Christmas Day 2010

A very different Christmas

As I sit typing this I can hear the girls at the Rugambwa Girls Secondary School, the  boarding school across the road, in their classrooms singing Christmas songs – some in english, some in kiSwahili.  It is a beautiful sound!

“But it’s Saturday” I hear you say, “and holidays, why are they in classrooms?”

Children as young as 4 are sent away to boarding school in Tanzania, often distances of several hundred kilometres from home.  They often remain at school over the long holiday period either because their parents can’t afford the bus fare to bring them home or they are sponsored orphans at the school and have no other home. 

There is quite a big group of girls in residence at the moment and as they often do, they have congregated to sing.  Sometimes the tunes are familiar to us, sometimes they are Bantu tunes with the distinctive Bantu ululation at the end.

Yesterday afternoon we came home from Dar es Salaam after the volunteers’ conference and a holiday on Zanzibar.  The house was empty of fresh food.  So we went shopping this Christmas morning.  It was business as usual in the market and all the shops though the bakery had not delivered any bread. (This is a Christmas bonus I reckon.)  Only a very few businesses have any Christmas decorations up, and those are of the tinselly bunting variety and often accompanied by tinny carols played at double time (think Nahum Tate meets the Chipmunks!)

But at 9 am, despite the shops being open, there were people everywhere on the streets, all dressed in their best clothes, heading to or from services of worship – Lutheran and SDA mostly.  The Greek Orthodox had contributed to the festivity of the day with coloured balloons along their front fence.  Last night the RC Cathedral had been full for midnight mass and this evening there were again people everywhere, families out congregating and celebrating together. And not a piece of wrapping paper in sight!

We had Christmas lunch at our friend Valerie’s house with some other ex-pats and locals.  It was a lovely, nearly traditional, Christmas meal.  Valerie had done most of the cooking but guests also contributed to the menu including (from Matt) a cake given him by a Moslem colleague to celebrate the birth of God’s prophet!

Tonight I am listening to Handel’s Messiah and thinking about an early night – we were up very early this morning to talk to family in Australia on the phone.  This morning there was no sign that Santa had visited the families of children next door.  I think he missed Bukoba!  The only evidence I have that Santa was active last night is from Matt – his niece in Wiltshire texted him, that she was delighted with her present from Santa, at 3 am UK time (6 am here).  She had been warned not to wake her parents early and thought waking an uncle thousands of kilometres away was a safer bet!

Steve and I had our Christmas present to each other early – 6 nights on Zanzibar – but he has also given me a new pair of earrings which I will treasure!  (They are Stoney tangawizi bottle caps)

I love the ingenuity of the children here!  They have so much fun with so little.

At Jambiani (Zanzibar) last night we watched children having a race along the beach pushing plastic bottles on sticks and making interwoven tracks in the sand.

Yesterday we met some children who obligingly posed with their slalom track for racing bottle caps in the sand.  It looked such fun!

Someone famous said ‘childhood is an invention of the developed world’ (or something similar).  He was right in that children here have responsibilities and know hard physical work from a very young age.  We often see children as young as four years of age minding their younger siblings, maybe taking them to get water with each child carrying a vessel the size depending on the age of the child.  

But the household tasks the children have to do doesn’t mean they don’t have time for fun!  Sometimes it is quite Victorian – children with bike tyres or other ‘hoops’ and a small stick bowling them along.  Sometimes it is far more modern – the children next door to us love to play ‘Emergency sirens and car alarms’.  They can spend up to half an hour running around imitating all the noises they have heard on the videos their dad plays in the little cinema next to our house.  They are very good mimics! 

We often see children pushing home made trundle wheels or little cars they’ve constructed from waste materials and attached to the end of sticks.

One of the joys of my job is seeing the fun the children have with the teaching aids I (and previous volunteers) am teaching their teachers to make.  To a western child it would be very ho-hum to be given a cardboard box clock to use, or a pack of cards made from a calendar page.  But here the children’s faces light up!  “What, you can have fun doing maths?”

Thank you to all of you who have contributed to the costs of printing my book so that more children will be able to have fun in maths.  I can now print plenty!

And a very merry Christmas to you all!

Love from Jenny.

Maths teachers in Bukoba are crying out for help – they want to teach maths in a way that is contemporary and relevant, they want to use teaching / learning  aids but they have no money to buy them, they want to know more about the Algebra and Geometry they have to teach.  Would you like to help them?

