I have been working on my aerial silks things off a rather public abandoned crane. Usually I am accompanied only by a crowd of children, one of whom tends to should "Angalia!" [Look!] over and over. There is one very sweet child who helps me gather up the fabric when I'm done and stuff it back in its tote bag. I have actually asked her if she would like to learn silks (I normally do not offer to teach Tanzanians due to a mixture of selfishness--this is MY recreation--and fear that due to language barrier of instruction I'm going to get someone hurt because I won't be able to give good directions, and while this isn't overly dangerous as aerial stuff goes, it is very very important to do it right in order to be safe.) but she gets shy and bashful and refuses. Oh well. Now that classes are in session and the students are more or less around, I am getting students coming over to talk to me. I have mixed feelings about this. I like that the students are interested in talking to me in a relaxed environment, but the ones who do come talk to me are by and large men and I am just waiting for them to start hitting on me. I hate that I have to have this nervous expectation. I blame the patriarchy.
Anyway, the other day three young men were hanging about wanting to ask questions. The usual about how I see Tanzania as compared to America and what I think about Tanzanian education. That last one takes a while since now that I'm not at a teacher's college I feel more free to criticize the entire institution of teacher colleges. Eventually, as all young men seem to, they got around to asking me how technology affected society, by which they really meant porn, but they were too shy to say so, so I talked about how we now had more information in a half an hour than our many-times great grandparents might have seen in a lifetime until they got up courage to actually talk about porn almost directly. They asked about technology inspiring people to do bad things, like have relationships with people much younger, and encourage the "boy girl thing."
As euphemisms go, boy girl thing is cute but a little annoying in that it implies that the most logical "thing" for girls and boys is sex, rather than those multiple other possible things between girls and boys. Friendship, for instance. Mutual respect. Professional colleague-ism. Bitter enmity. Mild annoyance. There's a whole range of human interaction that doesn't involve sex which can happen between boys and girls.
Whatever, I began with my usual speech of "you need evidence for such a claim and do you really think such relationships didn't happen before easy access to porn?" Really, teacher-student relationships/rapes seem such an entrenched part of secondary and primary school culture I'm having a hard time imagining it being recent. I mean, the whole structure of teachers as omnipotent masters with students as rightsless slaves coupled with all academic success based on test scores that teachers can and do alter given certain considerations just lends itself to teachers raping students. (Given the power inbalance, I just don't see a student being able to give consent on any sort of footing of equality with a teacher, therefore rape.) Also, if nothing else, I want the students who talk to me to get the idea that I don't like unsubstantiated assertions. Critical thinking! Credible and convincing evidence! I need some science cheerleaders in lab coats to follow me around chanting such things.
Another of the young men responded that yes, it is true that inappropriate relationships have existed for a while, but having easy communication forces situations into the open. This is an insightful point, I like this kid. My response was to comment that yes, it does, and that can be a really good thing (except that part of this openness means that people beside me on public buses sometimes look at porn on their phones and I don't like that, though it is less objectionable than being beside a vomiting child on a bus.) because when sexual relationships become a more open event we can educate people about having sex safely without disease or unwanted pregnancy, and we can talk about how inappropriate relationships are bad and when they happen we are educated to take action to protect and support the victim and shame and punish the person forcing the victim into such a situation. It was a little awkward grammatically talking through this in terms in which these kids were more comfortable, but I did what I could.
It ended up being a long discussion that I think went really well. I didn't get much silking done, but someone has to talk to the children about safe and consensual sex. Enter the dirty condom-brandishing hippie brigade which is Peace Corps. Trying to making the world a more equal and less disease-riddled place, one safe and consensual sex talk at a time.
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