The Great Ihalimba-Nundwe Relay

[Email - To: All]

Hi all

If you didn't get the last email (the one where Vende and I "have words"), then it should be at the bottom of this - I suggest you read it first. It wouldn't let me send it to so many people before.


What a difference two and a half weeks make. Well, maybe not that different. Got back to Ihalimba on the Monday, and Vende had suddenly started organising things. We even had some seminars, on STIs and Gender, as well as snaring a load more IGPs (Income Generation Projects).

Unfortunately, Vende couldn't resist giving his version of previous events to Oswin, right in front of me, but I just bit my tongue and went in the other room. This, of course, didn't help, because we have no
doors.

Generally, though, we've been getting on much better than before. I think the main reasons are that 1. Vende is more organised and 2. I'm letting him do all the organising. I've pretty much accepted now that if I organise or plan anything either Vende ignores it or gets upset that I'm "trying to take over". The problem is with that is that most things happen in Swahili, so if I haven't been involved in the plan, or Vende's just doing it all off the cuff, it's much harder for me to follow what's going on and to contribute to lessons/seminars.

Anyway, the first week ticked over pretty nicely, even though I was bored throughout, and then we had our teachers' workshop on 22nd February. I was looking forward to this because the teachers speak reasonable English so I could be much more involved. Straight away, we were a little disappointed, as only 5 of the 8 teachers turned up, and the Head Teacher was one of those missing. We started with Non-Formal Education (NFE), and much as expected, they weren't particularly responsive, and they had a sackful of excuses for not using any of the techniques, and to continue teaching in an achingly formal manner: it takes too long and the syllabuses are so tight, class sizes are too big, Tanzanian children are too stupid to learn that way, etc, etc.

Next, we included some time for talking about AIDS/HIV, STIs and adolescence. None of them had ever been to the seminars, or sat in on lessons, so they need education on these issues as much as anyone. And they were really interested, and much more responsive to discussion than before. So enthusiastic in fact, that we immediately got bogged down in how HIV got from chimpanzees to humans (i.e. whether it was through a 1950s polio vaccination programme in the Belgian Congo, whether it was a man having sex with a female chimpanzee, or whether it was a woman who had sex with a male chimpanzee - I think the male teachers favoured the last option). We managed, eventually to make a little progress, so we spent the next 45 minutes discussing whether AIDS is a real disease, or a syndrome, and never actually got onto any useful discussion about AIDS or the other topics at all.

Before lunch, we managed to start on Child Rights - namely, Child Domestic Workers (housegirls in Dar Es Salaam in particular). Iringa is the region that supplies most CDWs to Dar, and very are very poorly treated an paid, and usually end up on the streets. It's estimated that almost every bus that leaves Iringa, bound for Dar, carries one boy or girl heading off to find/start work in the city. The teachers showed a little less interest, but they agreed with everything that was said.

Chipsi mayai for lunch, and then Vende kindly offered to let me lead the next part of the workshop, also on child rights. Or, more specifically, on corporal punishment. Thanks. And, once again, the excuses came flooding in. They didn't seem to respond to the idea of rewards as well as punishments at all, and although they accepted that beating is wrong, they defended the current situation. "Children prefer it to other punishments." "What do we do if the child refuses to accept these other punishments." "Pressures on the teachers means that it's the quickest solution." "It won't work here." Have you tried it?? Corporal punishment is still legal in Tanzania, under strict (though flouted) conditions, so we can't demand they stop using it completely, but their attitude was utterly demoralising.

We really didn't know how the workshop had gone, whether they were going to reject the new ideas, or take them away and think about them, but at least we knew we hadn't alienated or angered them, as we've always been on good terms. Of course, they might now have just thought we were mad.

It was Nundwe's community event on the same Saturday, so when we finished we bombed it over there on the bike, and only just caught the end of their football match. And so began the Great Ihalimba-Nundwe Relay of 2004...