My new project is this – to write a book and have it printed and distributed so all the teachers in Bukoba District will know the joys of Tangrams and Bottle Caps (and know what Algebra is and what it isn’t!)  This gives teachers the power to better use what they already have and can easily get – it makes them less dependent on financial hand-outs!

The book has written itself – it is based on the collection of resource sheets used in my seminars.

The printing can be done here in Bukoba – Ebrahim Sokwala, Director of Best Deal Publishers and Book Sellers, has told me he will do it at cost !

Distribution is easily solved – teacher mentor teams will take it with them when they take the Pupil-centred Teaching message to the rest of the District.

All I need is $2000 to have it printed .

Here is the front cover.

I will send a (PDF) copy to anyone who wants to see what is inside. 

And you can have your name on the Official Sponsors page.

I hope to have it printed in January so if you could put a little something in Bukoba’s Christmas Stocking I would appreciate it.

Contact me at jenclark59@gmail.com if you would like to help and I will give you more details and tell you how to send money.  Thank you - in great anticipation.

There are 4 on the bike that is coming along the road!

 Minziro Forest Reserve

This trip has been a long time in the planning.  We couldn’t do it until the new tyres arrived.  Today Steve and I, along with Terri (USA) and Leen (Belgian) finally made it.  And it certainly was worth the effort!

Minziro is about 50 km west on a good bitumen road then another 20 km northeast on good gravel – so the driving was easy (and Steve only swore advised other drivers a couple of times).  Most of the traffic on the gravel road was bicycles, some carrying quite a load, though there were several cars and motorbikes including one carrying a dad and three little tackers – baby on his knee and two more on the pillion – all of whom waved and smiled as they went past!

The gravel road winds through the forest and up to Minziro village which is close to the Uganda border.  The forest crosses the border – it has a different name on the other side – and could have been National Park quality except that it has been exploited for rainforest timber since German days when a little rail line took the timber to Lake Victoria for export.

 The first thing we noticed about the forest was the number of butterflies.  They were of many different colours – orange, blue, chocolate, yellow, zebra striped, and more.  There were so many that sometimes we were ‘wading’ through them as we walked along the road.  The butterflies were certainly easier to ‘watch’ than the birds which were mostly skulking just out of sight.

There are many little dirt footpaths leading off the road and we wandered down about a dozen of these over the several hours we spent in the forest.  One went along a little creek where we saw beautiful ferns and fungi as well as a glimpse of a blue-breasted kingfisher.  Both Terri and Leen are quite interested in birds – Terri spotted Steve’s Shoebill several weekends ago and Leen has asked if she can have Steve’s bird list for the house as she lives near us and wants to narrow down the possibilities to look up in her bird guide for what she sees in her garden.  Terri goes home to the US on Wednesday next but Leen I think will be a fixture on Steve’s local birding expeditions when she is in Bukoba.

Steve’s bird Life List increased by 10 – I spotted the African Moustached Warbler and the Whinchat!

It was a lovely day out!

Leen & Steve studying the handbook

Quote of the week from a young Danish friend during a discussion on the various Christmas traditions in northern Europe -

“I don't know if you know it but we have this festival in Denmark, I think it’s called Easter!"

No-one could speak for laughing for about 5 minutes.

Sign of the week

More on traffic/roads/vehicle in Tanzania

If you see a pile of greenery (branches pulled off the closest tree) on the road you know there is (or was) a truck or bus broken down just around the corner.  If there is a rock just past the greenery then the truck or bus has gone but the chock that stopped it rolling away while it was being fixed is still there to add to the exhilarating experience that is driving in Tanzania.

Sometimes, if the truck or bus is still there, there will also be a safety traffic triangle among the greenery.  It is compulsory to carry two at all times when your car/truck/bus is on the road as well as a road safety sticker on your windscreen and a fire extinguisher. 

We carry two extra safety triangles.  I was cautioned by a policeman several months ago because one of my triangles was missing half a side of reflective red plastic.  He said it was a ‘pembe-mbili-na-nusu’ (2½ sided figure) and not the pembetatu (3 sided) required!  He said he would ‘punish’ me  if I didn’t have two complete ones next time!  I fixed the broken one but bought two new ones anyway.  I didn’t like the look he gave me when he said he would have to punish me.

