the context
of life in Arusha.
Bernard making the simple corn sheller.
Bernard showed the class that his sheller could shell a cob of corn much faster than with Joseph's fingers. Kernels are flying everywhere!
Finally, Bernard
talked about how to invent something.He
made some great points that the students really picked up on:
1)Inventing is a cycle; it won’t happen in a day.You have to test, modify, and re-test your
invention until you get to a point where you are satisfied with the end result.
The invention cycle, courtesy of Daniel and Bernard from Global Cycle Solutions
2)Use the materials that are available to solve the problems
around you.Just like the metal from an
old pot to make the corn sheller, use resources that are readily accessible to
help you design and build your invention.This will generally save time and money, and will make your invention
more realistic for more people.
The students
were SO excited to see all of his inventions and they did not stop talking
about his visit for the rest of the week.The next day I had them come up with a name for their group, and they
decided on “Arusha School Inventors Kids Club”.So awesome!!
I could tell that
Bernard's presentation really inspired them and contextualized the idea of inventing
and solving problems in Arusha.I’m so
glad that the students have a local role model that they can look up to - I can
now focus on reinforcing the ideas that he introduced and using his work as an
example as I guide the students through their own invention cycles.I can’t wait to see what they come up with –
stay tuned!!
To see some youtube demonstrations of a couple of Bernard's inventions, click here for a demonstration of the bicycle phone charger and here for a demonstration of the bicycle powered corn sheller.
After a week of electricity outages, we're up and running again (we hope).
It's not uncommon for electricity to go out here, but it's usually just for a few hours. This week was unusually bad, with much of the town experiencing outages at some point this week. Many restaurants and other shops had generators, but schools, government buildings, our apartments, etc, were left without power for a lot of this week.
When the power goes out for that long, there is also a "power sharing" schedule that gets put into place. For example, where there normally might be 3 electricity lines, if 1 or 2 of them go out, then the last line with electricity gets fed to the various places on a schedule so that everyone shares the remaining electricity. So far, the schedule that we've heard has not been accurate, but we use the electricity when we have it!
In Sakina, where I lived in 2009, the power would go out almost every night or every other night because we were on an electricity schedule. I don't know, but I'm guessing the village may not have had as much access to electricity. We haven't seen that too much here since we are living so close to Arusha town, where they definitely have more access.
On Saturday, my
friend Laura from high school, came down from Nairobi, where she is working in
agricultural insurance with Syngenta Foundation. We took a bus to Moshi and then a daladala to
Marangu, which is a small village in the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Marangu is also one of the climbing routes on
the mountain, so we saw lots of climbers.
I asked our tour guide, Rogath, if he had ever climbed Mt.
Kilimanjaro. It turns out he has climbed
the mountain over 40 times and set the return ascent record on the Marangu
route in March 2000 (since broken) in 14 hours and 50 minutes!
Laura and I at the Mt. Kilimanjaro National Park Marangu gate!
First, Rogath
took us to the Mt. Kilimanjaro National Park gate in Marangu. We toured some mud caves that were carved out
by the Chagga tribe during colonization when the Maasai tribe came south into
Tanzania from Kenya and invaded the Chagga land and steal their cattle. The Chagga hid in the caves in the mountains
until colonization ended and the tribal wars ceased.
A quick history
of Tanzania’s colonization: Tanzania was a German colony from the 1880s to 1919
and then became a British colony until 1961.
In 1964, the mainland of Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar merged to
officially become Tanzania.
The caves were
very dark and had many long secret tunnels with various exit points so that the
Chagga could escape if the caves were invaded.
Picture above is of the lava rock deposits from Mt. Kilimanjaro in the Chagga caves.
We then started
hiking through the village of Marangu, with Rogath stopping to show us various
plants, such as peppermint, avocado, bananas, lemon, and many other fruits,
vegetables, and herbs with medicinal uses.
Rogath brought us to the first of
2 waterfalls, where we could have swam if it was warmer and where there are
sometimes cliff divers that perform for tourists (there weren’t any while we
were there). We then hiked to a second
waterfall, which was much taller (about 60 meters) and very beautiful.
After the hike,
we tasted banana beer at a small restaurant.
There are 4 types of bananas in Tanzania: cooking bananas (they taste
like potatoes), frying bananas (which are sweeter and bigger), eating (smaller
and sweet), and bananas for banana beer.
It tasted a lot like wine, and was actually pretty tasty. Who knew bananas had so many uses?
On the way
home, the clouds cleared up and we had an awesome view of Mt. Kilimanjaro. The weather here is usually cold, cloudy, and
sometimes rainy in the mornings, warmer with some sun in the afternoon, and
then clear, cool, and beautiful from 4 until it gets dark around 630 pm. About 20 minutes from home, our bus broke
down while climbing a hill. After a few
tries at restarting the engine, we got off the bus and caught a daladala back
home.
Last Friday, we
went to Arusha School, a primary school where the Duke students, Katie, and I
conduct after school programs (more on these programs later in another
post).Arusha School was having their
Sports Day, where alumni, parents, teachers, and students all came together to
participate in sports.They had events
such as marble races, filling a water bottle from a bucket race, 100 m, 200 m,
400 m, tug of war, relay races, etc.Between
all of us, we know about 120 students at the school, so we were excited to see
them compete.
The students
were split up into 4 houses, Nyerere, Kenyatta, Samora, and Mandela, and each
house competed against each other.The
houses were named after Julius Nyerere, the first president of Tanzania, Samora
Machel, the first unlelected president of Mozambique, Jomo Kenyatta, the first
president of Kenya, and Nelson Mandela, the first democratically elected
president of South Africa.
The 11-12 year old boys 100 m race is off to a quick start!
After all of
the student competitions, the teachers, alumni, and parents faced off in the
100 m race and tug of war.Even all of
us wazungu (foreigners) teachers got to compete against the Arusha school staff
in a game of tug of war.What a fun
afternoon!
At the end they
had a “chicken race,” where the teachers had to run after a chicken and the
first person to catch the chicken got to take it home to eat.I felt a little bad for the chickens, but the
teachers were very motivated to catch the chicken, so it made for a funny
event.
At the end of
the Sports Day, the headmistress and second master announced the winning houses
in each event.The house leaders went up
to the stage to collect their trophy or plaque.Even though Samora took home the overall prize, all of the students were
so proud of their teams.It was so great
to see so much celebration!!
