Chasing Chakula

Monday, July 16, and Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Chakula means “food” in Swahili.  Kuku means “chicken.”  I have a hint for you: the kuku was named Chakula.  You can guess where a blogpost entitled “Chasing Chakula” might be headed.  But I’m getting ahead of myself, so read on if you want to hear the rest of that story!

When we arrived in Pommern that first day, we were famished and were excited for Mama Tony’s meal.  There was plenty of food, and we all ate our fill before moving into our rooms in the large Mission House.  I was assigned to a room with Ashley, a school speech pathologist about my age from Washington state; Maria, a spunky special education teacher from New Jersey; and my sister Rachel, a pre-med student at a small college in Iowa. 

Roommates: Rachel, Ashley, Maria, and me

After we’d had a bit of time to settle in, we went out in small groups to walk around and explore the village.  Nearly half of our 16-member team had been to Pommern before, so there were plenty of “tour guides” available.  It was so fun to see everything again, and though I struggled a couple of times to remember the exact paths to take I soon regained my footing.  It was comforting to greet people with the word kamwene (a local greeting for “hello”), and the shouts of ciao from the kids who confused us with the Italians (who volunteer through the Catholic church in another part of the village) and the requests for pipi (“candy”) were familiar as well.  Apparently the Italians frequently give candy to the children of the village.

When we got back from our walk, many of us sat on the porch of the mission house and relaxed for a while.  I took a sun shower before supper – I’d forgotten exactly how much of a pain that is – but being clean after the dusty ride felt good.  Supper was rice and beans, which would become a common evening meal.  After supper the youngest ones among us played more card games and had a grand old time.  We are all so competitive, it definitely could have become our undoing! 

Sun shower time...  :/

Playing cards the first night: [clockwise from lower left] me, Daniel, Ryan, Forrest, Ashley, and Rachel (photo by Amy)

We closed the evening by going outside to get a glimpse of the beautiful night sky in the absence of light pollution.  We were not disappointed, as we saw the brilliantly vivid Milky Way arching across the sky.  It glowed so brightly it was hard to believe that what we were seeing wasn’t just light reflecting off of a cloud.  Very few things on God’s great earth are more spectacular than that sight!

*        *        *

The next morning after breakfast, we had our first official team meeting in Pommern.  We each set three individual goals for ourselves and contributed a “house rule” for the group.  It was a good team-building exercise.  My three goals were to teach math and English at the secondary school, to get to know one or two people of Pommern very well, and to participate in as many different opportunities as possible while there – all things that were very important to me while I was there.

Our goals (photo by Amy)

Our house rules (photo by Amy)

Next we set out to visit the three main places where we would be working while we were in Pommern: the clinic, the secondary school, and the primary school.  We got a tour of the clinic, and the nurses and doctor on our team as well as our two public health/pre-med students got a little more detailed information there since that would be where they would spend the majority of their time.  I saw some rooms in the clinic I hadn’t seen before, including a place where vaccinations for TB, measles, polio, tetanus, and maybe a couple of others are stored.  We met Dr. Elton, who has replaced Dr. Godlove at the clinic.  The clinic currently has 7 nurses, which I’m pretty sure is more than before.  I nearly cried when we went into the main dispensary and saw that the shelves were almost bare.  I felt extremely thankful for our church members and the supplies they and others were able to contribute to send with this team, and I couldn’t wait to deliver them.  A new learning for me was that the patients who stay overnight are not “admitted” to the clinic but are simply “resting overnight” due to government regulations. 

Pommern Clinic

Nearly-bare shelves in the dispensary at the clinic

We had to stop our clinic tour before we got to the overnight wards and the surgical areas because it was 10:00 and nearly time for chai at the secondary school.  Down at the school we met with Haran, who had been the Global Volunteers team leader before Edward, then became secondmaster (assistant headmaster) at the secondary school, and is now the headmaster.  We met in the teacher’s lounge and heard some information about the school.  Enrollment is significantly higher than two years ago, and there are apporximately 800 students at the school and about 30 teachers.  They are working on constructing new classrooms to accommodate the students.  

While we were meeting with Haran, a few students came in carrying thermoses of tea and a pail of aandazi (delicious donut-like treats), followed soon by the arrival of all the teachers.  We listened while one of the teachers read off some announcements in Swahili.  Then we all introduced ourselves, and a few things were spoken in English and more in Swahili between Edward and Haran and the teachers, presumably about our presence and expectations for one another (at least, that’s what the parts in English were about).  After the meeting, we walked around the school grounds.  One of the most exciting parts was seeing the finished kitchen that I helped build two years ago.  It’s very nice!  We also got to see evidence of the buildings they are converting into new classrooms and got to go in the computer lab.

Inside the teacher's lounge at tea time -- you can see the thermoses of tea and pots of aandazi on the table, as well as the aandazi in bowls around the room.

The new secondary school kitchen as it looked when we left two years ago...

...and the secondary school kitchen today!

Inside the computer lab.  There are about 10 computers, which are powered by solar panels.

