You Know What Happens When You Assume

Monday, July 23, 2012

Fresh off our weekend at Ruaha and ready to start my first full week in the classroom, I got up early to go to school before breakfast with another volunteer, Maria, so we would be in time to see the students' daily morning assembly.  Before I left the mission house, I stepped into the kitchen, told Mama Tony I was leaving early for school, and asked if I could take a couple pieces of bread.  African hospitality reared its head though, and Mama Tony wouldn’t let me out of the kitchen with just bread, insisting that I must have some porridge as well.  I don’t even like the porridge, but there’s no refusing Mama Tony when it comes to food.  She handed me a bowl and a spoon and pointed toward the porridge that was already cooked and ready.  I took a couple very small spoonfuls and closed up the pot, but Mama Tony saw how little I had taken and came over with a much larger spoon and served me another hearty scoop.  That’s African hospitality for you!  I took my bread too, and back in the mission house I ate as much of the porridge as I could muster, along with my bread and butter, before heading to the school.

Rachel and I with Mama Tony.  We loved her Iowa Hawkeye t-shirt!

Maria and I had been under the impression that morning assembly consisted of announcements by the headmaster and by a student, followed by some singing.  It was the music we were eager to hear, but we were disappointed that there was no singing that morning.  (Or any other morning while we were there, as it turned out.)

Students gathered for morning assembly at the secondary school.  Large numbers of students were still doing chores though or otherwise wandering around the school.  I'm not sure why some students had to be at morning assembly and others didn't.

After the assembly I walked back to the physics lab area.  A couple of the math and science teachers were standing outside while a student swept the lab.  I talked with the physics teacher, Patrick, while the students were busy getting to class and some were washing the floor in the classrooms.  A bunch of students were carrying desks and chairs across the courtyard from one classroom to another, though I’m not sure why that was necessary.

Steven arrived shortly, and two students came to ask Patrick for help with their physics work.  He asked them if they had a class first period and when they said no, he asked them to come back in 20 minutes.  They did, and he worked with them for two whole hours — clear up until teatime.  Awesome dedication.  Patrick is older than most of the teachers at Pommern Secondary School and really seems to be an outstanding teacher. 

We were supposed to have a Form II class this morning, but Form II was still taking their mock-exam today.  Supposedly they will be done tomorrow.  Time will tell.  So we busied ourselves preparing lessons in the office at the back of the physics lab until Steven had to leave the room again.  It was cold in the office, and I walked out into the physics lab to stand in the sun.  Patrick was explaining a lesson to the students who had come in for extra help and told them to assume that something was true.  He then started chuckling to himself and began to excitedly tell me how one of his "American friends" (probably a prior Global Volunteer) had taught him something about the word assume. 

Just imagine, in the middle of small-village, Tanzania, Africa, here’s this 40- or 50-something Tanzanian teacher asking me if I know what happens when you assume!  I busted out laughing immediately, and he says, “Oh, you already know this?”  I told him I did.  The students were laughing too, but the kind of laugh people use when they don’t actually know why they’re laughing, so I asked Patrick if the students understood the joke.  He proceeded to explain it to them partially in English and partially in Swahili, and then they laughed for real too.  I must say that I definitely wasn’t expecting to hear that joke in Pommern — fun times!

Patrick and I

Throughout the morning the teachers were working on completing census forms.  They had to record their name and some information about themselves, including a picture, on the form.  The Tanzanian government takes a census every 10 years, just like in the U.S., I learned.  The students have to go home for the census though, so there is an extra break this school year for most of August.  It definitely made me think of Mary and Joseph going to Nazareth to register!  Steven spent considerable time this morning looking for glue to attach his picture to his form (resources are not handy and “wasted time” is not a concept here) and later headed to the computer lab to make a photocopy of some page for his form.

