"USA"

September 24, 2013

I have been preparing to start teaching the past week and a half and I was at school today working on lesson plans. After school, on the way home, my Second Master invited me to join him for a soda at a small shop along the road. Everyone I have met here has been incredibly hospitable, especially considering the fact that I probably still don’t know how to show enough gratitude in Swahili. After a soda (ginger, duh…), I continued on my way down the road. It is about a twenty minute walk from my school to my house.

I’m adjusting to a lot of new things here but one thing I have yet to adjust to is the excruciatingly slow walking pace of most Tanzanians. I guess it’s part of the “it’s about the journey” philosophy. I’m all for that, but I guess I never took it quite so literally.

Anyways…

Naturally, I pass my fair share of students on the way home. Usually I’ll take advantage of the opportunity to expose them to some conversational English (something the rarely have a chance to learn/practice). And usually we get to “good afternoon” or “how are you?” and things usually end after “what are you doing this evening?” They’ll get embarrassed or switch to Swahili.

But today, a student made it past these initial greetings and began asking me real questions, in real English, “Sir, you said you are from America?” “I want to go to America!” “Tell me stories of life in America.” I remembered being told during training that all Tanzanians see of the US is movie stars and pop idols. So I wasn’t surprised when this student’s next question was, “do people just throw money around all the time?”

I couldn’t help but laugh, but I’m sure he has seen a disproportional amount of money throwing in music videos. I can’t remember the last time I was in a nightclub and a man with ten gold chains and a fur coat started throwing hundreds around as a dozen models danced around him in bikinis… sue me for being un-American. I tried not to get too philosophical about it with this (maybe 14 year old) student but I did my best to set his image of the US straight. I told him that no, we have happy/unhappy, employed/unemployed, wealthy/homeless, nice/mean, educated/ignorant people in the US just like they do here. And that a student his age would be waking up, eating breakfast, going to school, learning various subjects, going home, playing soccer, having dinner, and going to sleep much like him. (All without having any money thrown at/by him!)

I didn’t want to entirely crush his dreams, though. I could tell he was a bright kid. He spoke better English than most of the students I have talked with, and that seems to be half the battle for the students in the Tanzanian education system. He told me he enjoys the sciences. I did the responsible thing and encouraged him to keep doing well in school. And as motivation I mentioned that his best shot at making his dream of going to America come true was through education. He’s going to be in my physics class I think. Only time will tell if that will be the motivation he needs. If not, I’ve got two years to figure out another way to get him going.