The Adventure Continues (10/25/2005)

Hi all,
I realized that even though I gave you my address I do not have many (any?) of yours. So if you would like post from Tanzania you had better send me your address.

This week I saw my first corporal punishment in the class room. My mentor teacher punished over half the class for not doing their homework. It was not as disturbing as I was expecting. Earlier in the week we had a class about disipline and the horrors we should expect to see. In the session we were told that sometimes teachers would break the student's hand they would hit it so hard. Or they would not follow the rules that stipulate that you can only hit the student on the hand or normally clothed buttocks. What I saw seemed to follow the rules but the kids seemed to be joking and laughing afterwards, which made me feel slightly better but at best this was a waste of time.

There is almost always fire on the mountain, but usually you can only the see the smoke from Morogoro. Last week there were several fires that were big enough that I could see the flames and one fire looked like a snake burning in the night.The moon is nearly full and the sky had a beautiful sunset last night. I also noticed recently that the sun actually shines almost directly over head at high noon which means two things: first you cannot see the sun unless you tilt your head way back; second you cast practically no shadow since the shadow of your body is cast on your feet.

I start teaching this week and am excited about it, however I also need to learn boat loads of Kiswahili we will see how it goes. Also the methiquine used to prevent malaria has side effects that can be really cool or scary. About half of the PCVs look forward to the dreams they have but many also feel woozy or have hallucinations so are trying to lower the dosage to reduce the side effects. I fall into the first camp the dreams can be pretty bizarre but still feel very real.

I think that is all I have time for this week,
Kwaheri,
T.