In and around working on the census form, Steven and I spent most of our morning with me continuing to teach Steven geometry — proofs about congruent triangles and isosceles triangles and parallelograms.  We also talked about cultural similarities and differences, like we did most days.  He asked me what the dress code for teachers is like at home, and we learned that neither here nor there are we allowed to wear jeans (on a normal basis anyway) for work.  Steven said he’s not allowed to “dress like a gangster.”  Ha!  His own choice of attire was sometimes less formal than many of his colleagues though, often wearing khakis and a t-shirt with a hooded sweathsirt over it.  Today though he looked like most of the other teachers, wearing a nice pair of dress pants, a dress shirt, and a suit jacket.  The female teachers always wear dresses or long skirts, and I was always amazed at how all the teachers manage to keep their shoes so clean given the harsh red dirt of Pommern!

During teatime, Haran (the headmaster) spoke about a meeting he’d recently attended with other headmasters from nearby schools.  He talked about the things the teachers needed to work on to compare better to other districts and the things they were doing well.  It almost could have been my principal in the town where I used to teach coming back from a monthly conference principals’ meeting and telling us about topics of discussion and concern.

Teachers gathered for teatime; you can also note their standard attire

Steven was supposed to have his Form IIIB class directly after teatime.  Haran’s speaking went a little long (teatime almost always lasted longer than it was supposed to), and then we went back to the workroom, taking our sweet time, to get Steven’s notes.  When we got there, he couldn’t find them though, so he asked if he could share mine.  I agreed but wondered what he does when I’m not around!

When we got to class, the students were mostly all there.  Well, 25 of them were anyway — I still didn’t understand at that time why that class was so small. However, later I think I figured out that there were a large number of students from that particular class who had not returned to school in July due to the fact that they would just have to return home again in August anyway for the census.  There were smaller numbers of students for whom this was true in the other classes as well.  It’s certainly a totally different place and culture where students and families see no harm in missing a month of school.

Anyway, when we entered the room, the students stood and greeted us as normal: “Good afternoon, teachers.”  When Steven asked them to take out their homework, not a single student had done the one-problem assignment.  There were no consequences though (somewhat to my relief as I really didn't want to see every student get hit, but somewhat to my chagrin as there obviously needed to be a consequence of some sort if there was going to be any expectation for the students to do their homework next time), and Steven merely went through how to do the homework problem on the board.

He and I then continued with our lessons on “the earth as a sphere.”  There are certain things the students do very well (their computation skills are generally pretty strong, much stronger than many American students), but they seemed to have no conceptual understanding of longitude and latitude.  The final problem we did was about how an airplane starts at 5ºW and flies 21.5º to the west, and the question was, “What will his final longitude be?”  The students really had no idea whether to add or subtract the 5 and the 21.5.  In fact, they all told me I should subtract them. 

Granted, they’d also been taught that when calculating angle alpha (the difference between two latitudes or longitudes), they need to subtract the two degree measures if they are on the same side of the equator or prime meridian and add them if they are on opposite sides.  But clearly that means they’ve just memorized a rule and are not thinking logically about any of it.   Or perhaps instead, the difficulty was in understanding the English.  Maybe they thought the problem stated that the airplane lands at 21.5ºW, rather than flying 21.5º to the west.  

Language in and of itself can be a barrier to education in Tanzania.  The official language of instruction in all Tanzanian secondary schools is English.  However, English is the third language the students learn (they also speak Swahili as well as a local tribal language), and some of them struggle mightily with their English.  In actuality, some teachers do more instruction in English than others do, as well.  

To understand what this might be like, imagine that you are a native English speaker and have been learning Spanish grammar and vocabulary (but not really speech) one hour per day for grades K-8 (sometimes from a teacher who speaks Spanish pretty well and sometimes not).  Then all of a sudden when you enter 9th grade, all instruction for all of your classes except English (math, science, history, bookkeeping, civics, religion, etc.) is in Spanish.  Not only do you have to learn the material, but you have to understand it when it's taught in a language that is not your native tongue.  That would be tough!