Today we drove to Katoke to visit the maths lecturer at the Teacher Training College there.  We drove along a road that has become worse as the wet season has progressed as the heavy rain washes away the clay and leaves the sharp rock exposed.  Buses use the road and their undersides are scraped on the rock as the 27 passengers (in a vehicle the size of a Ford Spectron) get tossed around inside. 

We approached a tight corner and there was a pile of greenery on the road.  We continued cautiously and around the corner there was a small truck on a big angle with wheels on one side off the road and in a ditch.  It looked like it had tried to avoid the bigger truck which was coming the other way on the wrong side of the road trying to avoid the rocks.  The trucks had collided and neither was able to move.  No-one was hurt but people were milling around and clambouring over the vehicles trying to work out how to extricate the trucks from the tangle they were in.  The millers-around had probably been ‘passengers’ sitting on the loads on the backs of the trucks!

Luckily the road was wide enough for us to safely go by and we had been cautious enough to be going at a safe speed so we had no problems.  Our cautious style of driving though is very un-Tanzanian!

Tanzanians are very patient people, they are never in a rush, unless they are behind the wheel of a car or sitting on a motor bike.  Then there seems to be nothing more important than getting to the next corner or the next town at the fastest speed possible with no thought to safety or the convenience of other drivers. 

Steve has plans to hire a truck with loud speakers (a la election time) and drive around town blasting out Miles Davis and road safety messages – ‘drivers slow down’, ‘pedestrians walk towards on coming traffic’, ‘turn on your headlights’, ‘always wear a motorbike helmet’ and ‘don’t send text messages while riding your push bike on a busy road’  Seriously, he could save many lives!

It’s grasshopper season here too but that's a reason to celebrate!   The ladies at work were busy with a large bagful. I asked “Ngapi?  Milioni?” (How many? A million?) They told me “Milioni kumi!” (Ten million!)

To prepare your grasshoppers:

1. Pull off wings and legs.

2. Pour boiling water over the (still wriggling) bodies to kill them and wash them clean.  Allow them to dry.

3. Fry until crisp in hot oil.  Add salt.

They actually aren’t too bad – we had a feed of some that a young German volunteer Jana had cooked and they went quite well with a cold Serengeti!

Our first African wedding was certainly an experience! 

We arrived at about 3 o’clock to join several hundred others for the reception in the small village where Gosbert and Judith live.  There was a real party atmosphere!  Party goers in their best outfits, many in matching attire showing to which group they belonged – friends of the bride, family of the groom, work colleagues, etc.

We queued with the other invited guests for food prepared by the canteen staff who’d been hired for the day.  The ‘uninvited’ onlookers, mostly curious locals, were catered for too as other, enterprising, locals had set up stalls selling food, drink and cigarettes.

After a lovely late lunch of rice pilau and beef stew we adjourned to the ‘performance’ arena and were led to seats of honour on the groom’s side (I work with Gosbert) just in front of the large bank of speakers!  That was the end of conversation for the rest of the afternoon (and nearly the end of hearing in my left ear).  Luckily there was plenty to look at – the display of cakes kept me entertained for quite a while.

The very enthusiastic MC in a black & white striped jacket (his day job is primary school teacher) kept the DJ on his toes with music and canned applause needed in short bursts.  The bridal party began dancing in and the show began.

This was a bridal party of a size I’d not anticipated! There must have been 30 assorted attendants, including Gosbert and Judith’s four children.  They were all dressed in various combinations of red and white.  The young girls with their tulle turbans and little baskets of flowers were just gorgeous!

 Tanzanian people seem to be born knowing how to move to music.  Each group sashayed and rocked down the aisle then made way for the next.  Lastly the extravagantly animated groom and his demure bride arrived.  They were already legally married, the nuptial mass having been held in front of just close family at the local parish church earlier in the day.

Speeches and prayers followed then a ritual where cakes were presented to various groups – the groom’s family and the bride’s family were given the ‘pineapples’, the Bukoba District Council office staff and the Teachers Union received the ‘drums’, others went to very happy recipients but the ‘Bible’ cake went on to the Bridal couple’s table on the little stage.

The official entertainment followed.  A burlesque piece – two men dressed as a married couple performed a song and dance that was frowned on by some of the more conservative but I suspect was very funny if you understood kiSwahili – and then some lively traditional dancing, chanting and drumming.  The uninvited onlookers enjoyed this too, hanging over the fence watching.

