So here it is. 2015. The year I go back to the states. The year I get to see my friends and family and home again. The year I come back to the northern hemisphere, four seasons, rain year-round... And between seeing my family over break, planning for more to come in July and planning a trek up Mt Kilimanjaro with some friends back home, it's been hard to keep my head in Tanzania.
It's hard to motivate myself to keep learning a language I may never use again in seven months. My Form IV kids graduated last year and have moved on from school. The initial vigor of being a new volunteer in a new country and a new life has worn off and all that's left is some serious Senioritis.
But I still have 4-5 months of teaching left and if I'm here for anything, it's the kids. They're the future of Tanzania and they give me hope for their country. They're still so impressionable and I am doing my best to fill their heads with new ideas and perspectives.
Beside the students though, I've started working on a grant for a project at the school. One that will help the school a ton and as an added bonus, keeps me busy and the time moving. The project has two parts. One is a water catchment system that will collect the water from the roof of the laboratory into a 1000 liter tank, making rainwater available for students during the rainy season. Currently they walk to a river about 2 km away for their water, often multiple times each day. So this should help save some of their time and energy for studies and other activities.
The second part of the project is to build new lab benches in the chemistry laboratory. These benches will have sinks in them and running water will be fed to them from the catchment tank outside the lab. This will give the students a safe and well-equipped place to perform chemistry experiments. The chemistry teacher, a good friend of mine, is so excited to be working with me on this project and can hardly wait to be able to teach and do demonstrations in the new laboratory. He has been the only science teacher at my school (of about 700 students) for many years and I hope this new equipment will help to reinvigorate him and help him to inspire his students to continue studying science!
---start plug---
This project will be one that people back home can donate to if they so choose. There will be a Peace Corps website to go to where anyone can donate. If you're interested in supporting this project, feel free to email me and I'll make sure to let you know when it goes live. And yes, it's tax deductible.
---end plug---
Also, I'm still working on a new resource for the Shika na Mikono committee I'm on. It's a book to help science and math teachers use hands on learning techniques in the classroom. I've been working on the physics portion and other volunteers are working on chemistry and biology. This weekend I'll be handing over my part to another volunteer to start compiling all of the lessons into a single book, and then I'll start working on the math lessons.
Shika is also doing a teacher training in Mwanza in about a month that I will be helping with. We did one in Iringa last year which was really successful, so I'm excited to do another! It's good to get to the teachers before they've established any bad habits and show them how they can use activities and demos to keep their kids interested and involved in their learning.
So that's what I'm up to. Fighting Senioritis with a couple projects. I won't be here much longer but hopefully I'll leave feeling like I did enough.