Students in Form IIIB copying down notes from the board about "the earth as a sphere"

At the end of the class, Steven had the students count their attendance aloud, boys and girls separately.  This is how the attendance must be recorded in the official lesson plan book — broken down by gender.  To do this, the students numbered themselves off outloud with the first girl saying “one,” the second “two,” and so on around the room.  Then the boys did the same.  It took the students a couple of tries to do this correctly and could have been done much more quickly if Steven or I had just done the counting ourselves.  But time is not a resource. 

In all fairness though, I actually probably wouldn’t have been much help with counting yet at that point — girls and boys all keep their heads shaved until they are adults, and though one can easily discriminate boys from girls based on whether they are wearing pants or a skirt, that’s hard to tell when students are seated at their desks.  I got better at discriminating boys from girls based on facial features as time went on.

Thus ends another morning at the school.  Stay tuned for details about delivering medical donations to the clinic on Monday afternoon — definitely a highlight of the trip!

Still a Different World

Student behavior at Pommern Secondary School in terms of respect is impeccable.  Students never talk back to the teacher, refuse to do what they are told, walk away while an adult is talking to them, disobey a direct instruction, or ignore a teacher who beckons them.  They stand when an adult enters the room, and they great adults as “madam” or “sir” or “teacher.”  They say shikamoo (pronounced “sheek-uh-moe,” a Swahili greeting of respect), and the girls often accompany that greeting with a curtsy.  American teachers would be overwhelmed with the formality and deference.

However, there are problems with student behavior too.  Timeliness in general is not an important value in African society, so tardiness to class is frequent (and not acceptable in the school setting, though enforcement was extremely inconsistent).  As already noted, homework completion is atrocious, at least in my observations.  Attendance isn’t the best either, as kids sometimes pretend to be sick or simply “dodge” (skip) class. Remembering that secondary schools are boarding schools, there also seemed to be a lot of problems with students not doing their assigned chores, not keeping their dorms clean, etc.  There is no paid custodial staff at Tanzanian schools, so students are responsible for these jobs both in the classrooms and in the dorms.  The most common cleaning duties involved sweeping and washing the floors and washing the chalkboards.

These two papers were posted on the wall in the Form IIA classroom.  The first shows the timetable (schedule) of classes for the stream.  Note that the students stay put in the same classroom all day while the teachers move from room to room.  The second sheet shows the "cleanliness timetable" that tells which students are responsible for cleaning the classroom each day of the week.

A glimpse of the girls' dormitories on my way into the secondary school

Inside one of the boys' dormitories — this picture was taken two years ago when the students were not on campus.   The students have to bring their own mattress from home, and the dorms get very crowded.

The consequences for student misbehavior are very different from what most present-day American teachers are used to, too.  Punishments are primarily physical in nature and have the intent to either shame the student or cause pain or both.  It took me awhile to figure out that the students I occasionally saw lying on the grass in the courtyard weren’t there to enjoy a nap in the sun.  I never did fully understand how it was a punishment, but apparently having to lie face down on the grass was a method of shaming the student as their classmates passed by.

Another common punishment was to require a student to kneel on the ground outside or on the cement floor of a classroom for a period of time.  A kneeling student wasn’t allowed to sit back on their heels but had to sit up straight with their weight on their knees.  This punishment had the double-effect of causing shame as well as some degree of discomfort. 

Students were occasionally sent to the discipline office for consequences (kind of like the assistant principal's office at home??), but more often discipline just took place on the spot — in the courtyard or in the classroom.

Steven entering the physics laboratory (the office he and several other math/science teachers shared was at the back of the physics lab classroom); the discipline office is next door.

Sometimes students were required to do extra cleaning duties or to haul heavy materials across the school grounds as consequence for some behavior.  However, it wasn’t always possible for me to distinguish when students were doing these tasks as part of their normal duties and when they were doing them for punishment.

