I fly into Philly Dec. 6th!

About 3 weeks left in village/at school, 4 as a PCV, and 6 until I'm home! I can't wait! I'm SO SO SO ready to go home. The students I've been teaching for the past two years have finished the national exams and gone home, so my main reason for being here is gone. Plus, I'm just sick of being the outsider and ready to be in a culture that understands me and spend time with like-minded people. Basically, I'm ready for a break from Tanzania. The weather's been gorgeous (tho still incredibly dusty because the rainy season hasn't started), I've had some wonderful weekends with other PCVs, and I'm starting to like the Form 3 students I started teaching when I finished Form 4, but I'm still just ready to go home. I know once I am home, there'll be times when I'll wish I were back here, but I am ready for a break.

I've also recently been disappointed with the behavior of some Tanzanian friends, which really just shoved home our cultural differences and the fact it's incredibly difficult to judge people's character when you don't completely understand the culture. It made me realize how tired I am of not knowing if I'm reading someone correctly or not, and just plain old sick of being disappointed by people's behavior.

My students left, as I said, and saying goodbye was strange. First, Tanzanian culture doesn't really do goodbyes, so it lacked the significance I attached to it. They told me they came to say goodbye, thanked me and told me that if god wished, we would see each other again. I gave all my students my address and email, and some gave me their phone numbers so I can text them my new number when I get back, but I'll be surprised if I ever hear from even a handful. One student didn't even know I was going back to America. But maybe that's all for the best -- to keep my head from getting too big.

So, these days I'm teaching Form 3 math and getting ready to leave. I'm not all that excited about teaching them, but they seem pretty receptive so that's nice. It's an incredibly frustrating situation though, because their teacher has completely failed them. Their teacher is the one I switched with at the beginning of this year -- last year he taught Form 4 and I taught Form 3, and this year I asked if I could teach Form 4 to continue with my students and he could do Form 3. He agreed, no problem. Now, I don't often see him in the classroom, he also teaches Form 4 physics, and he is the school accountant. When I offered to help him teach Form 3 in my last month here, he said that would be great. When I asked what I should teach, I learned that he has only finished 1 topic from the syllabus. But he assures me that he's almost finished the second. Our school year started in January. He has taught the topic of "relations" (the precursor to functions), and was in the midst of "functions." That means he has yet to teach statistics, properties of circles, the earth as a sphere, accounts, rates and variations, and sequences and series. The government syllabus allots 28 periods for relations, about 4.5 weeks, though last year I spent a much shorter time on it. For functions, the syllabus allots 30 periods, 5 weeks. Again, school started in JANUARY. When I asked him about why he's taught so little, he said that the students are so lazy that sometimes he doesn't like to enter the classroom and teach them. He does have a lot of responsibilities as the school accountant, but this is ridiculous. I might be able to get through most of two topics with them, but basically he's set them up for failure. For the National Exams, all of a student's scores on the various tests are combined and then that average puts them into Division I, II, III, IV or 0 (with I the best and 0 as failing). If a student fails the National Exam in Math, it knocks him or her down a full division, unless he or she's already in division IV. The division they earn is then the primary determinant for continuing on to the Advanced-level secondary school (forms 5 and 6). While it's not unusual for teachers to skimp on entering the classroom and teaching, this teacher's behavior is terrible even by Tanzanian standards. I talked to the headmaster about it, and he was glad to be told and planned to talk to this teacher, but his response was primarily that this teacher is a good, hard worker so probably his accounting duties took up too much time. AAAAAARRRRGGG! Ugh, and that excuse he used -- that the students are so lazy -- is extremely common and pisses me off to no end. Yes, I agree that some students are lazy. But how on earth does that justify your laziness?!?! Sometimes I leave the classroom dispirited and frustrated and don't want to enter another, but I do because IT'S MY JOB. Seems so simple, but the logic just isn't here. Teachers say that the bad test results are because the students are so lazy, that the dormitories are dirty because the students are so lazy. Ok, I see the logic in the second part, but not the first. Only a rare few of these students have books they can use to teach themselves, otherwise they have notebooks that have been passed down from other students and the teachers, whose job it is to teach the material to the students. Somehow the correlation between teachers rarely entering and poor student results is lost. This is one case where I believe the correlation does imply causation. Of course there are many other factors involved, but teachers play a big role.Ok, sorry, that's enough venting...

This past weekend a bunch of PCV friends ended up staying at my house for two nights, and then we headed to two other friends' places the next two nights. It was a lot of fun and a really nice, unexpected last time to hang out and opportunity to say goodbye to friends I wont see again here in TZ. The weekend before that, Brian and I went to a village on Lake Nyasa and had an INCREDIBLE weekend. We went because we decided to take up a Tanzanian friend of a PCV friend on the offer to show us around his home area of Manda on the Lake. On Thursday we met in Ludewa (170 km south of me, maybe?) and this Tanzanian friend, Paul, took care of us completely. And I mean completely. He got us a room in a hotel, had dark beers and vegetarian food waiting for us, and would not let us pay for anything. The only money I spent all weekend was my bus fare to Ludewa. He and his driver took us in his private car to Manda, where we stayed at his house that's about 100 feet from the lake. His cook made all of our meals, the cook's wife took us out on the lake in a little motor boat, and they made sure we were entirely comfortable. He only stayed with us for 1 day, but his entire house and staff were left at our disposal! It was a perfect little vacation :) To return, he bought all of our bus tickets and again arranged for our hotel and food while we were waiting for the bus in Ludewa. Oh, and his driver drove us back and forth between the hotel and the little restaurant where we ate. Luxurious, much? It's not a tourist area and the village was just a little village -- dirt roads, no electricity, no running water -- but it was a beautiful spot, the lake was wonderful for swimming, and I woke up to the sound of little waves crashing on the shore. I wish there was time to go back! Definitely a weekend I'll remember forever :)

And now I'm just getting ready to leave. I gave away lots of clothes as presents to female Form 4 students, I'm figuring out what I'm giving as presents, what I'm selling from my house, what I'm taking home and what I'll leave for other PCVs (I still don't know if I'll be replaced). And I still have to decide whether I want to dig a deep hole for my plastic trash or throw it in the school's trash pit where it'll be burned. Yes, I really do have 2 years worth of trash in an outside store room. But keep in mind that I don't make much trash here; it's nearly entirely from packages and western products I've bought here -- food packaging, shampoo bottles, etc.I'm going to choose a couple hundred pictures from the last two years and post them when I get home, so look out for that visual representation of my PC experience at last :) And think of me on Nov 13 when I spend my last day in village, Nov 19 when I officially finish my PC service, Nov 21&22 when I'm swimming with whale sharks, Nov 24-Dec 5 when I'm exploring Egypt, and Dec 6 when I arrive in Philly! Brian will spend 10 days on the East Coast, flying back to Minnesota Dec 17th, and that time will probably be shared between Philly and NYC. So if you want to see us, let me know! We'll probably be in NYC for a long weekend starting Dec 8 or 9, and after he leaves, I'll still be up for traveling and visiting :)

See you soon!