Soo Cute! They are pretty smart too! This one kid could count in Swahili, English, & Arabic!
Yesterday and Today we all went around and checked out some of the potential internships sites we would be working at. It was a very interesting experience to say the least. It was heart breaking and revolutionary to see how excited and motivated the kids at school are to make something of themselves. We asked what the kids wanted to be when they grow up and a lot of them wanted to be pilots - this is because to fly means they could leave Tanzania and see different parts of the world. A lot of them also wanted to be engineers, which is good if they stayed in Tanzania the country could use them. Every class we asked wanted to come to America. They all also new that Obama was our President. One girl even said she wanted to be the President - girl after my own heart! They go to school in class rooms built to hold 25 kids but hold 50+ and half the time they don't have a desk. There are normally only 5 to 6 class rooms but there are 2000 students! So they go in shifts which means they really do not spend much time in class learning and they don't get a nurturing/learning environment at home. (So we saw a lot of schools - and this manly has to do with the fact that teachers are not certified or trained by any means. UDSM just started and Education college this year. So to have Americans come and teach is huge even though we really are not qualified to teach - we did come from a system we could all probably simulate and is better than anything they have. All the students wanted us to come back and teach English-could you imagine me teaching English! Just reading this blog you know it would be a bad idea!) Then there are the organizations that are trying to teach reproduction eduction, aids/hiv, importance of hygiene, importance of an education, etc. We also went to a health clinic that is trying to educate women on pre/post natal care, preventive measures, etc. There are also organizations that do micro lending to help support entrepreneurs and those that want to provide for their family. The micro lending would be a great way to help the community and individuals put together business plans and teach them how to successfully operate a business for themselves. I am hoping that maybe I will get to work with a micro lending organization, but there is also a national organization called SOS Villages that I wouldn't mind working for. They believe that every child should grow up in a family with a mother and father. So they take in orphans and put them with a mother and 10 - 12 brothers & sisters raging in age from 0-15. The head of the village is the father and the other homes are the kids' cousins and aunts. So its pretty much just like a giant Gartner family! The thing I am most interested in that they do is this strategic family planning outreach program. They go out into the community and work with struggling families to help them develop a plan to get themselves on their feet, providing for their children, stressing education, health care, and teaching them the skills to provide for themselves. Whatever I do I want to have a sustainable impact and not just a quick fix or be just a white American that must now something that can help them!
Ok now to the contradictions; so after doing all this and seeing all the different life situations people are living in, we all went to the movie. Ok so that does not sound so crazy, but when you watch the Tourist and forget that when you walk out you are not just going to hop in your car and drive off, but pay for a doga doga (3 wheel bike taxi thing) to take back to your dorm where the water is not running, there is something wrong. I almost felt guiltily for thinking what an awesome deal it was to go to the movie for about 9000 shillings which is $6 (this included my popcorn). That is more then the average student at UDSM spends on lunch in a week at the cafeteria! |
So I have another Contradiction today! We spent all morning in the CIEE office trying to figure out our classes! Then the girls took the dalla dalla out to the beach - at a huge resort with a water park! It was crazy, but very relaxing! The beach was beautiful and the resort was amazing-I couldn't believe it!Our waiter for dinner was a lot of fun! We practiced our Swahili with him! He then had a surprise quiz for us... he wrote 5 different sentences down and then came back and asked us what they said! Then it was dark so we took a taxi back. About 2 miles from the resort he ran out of gas! It was in a scary neighborhood and we just sat there waiting for our driver to get gas then he had to jump the car.
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