And finally it was not uncommon for teachers to hit students with a stick.  This was the consequence for tardiness at least a couple of times that I saw.  It was also used one day on all the girls in one form because they hadn’t done their morning chores.  When this punishment was used, teachers would typically make the students hold out their hand to receive one or two swift whacks on the palm of their hand or bend over slightly with their hands on a table to receive one or two even swifter whacks to the seat of their pants.  This was never a comfortable sight...or sound...to witness.  (And presumably not comfortable to experience either!)

Click to enlarge the picture, and near the far end of the table you can see one of the sticks teachers used for discipline.  This picture was taken in the math/science teachers office at the back of the physics lab.

Teachers frequently carried a stick with them around the school, like the teacher in the middle of this picture is doing.

I tried to explain our standard American consequences of detentions and suspensions to Steven one day when he was asking questions about American education, and it was hard for him to understand how those things were even punishments.  Students at the school in Pommern often hang out in the classrooms after classes are over for the day anyway, he said, so detention seemed silly.  And when they have enough trouble getting students to come to class in the first place, why would they use suspension and force students to stay in the dorms all day as a consequence?  (I can’t deny the truth of the argument against suspension, especially out-of-school suspension.)

One of the other non-teaching volunteers commented one night when we were talking about the whackings at the school that it must not work very well if they keep having to do it.  Maybe, but consequences as a whole seemed to be pretty inconsistently enforced, which is an issue in and of itself — I should point out that more often than not things like tardiness or wandering around the school during morning assembly were in fact just ignored, not punished.  But in any case, I don’t think American teachers believe that detention “works” for all kids either.  Consequences in general work for some students better than others.  For some, just the threat of consequence is enough.  For others, a consequence one time is plenty to change behavior.  And then there are the students who seem to spend half the school year in detention (or lying on the grass on the courtyard!)

While I didn’t grow up in the American school age of corporal punishment, other physical and/or shaming consequences seemed more acceptable at school yet then than they are now.  We had a teacher who made us kneel at our desks like the Tanzanian kids do if we were rocking on our chairs.  We had a principal who made students do push-ups in the hallway if they were running in the halls or jumping up and hitting the frame above the doors.  We had gym teachers who made students do push-ups or catwalks (bear crawls) for just about any misbehavior in PE class.  We had a teacher who would make students who were having a side conversation during class stand up in front of the room and hold hands.  We had cafeteria supervisors who would make students go sit up on the stage at the end of the lunchroom if they cut in line or otherwise misbehaved while eating.  And I could go on.

For my own part as a teacher at home, I’ve learned that the harshest consequences for most kids are those that force them to own up to their mistake — not shaming them in front of their peers, but making them take responsibility to an adult for their behavior, e.g. having to go report to the principal themselves how they broke that cafeteria tray during our class picnic because they were treating it as a baseball and swinging at it with a stick they were pretending was a baseball bat (and then pay for the cost of the tray), having to write and deliver a letter of apology for using inappropriate language in front of younger students or for lying to the teacher, and so on.  (Yes, true stories.)  Not to say I’ve never given a detention or even made a student write, “I will not ….” a certain number of times, but I’ve also hardly ever wished for the dunce stool of the early 1900s or the school paddle of the mid 1900s or even the push-ups in the hallway of the late 1900s.  At the same time, it would be nice to teach in an environment where kids don’t talk back or swear at the teacher and where parents don’t make excuses for their child’s misbehavior.

So am I defending the discipline system I saw at the school in Pommern, or criticizing it?  Neither really.  Or maybe both, actually.  (Withholding judgment, withholding judgment...)  But regardless, that aspect of the educational structure was definitely the most difficult thing for me to get used to.  On the other hand, I don’t know how they do it any differently either, given their culture and all the other components of their educational system (the large class sizes, the lack of meaningful grading systems, etc.).

