SEW

Service Emphasis Week

Last week, HOPAC secondary school was not in session. In fact, no teacher showed up to teach last week. No student sat in a classroom. No books were opened.

But lessons were still learned.

Each year, the secondary students spend a week on a short-term "service" trip. The secondary teachers are chaperons, team leaders and service planners. Some of the groups went to orphanages. Some went to Tanzanian prisons. One group even traveled to "the bush" to work with the Masai in Northern Tanzania.

I spent the week camped out at the school with 4 amazing students: Josh, Niko, Laura and Amy. (All of us from different continents... yes, I got teased about my "weird American accent.")

We were asked to lead swimming lessons for our support staff: local Tanzanians who serve the school as office staff, gardeners, cleaners and maintenance workers. All four of the students have been taking Lifeguard training classes at the school, so they were asked to lead these classes during the week. We also had a number of service projects to complete around the pool area. These students were so dedicated, they were waking up at 6:30 in the morning (because we were sleeping in primary school classrooms and primary was still in session!) and working until 6:30 in the evening. 12 hour days, exhausting labor (scrubbing algae and painting), HOT, HOT Tanzanian sun. They were champs!!

The View of Our Pool from the Basketball Court

The sketch of the mural... designed by the team and perfected by the art teacher.

The finished product.

For me, the best part of the whole week was the swimming lessons. We got the chance to work closely with people we have very little interaction with on a daily basis. Now, we know their names, we say hi, we talk. Also, these are people who live in a coastal community, surrounded by water. Most of them began the first lesson terrified of the water. Most of them ended the third lesson able to do 2 strokes: freestyle and elementary backstroke. (Nobody is going to the Olympics anytime soon, but they're probably not going to drown either!) All 4 students have also volunteered their break times to continue the lessons. What an example!!

Teaching the Elementary Backstroke... Chicken, Eagle, Snake!

Josh teaching freestyle.

Nike teaching floating on your back.


The team... sunburnt and exhausted.


Laura said that she learned you could serve anywhere. "Everybody needs some help. You just have to find what God has given you that you can give to someone else."

Responsibility

Why is it that the more responsible you are, the more responsibilities people give you?

How do you refuse to take on other people's responsibilities when their irresponsibility directly affects what you need to do?

How do you teach responsibility? Slowly, slowly or by setting certain expectations and "forcing" people to live up to them?

Bugs in Africa

Yes, Virginia… there are bugs in Africa.

Yes, this post is dedicated to all the bugs in my life… the creepy crawlies, wiggling wormies and scampering insects that have gladly taken residence in my kitchen, classroom and bedroom.

First, I would like to pay tribute to Syd… Syd the Spider. Syd lives everywhere… underneath our water filter, on the side of the fruit basket, beneath my bed slats and behind the clear, plastic fruit drawer in the refrigerator. Yes, Syd does cause quite a shock when you first see him, but when you see Syd attack other members of the bug kingdom, you develop a fond place in your heart for Syd and all his brothers and sisters. (The only time we kill Syd is when we start seeing small bites on our ankles that do not compare to the normal, daily mosquito bites that have become part of our existence in Dar.) [Geckos are also really good at killing bugs…we love them… but they do also give us quite a scare because they lurk in dark places, behind cabinets, in air-conditioning vents, etc. ]

Next, the great flying termites! Some of the largest bugs I have seen here… not so creepy until they drop their wings and become small crawling insects that chew on woodwork and lay eggs. Then, it does begin to look like autumn because the wings are golden-brown in color and cover the sidewalks and grassy yards with paper thin, oblong shapes. Not a delicacy I have tried, but Tanzanians like their Flying Termites fried and sometimes dipped in chocolate!!

Third… MOSQUITOS!! (and I would just like to clarify, once and for all, Mosquito nets are not Romantic!!!!) Mosquitoes are everywhere in Dar, and they are especially vicious this time of year. They go for whatever piece of skin they can find… fingers, ears… I even got a bite on my baby toe last week. There is no blood there! Why would they bite there? We do everything we can to keep them away… bug spray, mosquito coils, nets dipped in repellent, bug screens, and finally… the piece de resistance, the Mosquito Racket!! It’s a bug zapper-tennis racket combined… really fun at parties. If all that fails, there is always the tried and true handclap to squash the little annoyances!

Ants, ants and more ants… I would mention these in detail, but they are everywhere, in everything, impossible to exterminate and even harder to see. As a result, we no longer call them bugs… we call them protein!

Ralph… Ralph is a cockroach. We call him by a single name because we refuse to admit that Ralph has brothers, sisters, children, parents… Ralph is one roach who lives in our kitchen. (we refuse to accept any other reality on the subject.)*

Finally, in learning to live in harmony with the bugs in our lives, we teachers have tried to take an example from our students, who not only accept the bugs that they must share life with, but see them as friends, pets, and distractions during a boring lesson.

*NB: we found a great Cockroach repellent recipe in one of our cookbooks. It works pretty good!