The Journey Continues...

Tuesday (Sept. 1) afternoon began with a two hour mini-bus ride down a gravel "road", the term being used very loosely here because neither of us had ever experienced a road like the one we were traveling on. I was amazed vehicles could continually weather driving conditions as harsh and uneven as the road we were on.

Nevertheless, we soon came into view of the very first VST school, Madisi Secondary School. The school's buildings perched on the top of a lush mountain, with a collection of villages below. What a moment to finally witness one of the schools that we have been working so hard to support. Actually arriving at the school required a bit more winding and turning to work our way to the top of the mountain. While driving, we passed through a small rural village called Igoda(pronounced: Egoda). Villagers were coming and going as we made our way through the village, and we proved to be quite a spectacle. Apparently, white American teachers don't make their way through the village on a daily basis...

Madisi being the original VST secondary school, it is the most established. Classrooms and teacher housing were completed and in use, along with a permanent home for Steve and Susan Vinton, Godfrey, and Emmanuali, the VST staff. Everything after our arrival in the middle of the afternoon happened in a rush: we were shuffled into one of the teacher houses that would serve as our home base during our two week training, told to pack our backpacks with what we'd need for one night in the village, introduced to a student who would be hosting us at their home in one of the surrounding villages for the next two weeks, fed a hot lunch, and were sent packing with our student! Whew! These events all took place so quickly, it was difficult to allow any part of this new reality to sink into our brain. Before we knew exactly what was going on, Ian and I were heading in opposite directions with our respectful students to begin a foreign adventure unlike anything we had experienced.

Here is where our stories split:

Amy and Leukadia(pronounced Layokadia):

As it turned out, Leukadia's home was in Igoda, the village we had passed through on our way to Madisi. Instead of walking on the winding road we traveled with the minibus, there was a well-worn footpath that led directly down the mountain Madisi was perched on and straight up the neighboring mountain. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line... regardless of the elevation. Several students from the school walked home on this path as well and it was clear that the hike did not faze them in the least. As for myself, my legs were burning and my heart was pounding at the end of our jaunt.

We discovered later that it is typical for students to want to help the teachers in any way, including carrying anything for the teacher. My backpack, mattress, pillow, and blanket for the night were spread among four students, all asking to carry my belongings for me. My hands were empty, while my students were heavy laden with my possessions. It is a sign of respect for students to carry a teacher's load, but was a gesture that I struggled with. These students are working all day at school, and returning home in the afternoon to work and cook, and study after it gets dark, the least I can do is carry my backpack and bed. Our 25-minute hike to the village was the beginning of my lesson in humbleness and humility.

As Leukadia and I hiked, we chatted as much as our languages would allow. Leukadia is studying for Form 3, the third of seven forms(exams) secondary students must pass before graduating to university. She is 18 years old and lives with three other female classmates in a home in Igoda. Her family lives in a different village miles and miles away, but she is living in Igoda to attend school at Madisi and recieve a quality education. One of her roommates, Antonina (pronounced: Antoneena) is only 17 and also studying for her Form 3 exam. I was amazed, these young girls are living alone in the village, responsible for every aspect of their own lives, and attending school. Jeesh, how immature I was at 18!

Our training instructor, Sarah, had hand-picked students that would be quality teachers of how to live in a village. These two weeks are designed to be training for how to cook, do laundry, clean, fetch water, and navigate life in a village so that we would be ready to live on our own at whatever school we would be assigned to teach at. My first lesson upon arrival at Leukadia's house was how to wash socks: a bar of soap and a shallow basin of water. Lather, rinse, repeat until socks from school uniform are white again, and then hang from clothesline to dry.

Leukadia's home consisted of six rooms. The rooms were built of mud bricks, a worn concrete floor, and a metal sheet roof. Each room had a small window with wooden shutters. We entered into the first middle room, with two smaller rooms on either side. These first three rooms seemed unoccupied, but when we walked into the second middle room, it was clear this was the living room/kitchen/dining room. Connected to either end of this multipurpose room were two bedrooms: one for Leukadia and Antonina, the other occupied by the remaining two female students.