A student taking notes at the desk she shared with two other girls

So that’s the low-down on “the system,” the big things that are pretty standard and common at the school in Pommern and, as far as I can tell, in schools throughout Tanzania as a whole.  There are details that are less consistent (within the school there, as well as throughout the country), and some of those things will come up in future blog posts.  But understanding the major principles of the education system is, I hope, interesting and enlightening to those who haven’t experienced it. 

Personally, I’m fascinated by the systemic differences in education between countries and even within my own country.  I’ve spent a week in a New York City public high school (neat experience, but I was also totally out of my comfort zone there as a teacher-in-training at age 20).  A few years ago I had to make several phone calls to a school in New Mexico trying to track down a package that was mistakenly sent there instead of to my own school and was intrigued by the obvious Hispanic influences and culture there; I wondered what it would be like to visit that school.  I can imagine that a school in the deep south would be a very different experience from my own part of the country as well.  Or how fascinating would it be to visit a one-room schoolhouse in an Amish or Mennonite community?

And then there are all the many different parts of the world — Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Australia, plenty of variety throughout Asia, differences across Africa, and diversity around South America.  If I could spend a year traveling the U.S. and the world, experiencing the educational system for a week at a time in 52 different places, I would love it. But since that seems highly improbable, I guess I’ll settle for reading blogs and memoirs of teachers and volunteers around the world.  And add my own voice to the mix!

A Whole Different System of Education

Several entries ago, I promised more explanation of the Tanzanian system of education — grading, testing, instruction methods, student discipline, etc.  These aspects are all heavily entwined, and most of it is quite different from the American system, at least the present-day one.  While at times I have opinions about the pros and cons of the various aspects of the system, I mostly tried to withhold judgment and operate within the system at hand.  The smaller details of the system seemed to be followed inconsistently, but the basic structure is fairly standard throughout the country — at least, I have read many very similar accounts from blogs and memoirs of other short- and long-term volunteers.  Some of the contents of this blog entry I’ve written about before (in the context of the primary school), but other parts I haven’t, so come along with me and learn!

Textbooks are severely limited, especially in the rural and poorer areas of the country, i.e. the vast majority of schools.  The teacher may have access to a textbook, but the students typically do not.  This means that anything the teacher wants the students to learn must be written by the teacher on the chalkboard and copied by the students into their notebooks.  This is a time-consuming endeavor.  Typically the teacher will write a bunch of information on the board, give the students time to copy it (which for some reason always seems to take significantly longer for the students to write than it did for the teacher), and then go back and explain the meaning of the information the students just wrote down.

Steven delivering information to students

A student copying notes into her own notebook

In the rural and poorer areas of the country, there is also very limited access to electricity.  Some communities may have electricity that comes to the village via power lines, but many villages (including Pommern) get their electricity from solar panels (free to fuel, but expensive to purchase the panels) or a generator (expensive to buy both the fuel and the generator).  Ironically, there is a massive set of power lines that passes right over Pommern, but there is no access point to these power lines.  I never did figure out why not. 

The power lines that pass right over the village near the Catholic church, on the east edge of the village.  (As red as the dirt is in most of Pommern, I don't know why it's not really red in this particular area — but I promise that this is really Pommern!)

The limited electricity means that the technology that we rely so heavily on in present-day American schools — like computers, printers, photocopiers, etc. — is rare.  Pommern Secondary School has a small solar-powered computer lab, where classes are occasionally taught (though I never saw one), and a couple of printers.  Resources for these printers are expensive though, so the printers are rarely used.  Whereas I can regularly run photocopies of homework assignments, tests, extra information not found in the textbook, etc. at home, this is not possible in Pommern.  So just like information must be disseminated in slow methodical fashion, so must homework assignments, test questions, etc., and the whole process is again very time-consuming.

One of two solar panels at the school — these are used to power the computer lab.  A generator is also used to provide electricity in the dorms and some of the classrooms for a couple hours in the evenings (a single light per large room!)

