From another part of the world

Secondary School, Dodoma

A week has passed and our project is moving forward nicely. We have spent the week doing observations and interviewing teachers and have found interesting material to work with. The school, which is located in a small village outside Dodoma, has approximately 150-200 students and eight teachers. After many interesting conversations, it is rather clear that the teachers find it hard to focus on teaching as there are more important things to worry about. For instance, there is no electricity in the village, which obviously results in various issues. They also lack water, in fact, there is hardly any. The students, some of them living far away from the school ( a two hours walk), have to walk a long distance to find water and therefore, will not make it in time for school. During the day, neither the students nor teachers have any access to food or water, and naturally, they have trouble concentrating and get tired easily. One could think that these issues are difficult enough, but it also turns out they have a huge shortage of books, thus, the teaching methods are completely different from what we are used to. After spending a week observing and talking to the teachers, we are amazed and impressed and feel humble by their efforts and hard work.

Yesterday we made a short trip to the city but had to go back almost immediately as both of us started feeling a bit sick and nauseous and thought it would be best to return to safe grounds in case it would get worse. We bought some fruit and took the dala dala back to campus where we drank some refreshingly cold coke and then rested until feeling a bit better. Luckily, it turned out we were fine, at least for a while. During the night, however, it got worse, and we did not get as much sleep as we would have needed. Today, feeling a bit out of it, we at least managed to eat a banana each for breakfast, but stayed in our room, taking it very slow for most of the day. Being sick is unpleasant as it is, and being sick here, without water and food we can trust, makes it all so much worse. We spent all day in bed watching movies and series, feeling sorry for ourselves and hoping to start fresh tomorrow.