Cooking consisted of metal bowl-like pot placed over small charcoal burners. This method was used to cook all of our dishes. Students go without food during the school day until they return home when school is finished at 3:00pm, so starting food cooking was the first priority. Our afternoon meal was small peas and ugali, a paste made of boiled flour and water rolled into a scoop and then used as a utensil. The ugali was more functional then flavorful, but the peas were cooked in an oil of some kind and seasoned with salt. When we finished eating, preparations began immediately for dinner, which is eaten just before retiring to bed. Leukadia began cooking the beans, which take hours to cook. While the beans cooked, we scrubbed dishes from the previous evening's meal, cleaned the floor of the house, visited the general store for more sugar and rice, ventured down the mountain to fetch water, and then returned to the house. Tasks that would take mere minutes in the US were time-consuming projects in the village. Because these tasks were new to me, I was not of much assistance to Leukadia. The girl worked tirelessly to complete the tasks of the day. I asked her if she was ever tired after her day at school, which had begun at 7am, to which she only responded "sometimes". Her work ethic was amazing to me, who would have craved a long nap after a long day at school and a brisk hike back to the village.

The sun rises and sets around 6am and 6pm each day. Before we knew it, it was dark outside, and even darker inside the house. A single oil lantern was our light source, along with a headlamp from my backpack. Leukadia's roommates were gone for the evening; they had returned to Madisi for an evening study group, taking advantage of the electricity provided by the gas generators that run in the evening. The two of us ate a tasty dinner of ugali with cooked greens(called chineese) and tomatoes. After dinner, I was ready to fall into bed, but Leukadia was just settling in for a session of studying, so I decided to journal for a bit before bedtime.

It is typical for students to share beds; both pairs of roommates shared a twin mattress. I didn't realize the luxury I had of sleeping on my own thin twin mattress. We laid my mattress in the middle multi-purpose room, and I settled in for the night. It is the end of winter in Tanzania right now, and the temperature was in the forties when I climbed under my blanket and prayer shawl. To stay warm, the girls build small wood fires in their rooms and keep them burning throughout the night. These fires made the house quite smoky and I feared we would all be victims of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Night sounds in a hut in rural Tanzania include chickens that crow anytime they please, dog fights, fires crackling, and of course, rats scurrying, digging, and dropping various objects from the ceiling. I took some solace in the fact that I was of little or no interest to the rats, and tried to sleep. I awoke in the middle of the night having to use the restroom, and here is my most courageous moment of the journey: getting up among the rats in the hut, venturing outside in the moonlight to the outhouse, and finding my way back to the hut and onto my mattress. It did require much courage and praying.

Morning came quickly and before I knew it, we were getting up, having a quick glass of Tanzanian tea(world reknown) and hiking back to Madisi.


Ian and Musa:

Soon after I watched Amy walk one direction, I was on my way in another. "How far is it to your house?" I asked Musa.
"Umm...one half hour?" Musa replied.
I had a suspicion that our concepts of time may vary.

"What kind of animals do you have here?" I asked as we started our first ascent up a large mountain.
"Not many here" Musa replied, "but there are monkeys where I am from".
I assumed this to mean that like the student Amy was staying with, Musa was from a far away village but was living in a closer village to attend secondary school.
"No" Musa said, "where we are going is where the monkeys are. I live with my mother."

An hour and a half later, after a beautiful hike over the large hills in the highland forests of Tanzania we arrived at Musa's home. I met Musa's mother and sister (his father had past away two years earlier) and we set straight to work on cooking. After we ate our rice, beans and ugali (which is challenging because even though it is light outside it is still very dark in the hut), we set into the evening tasks of doing laundry, fetching water, feeding banana leaves to Musa's pig (each year, Musa raises a pig to sell so he can pay his tuition) and most importantly, preparing dinner (rice and beans again).

The sun went down around 6pm and Musa set into his evening studies. I sat and watched as Musa worked hard on some extremely advanced Calculus homework. I was amazed at how determined Musa was in his studies. He was thankful for the opportunity to be spending four hours every evening doing homework! He truly valued the education he was getting. It was not until late in my college experience that I valued my education and to this day have bad memories of the few nights that I had to stay up late studying. The opportunity to be educated is Musa's hope for a better future for himself and his family. So much so that he was willing to study for four hours every night and walk over three hours a day in order to get it.

This next part of the story is a little harder to tell. To make a long story short, after a few hours of anxiety, panic and no sleep I woke Musa and he graciously escorted me all the way back to the school in the middle of the night. Please feel free to ask me and I will be able to give you a more descriptive explanation of my feelings at this point in the trip.

After training at the school the next day(Wednesday), Musa came and found me and we began the hike back to Musa's home. This time with camera in hand: Musa's hand. He was so excited to take pictures (116 of them to be exact!) That evening, we trekked all over the countryside taking pictures of everything Musa could think of. His primary school, church, two of his older sisters houses, his uncles house and anything else along the way Musa could find to take a picture of.

My time during the day with Musa, though short, was a joyful and a wonderful experience. I was sad to have to leave so soon but I was in great need of sleep and rest from the anxiety that I was experiencing at night.