Door to the computer lab.  I hardly ever saw anyone in here and wonder if the teachers don't really have the experience necessary to actually teach any computer classes.  Certainly Global Volunteers could be of use in this way.

Inside the computer lab (you can see the one light for this classroom located on the ceiling right at the top of the photo).

As for grading and testing, again the system is very different.  Students advance from one level of education to the next by passing national standardized exams during Standards IV and VII and Forms II, IV, and VI.  This would be like if American students had to take a test during 5^th grade, 8^th grade, 10^th grade, 12^th grade, and again after two years of “pre-college.”  Any year you do not pass your test, you stay at that grade level for another year and then take the test again.  Education in Tanzania is mandatory through Standard VII (8^th grade), and students who don’t pass their Standard VII exams can’t go on to secondary school.

In American schools, at least in Iowa (and yes, it is difficult to explain to Tanzanians that U.S. education systems and laws vary from state to state), standardized tests do not have these high stakes.  Student advance from one grade to the next by earning satisfactory grades during the year, or at least it works this way in theory since sometimes students are advanced to the next grade purely for social (or parental) reasons, not because they’re academically ready for it.  Once students hit junior high (or high school in some districts), the grades students earn in class actually begin to mean something.  A failing grade means you can’t advance to the next class, and colleges care as much about your high school grade point average as they do about your ACT or SAT score.

Such is not the case in Tanzania.  No marks (grades) are kept.  Whether a student does their homework, gets their homework answers correct, performs well on an in-class test, etc. is relatively meaningless.  On the other hand, I imagine peer pressure and “saving face” could be used as motivators to some extent.  I do recall a math test being given to the Standard IV students at the primary school last time I was in Pommern, and when the tests were returned to the students, every single student’s name and score was announced to the class — from the highest mark all the way down to the lowest one.  That certainly wouldn’t be acceptable in the present-day American system, but there the children who earned high marks received the 3-clap applause from their classmates while the students who earned low marks were laughed at by their peers. 

One very blurry picture of the teacher and me in the Standard IV class from last time (taken by Edward, and the only photo that exists of that class)

So with no grades kept or GPAs earned, when it comes to advancing in one’s education, the only thing that matters is the national exam.  One might think that this fact would motivate students to work hard and study hard all the time so that they’re ready for those exams, but at least at Pommern Secondary School that did not seem to be the case.

Steven and I would frequently assign a homework question or two at the end of our class sessions, but most of the time students would not complete the assignment.  When Steven finished a unit, he did not give a test.  We just moved onto the next unit.  Honestly, giving a test in a crowded classroom would be difficult — how would you prevent cheating?  The only way would be by giving students sitting next to each other different questions, but how do you do that when you can’t photocopy a test for everyone and instead have to put the questions on the board?  These were just some of the many, many rhetorical questions I asked myself about the education system.

A crowded classroom (Form IIC)

And how do you motivate students to do homework or to study on a regular basis when their marks don’t matter?  That is the million dollar question.  Or the 16 billion Tanzanian shilling question, if you prefer that unit of measurement.  In either case, the answer seemed to be that you don’t.  Or you threaten the students with non-academic consequences, which you may or may not actually follow through with.  Which brings me to the topic of student behavior and discipline, and that ended up being a rather lengthy explanation so I decided to make it an entry of its own.  Stay tuned.

Going on Safari

Saturday, July 21, & Sunday, July 22, 2012

We woke early Saturday morning, ate breakfast, and headed for the park.  There was a slight delay in us being admitted to the park due to some miscommunication with the money and our number of people, but our guide and the park rangers worked it all out and we didn’t wait long. 

