TOD gripe and the World Cup (7/1/2006)

Thought I would be traveling during my June break, as it turns out two weeks ago I was TOD again. I have been Teacher on Duty (TOD) more than any other teacher. I looked at the schedule and even though there are more than 14 eligible teachers for the last two months my name has been on the schedule four times. If you were to take the number of TOD weekly assignments and divide by the number of teachers you would see that no teacher should be assigned more than twice. Although, this bothers me I have not said anything because as a foreigner that does not beat students my actual work as TOD is very little. In the past they just tell me to walk around in the evenings. This last week was special because the other TOD skipped out on most days leaving me to figure out what the TOD is actually supposed to do. One of the primary responsibilities of TOD is school maintenance. TOD is supposed to make sure the chores are done, unfortunately nobody ever tells me which chores need to be done. So if I see a student that is carrying wood and they say it for the cook I assume they were told to do it. The effect of this is that I never know who is supposed to be walking around and who is not. Also it is hard for me to justify telling students to stay in the classroom when half of their teachers are taking a vacation. Nonetheless I picked up extra responsibilities last week, taking attendance, filling out the duty report, giving students permission to go and telling the rest to get where they belong. The responsibilities aren't too much but it just frustrates me that I expected to have a month of vacation and instead I got two weeks of conferences, one extra week of teaching and one week of just TOD.

Last week I went to my second conference of the month. This one taught teaching techniques to Tanzanians. So I watched the World Cup with these teachers.

Africa is finally out of the world cup and I was surprised by my own emotional reactions. I chose not to watch the US/Ghana game because could not bring my self to cheer against the US team, and I did not want to be the white guy smiling when everybody else was sad that Africa's hopes were diminished. As it turns out I made the right decision as I have heard from several people that they were mocked quite a bit when Ghana scored the winning goal. Some of the teachers gloated to me a little bit the next day but nothing more than expected. When Brazil played Ghana I expect to watch with neutrality, for I don't really care about Brazil winning and it was pretty much a given that they would. If anything I expected to be supporting Ghana, knowing that their win would make everybody ecstatic. Instead after few minutes of watching the crowd go silent Brazil's first goal and get excited every time Ghana almost scored my feelings changed. Maybe it was the way that a few of the Tanzanians looked at me when ever they almost scored an equalizing goal, I remembered that at least one of the Tanzanians said they would be rooting for Brazil, then I recalled how my friends had the US loss rubbed in their faces, vindictiveness had somehow crept in. After Brazil held a two goal lead at half time half of the crowd left even though Ghana was definitely playing better. I continued to watch secretly hoping for yet another Brazilian goal as that would make the victory look like a decimation and the second goal was questionably offsides. Brazil scored another goal but it was even more questionable. I felt a little guilty watching them win with at least two goal that very well could have been called otherwise over a team that overall played better and who definitely wanted the win more.

I was also surprised by the Tanzanians' responses to two group activities. When talking about how some questions have many answers the facilitator asked why did Ghana lose. There were about six different answers but none of them were because of the referee. Also when asked to make something out of paper nobody made the same thing and I was only one who made a paper airplane. This is remarkable because for Tanzanians are famous for their inability to break away from the pack and Americans are known for their creativity but I would bet if done in America there would be relatively few shapes and many of the men would make either a hat or a paper plane (Note: the Tanzanians were all men).

Also I was appointed secretary for the conference (any Tanzanian group with more than two people has a chairperson, secretary, and time keeper). Since the Tanzanian's seemed to enjoy my morning report here is the typed version attached. I don't think it is that interesting but if you are bored to tears maybe this will clear your vision.

Also I have shared mullet fest photos with several people if you are interested in seeing them and have not gotten an invite from others after a couple of days. Let me know and I can invite you.
Have a good week,
T.