It is hard to know what to write about an everyday life. I recognise that my current everyday life is vastly different from yours, but it is still just an everyday life.
Instructions for an everyday life:
1. Wake up feeling a bit tired.
2.Get dressed in office gear.
3. Eat breakfast whilst trying to avoid excessive conversation with house-mates due to number one.
4. Travel to work.
5. Work hard, trying to be generous in spirit to your co-workers.
6. Eat lunch at lunch time.
7. Finish the day and return home.
8. Cook dinner or go out for a meal with friends.
9. Do some study or prepare for tomorrow's work.
10. When you find a chance, take an outing with friends on the weekend.
I have found that this model is more or less human existence worldwide. The exotic is in the details.
So, how is my everyday life exotic here?
1. I wake up to the sound of a rooster and the local farmers yelling to each other as they start their early-morning digging. I look out the window at the banana palms and remember I'm in East Africa.
2. I dress in the clothes I had made in Vietnam, beating yesterday's dust out of them.
3. Nothing odd here apart from the fact that the breakfast fruit comes from the immediate vicinity and the breakfast reading is the New African.
4. I walk to school through little farms and plantations absolutely bursting with colour. Along the way I greet stately elders and excited children. Sometimes nervous teenagers look up from morning chores to say hello. I usually don't say a word in English until I get to school. The monkeys in the trees might speak English, but they are too busy stealing the avocados and bananas to greet me in the morning.
5. My work is an African school staffed by Tanzanian teachers who know their subject areas very well but have a different work ethic to us. It can get frustrating but at the core of this work ethic is the belief that there are more important things in life than tying oneself to a job. My students greet me with enthusiasm and shake my hand. "Good morning Mr Matt". As with every teaching job I have successes and failures but here my failures are usually due to my poor understanding of the culture. I correct students for what I perceive as disrespect, realising too late that often they simply don't understand the English I have used.
6. Lunch is always beans. On Mondays and Thursdays the beans are served with rice. On Tuesdays and Fridays they are served with ugali, the national dish of corn flour stiff porridge. On Wednesdays it's just beans.
7. The walk home is often with a student or two. Same surroundings in reverse.
8. The pumpkins come from my yard, the other vegetables from little roadside stalls that are literally a few vegetables on a table. On Tuesdays we go to the local bar for the local speciality, chipsy mayai. Literally eggy chips. It's an omelette with chips in. Gold.
9. I learn Swahili twice a week so that my conversations with the permanent population can extend beyond simple greetings. My teacher is Joachim, a local young man who is waiting for a university place. He is not a teacher but we have a lot of fun and I am learning a lot. My preparations for work have me scratching my head as I help to prepare students for exams in which they must answer university standard questions with primary standard English.
10. Last week I went monkey hunting with Joachim and another local guy, David. David doesn't speak any English so my time with him is as good as an immersion lesson. More than this, though, is the fact that the guy never seems to frown. On our monkey hunt (strictly pictures) we visited David's farm, Joachim's old primary school, many monkeys and a paradise like creek, winding its way below the village. Some pictures of this are up on facebook. (reproduced here by Sally for those not on facebook)
It is remarkable how lives that are essentially the same can be so different.
A few weeks ago the volunteers went canoeing in Arusha national park. We saw giraffe, buffalo, baboons, zebras and some hippos in the distance. It's not good to canoe too close to hippos. They kill more people than any other animal in Africa apart from the two biggies... people and mosquitoes. It was a good day.
Tomorrow I fly to Zanzibar for a week of rest on the world famous beaches.
I could report so much but I'm no longer sure what is newsworthy. If anyone has any questions please ask away. In October I will be heading off to a very remote community in order to teach English to some pre-novitiate sisters there, so hopefully I'll manufacture some interesting stories there.
God Bless to every one of you. You all remain in my prayers and in my heart.
Matt