Our final stop was at the primary school, which really felt like returning home, as that’s where I spent most of my time two years ago.  We first met in the headmistress’s office – Edward’s wife, Mama Kinte, is now the headmistress.  She told us some things about the primary school, and I learned a couple of new things about the primary school, one being that there is a pre-primary class at the school for kids age 5-6.  We visited it later on, and it seemed very much like a kindergarten and the teacher seemed very friendly and, well, kindergarten-teacher-like.  While the government funds the rest of the primary school teachers’ salaries, it does not fund the pre-primary teacher’s salary, so students who go must pay 1,000 Tanzanian shillings (about 60 cents) a month.  There are 48 kids enrolled in the class, but there were only about 25 there when we visited.  

Pre-primary students (photo by Ashley)

The government is also supposed to subsidize money for chalk and marking pens and so on for the primary school, but the government doesn’t actually send the money, so the headmistress must find a way to buy chalk and red pens, while the teachers pay for any other supplies they want out of their salaries.  In some ways, a teacher paying for things out of their own pocket isn’t so different from home!  Students’ families must buy notebooks and pencils and pens for the children, and they are supposed to buy books too but can’t afford them.  Some recent donations to the school means there are about 5 textbooks per classroom right now, but clearly that’s not nearly enough…and 9 subjects are taught.  The parents are also supposed to contribute money for photocopying of practice and actual exams. 

In addition, we learned that the primary school has a trade/technical school that students who don’t pass their Standard VII exams can attend for two more years.  We visited that as well, which is just outside the courtyard that makes the main primary school.  One group of students was making bricks from a mud hole, and another group was building with already-baked bricks.  Students also have options to learn a trade of sewing or cooking, but we didn’t see that part.  We also visited the Standard III classroom, where the students greeted us by standing as is customary, and we took a peek at the one science textbook in the room, which the teacher was using to teach out of.  It was new and in Swahili, but it’s sad how few the resources are.  A very familiar and comforting sound came near the end of our meeting with Mama Kinte when I heard the unison words coming from one of the classrooms: “Thank you teacher for teaching us.  Welcome again.”  Ah, a wonderful sound of home sweet home!

Brick-baking at the technical school (photo by Amy)

We returned to the mission house for lunch of chipsi mayai (a traditional Tanzanian dish consisting of french fries cooked into a fried egg – it sounds strange, but it tastes wonderful!) and then had some time for journaling and resting.  We had heard at lunch that we were going to have kuku for dinner, and a couple of our team members got excited about helping to catch, kill, and pluck the chicken.  A little bit later, Moses showed up with a rooster he had caught and whose legs he had tied together.  Daniel (a mature-beyond-his-years 14-year-old from North Carolina who came with his twin brother and his mom) was disappointed because he had wanted to catch the rooster himself, so Mama Tony obliged by untying the rooster’s legs and trying a long piece of twine to one of the legs so that the rooster could be easily caught again.  

We named the chicken “Chakula” and all laughed and hooted (and so did some locals over at the carpentry and the store!) at the hilarious sight as mzungu Daniel chased Chakula around the area in front of the mission house for a good 10 or 15 minutes, as we insisted that he catch it “for real,” not my stepping on the long piece of twine!  Then about half of us watched Lisa P. (a nurse from Illinois) try to kill the chicken.  Instead of being instructed to snap the chicken’s neck, Lisa was given a knife to cut the neck.  Unfortunately the blade on the knife was not very sharp, and it was not an easy or quick process.  That part certainly wasn’t a fun experience, but it was still one worth participating in.  (Remember, one of my personal goals was to participate in as many different experiences as possible!)

Moses with the kuku he caught (photo by Amy)

Mama Tony preparing the long piece of twine while Daniel holds the kuku (photo by Maria)

Daniel chasing Chakula (photo by Maria)

Daniel with Chakula after he successfully caught the kuku (photo by Amy)

After our mapumziku (break) we had a Swahili lesson with Edward.  Mohammed usually teaches Swahili, but he had to go to Iringa to renew vehicle licenses that were expiring today.  I really enjoyed being a student of Edward’s teaching style, especially since he is a teacher by profession (and taught at the secondary school in Pommern before becoming the Global Volunteers team leader).  His style was very African, which is hard to describe, but one standard characteristic is starting a sentence and then asked “what?” and expecting us to finish his sentence.  He also often asked us to repeat words or phrases together as a whole group, then one side of the table, then the other, and so on – a strategy I had picked up on from my co-teacher at the primary school last time.

That afternoon we also got a quick tour of the downtown market area, and we had a chance to sit anad watch the village youth choir practice their beautiful singing outside of Pastor Saga’s house across the road from the church.  There’s no better way to end a day in Pommern than with the sweet sound of African music as the sun sets on the red dirt.

Pommern Village Youth Choir

Once the sun had gone down, supper of rice and the kuku we caught and killed was served.  While we ate, we got our work assignments for the next day, and I was excited to learn that I was going to be paired with a math teacher at the secondary school.  I was definitely eager to begin my service!