The Kili trek is over, now a whole new mountain to climb.

This 'mountain' be the figuritive one that is my placement work.

So I arrived back on earth on the 7th and on the 9th I moved into my new home for the next two months. As many of you know, I will be teaching for 8 weeks before I leave Tanzania in my dust and take off again. I've been teaching at the Shiramatuda School for Disabled for almost 2 weeks now. Its very..... challenging.

The head teacher of the class is completely corrupt. She steals and hoards tons of materials from other classes in the school and then turns around and asks me to buy her more stuff. And I really don't think she has been putting a great deal of effort into her work. The abilities of the students vary greatly. From down syndrome and dyslexia everything else inbetween. And the ones that have the more minor disabilities are far behind what they should be. Many cannot indentify an individual letter of the alphabet or even spell their own name. So that is what I'm putting my focus on. I just made some new flash cards that the students really enjoy. To help them distinguish one question from another, I put a number, a shape and the colour of the shape on the card. I'll ask a question like Rangi gani? (what colour?) Numba gani?(what number?) or Umbo gani?(what shape?). And the kids love to argue over what the correct answer is since there are three possible answers.

The alphabet is continuing to be a challenge. They know the ABC song, but thats it. They cannot tell an individual letter from the next. Buts thats only one half of the class. The other half have much more severe disabilities and will drift off into space really quickly. I did introduce one more number into one girl's numeric vocabulary. She would only write'1'. And she would write '1' over and over again until the other kids finished their math work. So put the pencil in her hand and guided her hand to write '2'. So now she is writing '2' over and over again. I'm not sure if she knows what '2' means, but its a step in the right direction.

I keep feeling as though I am the worst possible person for this specific job. I have no formal teaching experience and I haven't interacted with children since I kicked that all-consuming paste eating habit that I like to call the late 80's. The teacher doesn't offer much guidiance. She pretty much hands the class over and says 'teach them'. There is no set curriculum, and I have to create all of my own lesson plans. Not to mention the great lengths I have to go to, to work around the head teacher. Did I mention that they speak absolutely no english and every single one of my lessons must be in Swahili? This placement should be reserved for someone that has formal teaching experience. Not someone that was looking for something to do while they were in the area and thought "I'll teach something to someone." The girl that I'm teaching with wants to get out bu the end of the month. And to be honest, I have been thinking about trying to get transferred too. I'll see how it goes.

The home base that I'm living on is great. As many of you would expect, I'm deffinately alienating a few Americans. The health care, gay rights, and high dollar strike a few nerves. But hay, if they want to be part of 'the land of the free', they have to take all that comes with it. The food is awesome. I'm deffinately eating far more than I should. I have to cut back a bit. But its all so delicious! I'm going an a three day safari next weekend and I'm going to Zanzibar in March. It'll be a blast for sure.

I'll most more pictures in the near future. I'd hate for the envy back home to die out.

Cheers!

AC