The next ritual was the giving of gifts.  The groom’s extended family paid the bride price with gifts of rosary beads, spears and ‘kitenge’ (lengths of cloth) as well as money.  Other groups then began to line up with their (unwrapped) gifts to hand over the table to the bride and groom.  These included a mattress, an arm chair and several dinner sets which were presented one piece at a time!

I was called on by name (very embarrassing!) to give our present, then it was a free-for-all as individuals lined up to pass their offerings over.

At this point it was time for us to leave – a ½ hour drive on a rough and rocky road is best done in daylight and we didn’t fancy sharing the road later on with those who were continuing to enjoy the ‘hospitality’.

It was a wonderful privilege to be invited to share Gosbert and Judith’s special day and we hope you will get a sense of it too from the photos.  To get the true experience just turn up your music as loud as it will go as you view the pictures!

Being of the ‘if something’s worth doing then do it even if you don’t really have time’ persuasion (anyone surprised?) I tried to fit two days worth of material into one day in each of this week’s seminars.

On Monday this did not work – only two thirds of the invited teachers arrived and they seemed tired, my translator was distracted (he had other responsibilities that needed attention on his mobile phone  and was only with me because the stand-in he’d organised had come down with malaria) and there was no ‘energy’ in the room.  We finished all the tasks but I wasn’t convinced that we were at all ‘on the same page’.

The evaluation sheets declared the teachers to mostly ‘strongly agree’ that they would use the  activities with their pupils, that they would share the new knowledge with their colleagues and that the information received was useful.  They went away happily enough with their signed and stamped certificates but I thought as they departed that I would be surprised if I saw clinometers in use in these schools next year.

I thought about the reasons and it occurred to me that none of the teachers had brought the 10m tape from the ‘equipment to bring’ request – I had foolishly assumed that as the syllabus says ‘pupils will use a clinometer and a 10m tape measure to determine distances that cannot be directly measured’ that schools would have this equipment.  Not so!  The schools could buy 10m measuring tapes with their capitation grant but why would you spend money on expensive items that would be used on 2 or 3 days in a year by a very small number of students when the school community is crying out for basics like desks and books?  The schools don’t have the equipment needed to do the tasks the syllabus mandates!

I had seen a class do a measuring activity sharing one 1m wooden ruler between 70 children.  I suggested then to the teacher that using one metre long pieces of twine, a common & cheap locally made material, would be a way to better achieve the aim she intended.  I applied the same reasoning to the clinometer problem.

Tuesday’s groups measured out pieces of twine 5 m long using my tape measure and used those in the clinometer task.  Instead of needing to measure the distance from the tree to the place from whence its top was being ‘sighted’  we used the rope to stand exactly 5m from the tree and sighted the top from there.  The same aim is achieved and the problem becomes easier as you can work out your scale at the beginning!  So Tuesday we had a happier group of teachers (and a happier mathematics advisor!)

Wednesday and Thursday this week have been Seminar free as teachers are invigilating the Standard IV exams. (All other children stay home from school on these days.)   The results will be known in term 1 next year and we’ll see whether the practice exam and analysis made a difference in the 5 wards where I’ve been working.  My Standard VII practice exam is well underway so I’m hoping for some noticeable improvement over the results from the year before!  World Vision has offered to sponsor the practice exam and pay for photocopying, invigilation and prizes for children who do well.  That will be lovely provided teachers and pupils get the feedback on areas needing revision.

As Steve and I walked home on Wednesday afternoon we intersected with a group of children who had obviously just finished an exam – probably Form II in this case.  The sounds of children relieved that something unpleasant is over are universal!  They surrounded us, chatting loudly in kiSwahili and English (showing off!), then moved on.

Friday’s seminar was for the smallest ward and I expected the least number of teachers.  We started the morning with just 5 and soon were ‘Algebra Snap’ing with a solid understanding of like and unlike terms.  Six more arrived and we moved on to making and using clinometers.  One of the teachers shamefacedly told me that he avoided teaching the topic in Std VII because he didn’t know how to do it – now he does and we are all happy!

One more of this series to go then I trawl through the evaluation sheets and plan a new series for 2011.

On  a different matter entirely ….

