Which is dumb, all things considered. But I'm Peace Corps, and if we don't spend obscene amounts of time worrying about whether we are doing sufficient to Make the World a Better Place, we shrivel up and melt into gooey piles of crushing insecurity. Classes just resumed at the college. This week consisted of one day of no classes due to meetings, one day of no classes due to funeral, and one day of half classes due to college assembly. Tomorrow is a national holiday and Friday is always a half day. There may be classes happening on schedule for the two weeks to follow, and after that it doesn't matter because all the students leave to do their student teaching for two months. I finally actually have classes I can teach, and today I managed to teach them, and got chalk dust all over myself and everything, and I am just not doing sufficient to Make the World a Better Place. I have thus far instructed several members of a small village on how to make wine (sustainable income-generating project!), helped one of my fellow teachers with his homework, because he is now a university student wanting a degree in computer science so he can do cool stuff like build databases for the school, and encouraged some teachers to go to a Google conference in Dar es Salaam. Other than that, I just keep a bunch of Sun x2200 servers running through sheer force of personality. Angst.
Oh, just to keep my whining in perspective, funeral. It wasn't actually a funeral here, we were just sending off the body, because the man had been from Tanga. He was a teacher at the primary school associated with the college, and in Tanzania it is an employer's responsibility to take care of the funeral arrangements. Also in Tanzania, everything stops the day of the funeral. The community, which in the case of a teacher, is all the other teachers, go to the house of the deceased. The men sit around at the front of the house, my colleagues and friends at the college, who are mostly men, assured me that I would not be comfortable sitting with the men* and so I went around to the back of the house to sit with the women. Here I was lectured sharply for not showing up wrapped in a kanga. Fortunately, the British volunteer who teaches English had brought a spare for me, because she thought I might not have one for the situation, which I didn't. I don't entirely understand wearing kangas for funerals when wearing kangas to work is considered unkempt and not appropriate. Anyway, after a while of sitting around the car arrived, and I stood with the group of women in the background while the men surrounded the car and ushered the family, their luggage, and the coffin into the car and then we all watched silently in our segregated groups until the car departed.
I rather like this approach to funeral arrangements. Not the gender segregation, but that this is a day when the entire community stops what they to send off one of their own.
*Translation: they are not comfortable with me violating gender norms in this situation
One of the most comforting things I was told before I started teaching was "You're bad at first. Everybody is." Good teaching is not a trivial assignment, even when classes are not canceled right and left. After 3 years of it, I still have classes where I leave thinking I have only mystified instead of elucidated.
ReplyDeleteComputers, like books, can contribute to the exchange of ideas, critical thought, and amusement that is not criticizing one's neighbors. (Of course, they can also be abused.) Insofar as they do contribute to these things, keeping them running IS making the world a better place. I am proud to tell people you are Peace Corps.
Thank you, that was a very much needed motivational speech.
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