Eating breakfast at the lodge before heading out

Working out the logistics at the park entrance

Ruaha National Park: The Largest Park in East Africa

Forrest, me, Maria, and Ashley getting ready to go on safari!  It was cool in the morning but got much hotter in the afternoon under the African sun.  Ruaha is at a much lower elevation than Pommern.  (Photo by Rachel)

As soon as we got into the park, our guide told us, “Sorry, but we’re going to go fast to find some cheetahs.”  Dude, no need to apologize!  Normally they take the drive nice and slow so they can spot things to show us, but the cheetah was an animal I hadn’t seen in the wild before and I was excited.  We ended up seeing a pair of lions and a couple other things on our way to the cheetah — it was pretty neat to see lions first thing in our day.  

The two female lions we saw to start off our day — rawr!

As we approached the cheetah’s location, the first thing I noticed was a spot in the grass that was red and bloody.  Then I saw the cheetah.  He was standing near a dead impala, which he had clearly killed very recently. Unfortunately, our vehicle’s brakes were extremely loud and squeaky, and our approach scared the cheetah.  He took off running just a few moments after we got there.  Bummer.  The other half of our group had gotten to the cheetah before we did and were already there when we arrived.  They reported later that they didn’t see the kill, but they did get to watch the cheetah tear a leg off the impala and eat it.

Evidence of a recent kill

Cheetah!!  (The only picture I captured of him before he took off.)

The dead impala.  Poor thing.

One of Amy's photos showing the cheetah enjoying a meal of impala.

Nothing the rest of the day was quite as exciting as the cheetah, but we saw a huge variety of animals and had a fantastic time.  Our animal sightings in the morning were frequent and good.  We stopped for lunch around 1:30, and then there were a couple of hours of really hot weather and not nearly as many animals.  By about 4:30 it started to get cooler though, and that was nice.  The air is very dry here this time of year, so it cools down quickly when the sun starts to go down. 

Safari is a Swahili word (one of the few we have adopted into our English vocabulary) meaning journey, and the best way to tell you about our journey is to show you.  So come along with me on a photo safari!

Female kudu, a type of antelope 

Yellow-billed stork

Giraffe — my favorite animal!

You can see how close we were to the animals in this shot looking over Ashley's shoulder.

The African landscape.  Beautiful!  The fruit of the palm trees is known as dupalm fruit.  Both baboons and elephants eat it.  Baboons climb the trees to retrieve the fruit, whereas elephants shake the trees to make the fruit fall to the ground.

The official name of this tree is kigelia, but it is affectionately known as a sausage tree.  The fruit looks like a sausage but is poisonous to humans.  One sausage fruit can weigh up to 15 kg.  Note to self: don't fall asleep underneath this tree!

This is a candelabra tree.  Its sap causes blindness if it gets into your eye.  Note to self: don't fall asleep underneath this tree either!

Vervet monkey (a.k.a. black-faced monkey), high in the tree

I'm not much of a bird watcher, but we saw some really beautiful ones, including this lilac-breasted roller.

Female impala with two of her young

Another pretty bird — a type of starling

The other jeep ahead of us on the trail, and a baobab tree

Vervet monkey hanging out on the ground

A francolin — a type of bird that is largely terrestrial, though not flightless

Me hanging out on the back of the jeep for a better photography angle.  (Photo by Rachel)

Two male impalas getting a little feisty.

Elephant!  Did you know that elephants keep cool by fanning themselves with their large floppy ears? 

Looking over Rosemary's shoulder to show how close we were to the elephant.

Rachel with an elephant behind her — yes, we were really there!

Another giraffe.  The Swahili word for giraffe is twiga...and giraffes have twig-like legs.  I love languages.

Just proving once again that we were actually there!

Warthog in the distance.  They're not nearly as cute as Pumba from The Lion King.

Taking a break...and some photos with the beautiful African plain in the background.

This giraffe lost its tail in a lion attack.  Compare to a typical giraffe tail in the 4th picture back.

Baboons helping each other by picking insects out of each other's fur.

A mama baboon carrying a very young baboon, who is clutching onto its mama's tummy.

ADORABLE young baboon sitting on a sausage fruit!  Luckily the sausage fruit didn't fall on him!