Last Sunday we had lunch at a local restaurant with a group of volunteers – VSOs, ex-VSOs and others variously from Scotland, England, Germany and the US.  One of the volunteers, who works at a local teachers’ training college, was telling us how during the week she’d unexpectedly had no girls in her class.  Where were they?  Being compulsorily pregnancy tested by the school’s matron – any found to be pregnant would not be welcome back at the college after the Christmas holiday.

A lot of hilarity ensued on how the male trainee teachers could be tested to see if they had contributed to any pregnancy but then we had the serious discussion on the lack of fairness of the whole thing.

It happens so often – just when I’m feeling comfortably at home here something happens to remind me that I could be on a different planet.  Being in Tanzania feels not just like a change in place but also a change in time back to the 1950s!

What was to be two one-day seminars each for half the schools in Katerero Ward became one two-day seminar for all the schools, co-sponsored by World Vision Tanzania at their Katerero Area Development Program Office.  (This happened on Monday afternoon so there was some swift rethinking and reorganising on Tuesday before the seminar began on Wednesday!)

It was great! World Vision supplied morning tea (beef stew with chapattis and chai) and bottled water for us all each day, and gave each of the teachers a mathematical instrument set and a biro.  They also provided a great venue where we could spread out on large tables instead of the school desks we usually manage on.

Pudensiana, the coordinator at Katerero ADP, told me a significant part of their funding comes from WVAustralia so she was particularly pleased to have me there and to be able to help.

The current seminars are for the upper primary maths teachers and mostly involve the dreaded Algebra!  I had a minor sulk last week when I discovered there is no kiSwahili word for pronumeral but I recovered!  We all now know how to find factors of algebraic terms and how to determine if two terms are ‘like’ – um, sorry, no 4b is not actually ‘like’ 4b².  And we all now know that 4b cannot be 4 balls because the letter always represents a number not a thing!  I suspect Katerero Ward has the only primary teachers in the world who know this and some of them took a lot of convincing.  Go on, tell me I’m wrong!

[It doesn’t help that the text books use 3ð+4ð=7ð and such and I know that you can’t add apples and oranges so why can you multiply and divide them?]

We did an activity making patterns with toothpicks and writing the relationships we found.  The toothpicks were also handy following the beef stew.

We went outside and used our newly constructed clinometers to estimate heights of trees – I was suspicious of one that was 83 m tall but once we sorted out the difference between millimetres and centimetres it shrank back to an acceptable 8.3 m.  We also spent some time eliminating feet and inches (also mistaken for cm!) from our working.

  

"I'd rather poke myself in the eye than do algebra!"

We played card games – more Roman Numeral cards as well as a Positive and Negative number card game – and BINGO to practice fraction/decimal/percentage equivalents.  It’s amazing how competitive teachers can be when there is a cheap ball point pen at stake!

Now comes the tricky bit.  Each wrote on their evaluation form which activity they felt was most worthwhile as I have to cull half before the one-day seminars begin next week.  I am contemplating 20 forms with stuff like “Nimefurahia mbinu na njia zote zilizotumiwa katika ufundishaji, pia malumizi ya zona” written on the back and I recognize two words – nimefurahia = I enjoyed and pia = also!  The rest is a mystery Mr Josiah can unravel for me tomorrow.

Who needs an oven when you can make bread like this in the frying pan.

Fresh, wholemeal, sugar-free bread with New Zealand butter. 

The only way life could be better is if the butter was Western Star!

Elections

In Bukoba and district you cannot fail to notice that the national elections are imminent. Kikwete’s face – smiling and sincere – is everywhere and you really can feel the excitement in the air! 

The official 2 month campaign draws to a close with tomorrow’s National elections for President, Members of Parliament for each District and Ward Executive Officers to hold office for the next 5 years.

How do you get your political message across in a country where many are illiterate and very few have access to television and radio?  From the back of a truck!  The major parties have flat bed trucks loaded with speakers that have been patrolling the town blasting music, interrupted only briefly by a policy statement, at a decibel reading that would shame Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs.  The minor parties are doing the same from the backs of utes.  The photo shows a CCM street party just breaking up before moving to another part of town.

CCM (Party of the Revolution) being the dominant party has the biggest speakers and the loudest music. They seem to have access to more money and have had green and yellow hats, t-shirts and kangas printed that many supporters are wearing in towns and villages.  Everywhere you look there are green and yellow spare wheel covers and there are posters on everything – plastering cars (obscuring the middle of the windscreen in one I saw!), houses, fences, telephone poles and road signs.

