Lights Out

Well, more like Internet out.  For the first time since I have been here in Tanzania, the Internet has been in and out ALL week, more like out with an occasion appearance by the Internet.  Quite honestly, though, it is pretty freeing to not have the option to stay connected to the world, and it has been my best week in Tanzania so far.

This week, I was given a very important responsibility at school by Mama Shayo.  At the beginning of the week, Mama Shayo took me into the library, which I had never seen or been in before, and asked me to go through all of the donations about three standard trash bag sized bags from wazungu.  After only a few minutes of snooping around, I realized that the library was in quite a disorganized state.  Naturally, I asked Mama Shayo if I could take on the task of organizing the library kidogo kidogo, of course over the next few weeks.  She was very thrilled with the idea...I think that was her secret plan in bringing me in there all along, which is a-okay with me. 

At first, I was ecstatic about this task and opportunity.  It would be a prime way to put my OCD, organizational brain to work and it would make me feel like I was impacting the school in a greater way than simply teaching.  However, like most things in life, the library assignment has its ups and downs.  For example, it is awesome to have children so eager to help organize, clean, sharpen pencils, etc.  It is not so awesome to see a GREAT deal of resources being stored and saved, instead of being used by children.  This reality has been, and will continue to be, the hardest part of my new assignment.  That being said, as a white child who grew up in prime suburbia, I never had to worry about running out of needed materials nor being in a financial position to acquire whatever was needed, and then some.  

So, I struggled this week because part of me wanted to shake some sense into Mama Shayo and explain to her that we did not need to save 85 twenty-four Crayon boxes, 25 forty-eight Crayon boxes and about 25 additional Crayon boxes of different counts (including boxes of over 100 Crayons).  And that's only Crayons.  The other part of me realizes that in Mama Shayo’s mind, the school is ‘rich’ because of the many supplies that are sitting collecting dust in the library.  She told me this herself, minus the collecting dust part, when I asked if we could distribute some of the materials to each of the classes.  By saving, she will not ever have to face a time when reinforcements are no longer coming and all supplies have been used up.  Sigh.  My hope is that in the next few weeks or months if it takes that long, I can help her to see how to make a plan to distribute some of the supplies and still save so that she feels like the school will be rich for years to come – think 5 year plan for distribution of every supply in the library. I figure if I categorize and count all of the materials and then explain how to ration out supplies, I may have a chance to get some of these supplies into the hands of children.  Start your prayers now, people, because this is going to be an uphill battle.  

At the end of the first week of Operation Library, the following has been accomplished: all donations bags have been unpacked and stored, all markers have been checked to see if they actually work and categorized by color; all pencils have been sharpened; books have been reorganized; that was quite a task; and finally, I have gotten Mama Shayo to agree to move the many, many boxes in the corner of the library into the empty classroom so that I can move the furniture in the library to make it aesthetically pleasing.  Much more to come. 

None of that remotely comes closes to the greatest success of Operation Library this week.  Supplies aside, children never use the library; no one goes in there because it is not allowed.  Or should I say no one was allowed.  I did learn this week, though, that libraries as we know them in America are not common here, so I think that the staff is at a loss of how to utilize this resource.  In my constant desire to suggest modifications to the current system without offending or being overbearing, I created a timetable where each class could come into the library once a week.  Scheduling wise, it works out just perfectly because there is a morning and afternoon recess every day, that would be 10 periods for you mathematically challenged readers, so I assigned each grade a day and then split up the class into two groups: one for the morning recess and one for the afternoon recess.  The classes are too big for an entire class to come to the library at one time, so we actually need two periods to accommodate each grade.  

Visuals are always helpful when trying to persuade, especially across languages, so I took my timetable to Mama Shayo and pitched my idea.  I explained that I would be willing to monitor the library for each recess time all five days of the week so that no other teacher has to be assigned library duty, as an additional responsibility would not go over well with the other teachers.  I concluded by sharing that I think the children would really benefit from visiting the library on a regular basis.  And then they could use some of the materials in there too! I left that part out, though.  Mama Shayo was so gracious to give the green light to another one of my kichaa ideas.  For the two days the library has officially been open to children, the kids have been GEEKED about this addition to our daily/weekly schedule.  Children are literally begging to come read and color, and they run to the library when it is their turn, and when it is not their turn.  :)