A baboon and an elephant eyeing each other cautiously.

Close-up of a giraffe.  

Impalas, zebras, and giraffes all chillin' together.

A male and 2 female impala heading for the water.

Well, if the earlier picture was of two impala getting feisty, then this is of two impala getting frisky.  It's all part of nature!

Zebras!  Literally called "striped donkeys" in Swahili (punda milia).

Another striped donkey. 

Saddle-billed stork

A lion hanging out on some large rocks.

Cape buffalo — one of Africa's 5 most dangerous animals.  (The others are lions, rhinos, elephants, and leopards.)

Several cape buffalo, part of a decent-sized herd we saw.

A male kudu — note his awesome horns

We were super-close to this lion.  She was perturbed by some people who were out of their vehicle not too far away.  Silly humans.

Now she has calmed down a bit.

And this is a close-up of her.  My cousin commented on this photo on Facebook and told me: "National Geographic called.  They want their photos back!"

Waterbuck

A male lion — he was also perturbed by those people out of their vehicle.

A closer shot of the male lion.  He looks vicious.  Probably because he is. 

Mama elephant and CUTE little baby elephant

A large group of elephants carefully crossing the water.  They have to be careful of hippos.  A hippo can easily kill a small elephant.

Vultures 

A closer shot of an elephant

Jackal

Hippo

Hippo

A crocodile, hiding mostly below the surface of the water.

Rachel and me, safely high above the hippo- and crocodile-infested waters below.

Sunset at Ruaha National Park.  Gorgeous!

All in all, it was a really good day despite the heat of midday and despite the far-too-short sighting of the cheetah.  We stayed in the park until the sun was almost set and got back to the lodge at about 7:00.  Darkness was falling, and I had a quick shower before dinner at 7:30.  It was the most amazingly wonderful shower I’ve ever had though, and the water was even HOT — yay!  Dinner was cream of vegetable soup, a mandazi-like thing, rice, pasta, deep-fried beef (what??), and fruit salad.  There was enough time for me to write a quick journal entry before exhaustion took over and it was time for sleep.

*     *     *     *     *

Sunday morning we slept in a little and got up at 8:30 to eat breakfast at 9:00, and we were on the road shortly after 10.  We arrived in Iringa just before 12:30 to do some souvenir shopping and use the Internet.  Rachel and I visited a Maasai market, where I bought several things and got to have my picture taken with a Maasai woman.  

I'm wearing a Maasai necklace I'd purchased and two bracelets the woman had given me as a gift.  It's not uncommon for a shopowner in Tanzania to give a free bonus gift to a patron who has bought several things at his/her store.  Usually it means we probably paid too much for what we bought in the first place, but the prices are so low anyway that one can hardly complain.

Then we headed to a Lutheran Guest Centre to eat our boxed lunches from Tungamalenga before getting back on the road again around 2:45.  We arrived back in Pommern around 4:15 and later learned that Edward had been concerned about us because usually groups return from Ruaha by 1:00 or 2:00.  We certainly didn’t mean to worry him!

My sun shower was very warm when we returned, but the vast majority of my water had leaked out.  It still felt good to get clean though after the dusty ride, and there was just enough water for me to get by.  We also played outside with the kids and got to use our cameras for the first time in Pommern.  (We’re asked not to use them for the first three days so that we know people in the community before we start taking pictures of them.)  I showed some of the kids pictures and videos from two years ago, which they enjoyed seeing.

Supper was rice, kuku (chicken), green beans, greens, and guacamole.  The kuku was in honor of our returning from our trip.  In Tanzanian culture, meat (chicken anyway) is only served for special occasions.  We spent the evening going through some donations for the clinic which we would deliver on Monday and doing our normal relaxing, visiting, game playing, and journal writing until the generator went off at 10:00 and it was time for bed.  A good weekend indeed, but I was eager to get back to the school and especially to get to do some more teaching in the classroom in the week to come!