Chadema, the second most popular party, has little strongholds around town with their red, white and sky blue flag fluttering and the serious, bespectacled face of their candidate gazing from the poster.  CUF (Civic United Front) is very much the minor party – posters are only A4 size and rallies could be held in a phone box.

Mostly we hear the noise from a distance unless we are in town.  Passing one of the trucks on the road is an experience painful to the eardrums and to be avoided.  When the trucks travel down our street they make the glass louvres vibrate but luckily they only stop where they can draw a crowd – on the corner of the main road or down at the little market – so they are a passing annoyance (unlike for Mark, Michelle and Abraham who had the CCM headquarters next door and were being blasted all day from pre-dawn to mid-night) 

Monday it will all be over, I predict a CCM victory, and the town will settle down again.

In some countries elections are a time of civil unrest and can be hazardous – not so here.  Tanzania has been one of the most stable democracies in Africa since Independence in 1961 and there is no danger, though having two companies of soldiers run through the main street chanting this morning while we were in town shopping was a little unsettling.  To say it was a show of force would be overstating the case as they were a ragtag group armed with only wooden sticks but their presence had no immediate explanation.

Anyway, how does the election affect my work?  For the past months the Ward Education Co-ordinators have been continually apologetic about being unable to get to the seminars and review visits – their time has been taken up with National Exams but also with preparations for the elections.  The WECs are the Returning Officers for their wards and have to prepare voter lists and polling places. 

Teachers are also employed in running the election.  Last Thursday my visit to two schools had to be rescheduled as most of the teachers were at a seminar explaining what their responsibilities would be as electoral officials.  Another review visit had been rescheduled the week before because all the teachers were at interviews to see if they could be electoral officials!  It is interesting that although the teachers are not at school the children still are with those few teachers who are at work taking responsibility as we found when we arrived at Kashangati to a clamorous reception from the several hundred children and two apologetic teachers.

School are used as polling places, as in Australia, and have lists of eligible voters already pasted up on the wall outside the Head Teachers office.  I suggested to Mr Josiah that the school committees could run the Tanzanian equivalent of sausage sizzles to raise much needed funds but he just laughed.

I am glad we were here to witness the election process, its impact on us has been minor, and I expect tomorrow to be trouble free.  But I will be glad when it is all over and life in the schools gets back to normal.

Happy Melbourne Cup Day to everyone for Tuesday - I'll see how I get on running a sweep in the office!

Jenny

Make the biggest Roman number.

More review visits this week, more teachers stunned at my methods for addition & subtraction, more Roman Number cards in children’s hands and a wonderfully simple idea from a teacher at Ibaraizibu for teaching fractions using bottle caps that I will be spreading (with her permission) around all the schools I visit.

What fraction of caps are upside down?

ps. Stoney Tangawizi is my favourite flavour!

A warm glow

The first seminar series finished up last Friday so this week we have been revisiting schools to see what change has been implemented.  Of course it has been varied but overall I am so pleased to see the rate of uptake and what a difference a few new ideas can make to the teachers’ enthusiasm.

I have seen Roman Number cards and model clocks in many schools.  I have seen fractions being taught with cut up paper circles and rectangles.  I have seen addition and subtraction being physically counted out with bottle caps, twigs and stones.  The Head Teacher of one school caught up with me in the queue at the ATM this afternoon.  He told me how much the children were enjoying playing ‘Roman Numbers’ and how much his teachers were looking forward to the next seminar.

The mock exam has been held in most schools and teachers are planning their revision for the Standard IV exam.  There is still consternation over question 24 – What coins and notes add up to 13,800/=?  Maths questions in Tanzania evidently can only have one correct answer!

On Tuesday we visited schools in Katoma ward.  I watched a teacher showing the Standard 1 children how to add numbers where ‘regrouping’ was necessary.  She explained how to do

58 + 25 = 83

writing it all horizontally and mentioning the ‘carried’ 10 but not recording its presence anywhere.  She did have the children using bottle caps and sticks as counters to do the adding. (One child hadn’t understood what the sticks he had to bring to school were for and arrived with a bundle of firewood under his arm!)

Of course these children are failing to ‘get’ addition!

I suggested the vertical approach would be better, and that writing the ‘carried’ ten might help the children understand the regrouping process.  I wrote this on a little chalkboard:

            58

   +  25

          1

      83

This was greeted with amazement!  They’d never though to actually write the extra ten down – it looks untidy and anyway, they tell the children, so the children can ‘carry’ in their heads!

Mr Josiah has had me explain my method of addition at all the schools visited since – I feel like I’m starting a revolution!  So far only one teacher has said that she writes the ‘carried’ digit on the addition problem.  The others say they will do in future.

Next I will be revolutionising subtraction!

I will also be introducing the subversive idea of ‘trusting the count’.  If there were 8 bottle caps the first time you counted them out then there are still 8 and to add you can just count on the extra five - ‘9, 10, 11, 12, 13.’  I will also be encouraging teachers to apply the mathematics they are teaching with the ‘Tell me a story approach’ where children come up with a reason to do the maths, for example, “I had 58 bottle caps but the teacher said I needed more so I collected another 25.  Now I have 83!”

I know there will be ups and downs as I work with the teachers and the District Council officers but just for now I have a warm glow of optimism that I might actually make a small difference.

PS Remind me of this blog post when I start saying “What am I doing here??”

An Australian introducing Chinese culture to Tanzania

Tanzania does Tangrams

Today was the conclusion of the first series of seminars – 114 teachers from 32 different schools in 5 Wards of the Bukoba District have attended one of the 6 seminars.  The seminars have been held in primary school classrooms out in the wards using only materials the teachers will have available to them.  They have been aimed at mathematics teachers at Standards I to IV concentrating on exactly what they should be teaching and how they might teach the topic of fractions in a more child-friendly manner.

Children love to play

My job description talks about training and encouraging teachers to use participatory, child centred methods to teach mathematics – easy to say but not so easy to do with classes of 70 and upwards!  The Tz government is strong on the importance of education as the way ahead for Tanzania, one fifth of the national budget is spent on education and training; but schools still have very little in the way of resources and books to aid them in their mammoth task.  VSO’s policy of empowering people is important – I want to help teachers use what they have easily available to help each other and to help their students achieve improved mathematics skills.

Working with colleagues

Standard IV pupils do a set of exams in November that once were used to determine whether the child proceeded to Standard V – these days promotion is automatic but the National Exams remain to assess the performance of schools and teachers.

Doing the 'mock'

Pupils do ‘mock’ exams in Std IV (and VII) to prepare them for the National Exams.  One of the sessions in the seminars was to show teachers how to get the best value from these ‘mocks’.  Currently the only feedback teachers can give their students is a percentage score – the teachers get no feedback on which areas of the course they need to revise.  I have worked with the District Academic Officers and the District Inspectors to devise a Practice Exam and an analysis sheet to help each teacher target revision for the students in their class.  I hope increasing the feedback to teachers and pupils will improve the results in the National Exams – we’ll know next February if it’s made a difference!

Some teachers had fun

During our review visits teachers told me that one of the topics causing problems was Fractions  and that they found Geometry difficult to teach.  In response to this I have introduced TANGRAMS to Tanzania!  The teachers can now teach about fractions and fraction addition/subtraction in a way that children will find enjoyable, with the bonus that the tangram activity covers identification and drawing all the plane shapes required at Standard IV with the exception of the circle, and using much of the geometry vocabulary the children need.

Working right through 'break time'

Teachers worked collaboratively with their school colleagues completing each of the tasks – there was spirited discussion and plenty of laughter, especially as they tried to construct a giraffe from the tangram pieces.  Correcting each other’s Standard IV tests was also cause for discussion and laughter as they debated what answers should be considered correct.

Packing the car

The Useful Box

Teaching Aids

The previous VSO volunteers, Jim & Sue Taylor, worked with teachers on the production of teaching aids from the materials readily and cheaply available.  I have continued this program introducing a Roman Numbers card game with cards made from a calendar page, clocks and dice from wood and foam off-cuts. I hope all schools are now collecting bottle caps for counters. The teachers have been highly competitive in the card and dice games and agree that the children will enjoy them too. 

I hope to see some of the games in the Std I to IV classrooms when we start the next round of school visits; and if all has gone according to plan, maybe the Std V and VI teachers will be using Tangrams, cards and dice having been ‘in-serviced’ by their Std I – IV colleagues.


None of this would be possible without the support and assistance of Mr Josiah Karwihula from the BRDC - translator and problem solver extraordinaire!

Mr Josiah and me