Harry Potter Frenzy

Thankfully, on the Saturday after my last day of teaching, P5 and I had a special event schedule – which made my eminent departure seem less real or at least temporarily forgotten. 

For the past few weeks, we have been reading the first Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.  I have been so proud of my P5 babies for accepting the challenge of reading this book.  Not only is the English in HP fairly difficult for a native English speaker, but on top of that, there are ‘wizarding’ words that regularly appear throughout the entire story.  So, imagine that you are a young child reading stories in your second language.   You continually encounter words that are new to you – even with your massive English vocabulary.  But now you are reading a story that has ‘made up’ – for all intensive purposes – words that you have to learn in order to understand the story.  Before we started reading, I explained the nature of the book and asked them if they wanted to read it, due to its difficulty and additional vocabulary.  They all said they wanted to give it a go.  My pride swelled for them in that moment and every time we read together for the next several weeks.

Unfortunately, there was no way that we were going to finish the book in the four or five weeks I had left in country, but we started reading it anyway and made it through the first few chapters.  After the first week of reading, I realized that I could try to add some positivity to my soon departure by sharing with the kids that we could watch the movie version of the book before I left.  This way, although the kids would still be sad about me leaving, they would also have something fun to which to look forward right before my departure, which hopefully would make my leaving slightly more manageable for these precious angels. Anything I could do to make that transition easier for them, I would.

My kids have never seen any sort of motion picture before, so this was a very exciting proposition.  You should have seen their little faces when I told them about this idea.  They could barely sit still.  So, for four or five weeks, we read a few pages at the beginning of English class each day, and their excitement about the upcoming movie continued to grow. 

After a very sad Friday, my last day of teaching, my babies began to trickle in to school the following morning.  It sounds silly to say trickle ‘in’ because our school is essentially an ‘outdoor’ school, meaning the classrooms are in the shape of a horseshoe and you have to walk outside to move from one classroom to another. Our movie viewing Saturday was also the same Saturday of our follow up 'saving for secondary school' meeting where returned to Stella Maris with all of the needed documentation, and money, to open up a savings account for their child for secondary school.  A big day at Stella Maris, for sure.

Although I told pupils that they did not have to wear their uniform to our movie-watching event, some parents would not let their children leave home to attend a school function in anything but their uniform.  Thus, children arrived, some in uniform and some so excited, and proud, of their non-school clothes. The original plan was to watch our movie in the conference room of the lodge.  Teddy, as awesome as she always is, graciously agreed that we could use this room for our special occasion.  I believe her exact words were something like “Of  course, you can.  The hotel is for the school, right?”.  Reason 898040 why I love her.  As I made my way out of the hotel that Saturday morning for the parent meeting at the school, I checked in with Teddy to confirm that we could use the conference room, which has only been used twice during my entire time in Tanzania.   Unfortunately, Teddy forgot that on this lovely Saturday late morning/early afternoon, the conference room was very surprisingly being used.  So, that moved us to Option B of where to watch the movie: the P5 classroom – the one classroom that the electricity works in the school.  During the parent meeting, we tested the projector to make sure that a) it worked in the room and b) that you could see the image on the board.  Thankfully, the classrooms are ‘dark’ enough that the projector light was bright, allowing the projected image to be seen clearly.  

Conference room crisis averted, I called scholars together at 11 o’clock to begin our movie watching in the P5 classroom.  Extremely excited eleven and twelve year old children settled down into seats, and I began to set up the projector.  After several minutes of trying, checking the wires, making sure the outlet was turned on, yes, in Tanzania you have to turn on the outlet before power will run through it, we, the children and I, realized that the power was out.  :( And of course, the lodge’s generator does not reach the school, so we had no power to watch our highly anticipated movie.

Deep breath.  No problem.  We will find a way.  We HAVE to find a way, as I cannot let the 27 loves of my life down.  So, because it is Tanzania and it is common to leave children unattended, I left Siggy in charge of keeping everyone in line and walked back over the lodge.  I found Teddy, explained the situation to her and we decided that it would be best to bring the kids to the lodge and we could watch the movie in the dining area on the empty wall between the dining area and the lobby.  The only problem was that the dining area has large, large windows without any blinds or shades along the rather long sides of the rectangular room.  Teddy said that she would have the landscaping staff, Jordan and Masaii, hang some makeshift curtains on the windows closest to where we would watch the movie.  I walked back to the school, explained the situation to the kids and set expectations for how we would act in the lodge.  They of course complied and the appeal of our movie-watching endeavor increased as it now included watching inside the prestigious lodge.

Walking from the school to the lodge. 

My 27 loves and I trucked over to Option C of a viewing location, the lodge, computer, projector, and all the needed cables in hand. By the time we made our way over, Teddy had had Jordan and Masaii set up 27 chairs for my babies and they were beginning to hang up the curtains.  It was then just before noon, and the babies were patiently waiting for the projector materials to be set up again as well as the curtains to be hung to darken the room enough for the image to be visible on the wall.  The projector was set up well before the curtains, read extra blankets, comforters, etc, were hung, so in the meantime, we got a soda for each child to 'drink and be merry', and try to forget that they were waiting with nothing to do, while the setup was continuing.  Once 12:30 had passed, mind you, an hour and a half after the ‘start’ time of our movie viewing, Jordan and Masaii were still hanging up ‘curtains’ because the dining area was not yet dark enough – trust me, the kids asked me to start the movie again and see if we could see the image about every five minutes.  I looked around the dining area and made an executive decision that the space was just not going to get dark enough to view this movie.

Location Option C: the dining area of the lodge

My babies.  They HAVE to watch this movie.  Slight panic slowly seeped in, so I ran upstairs to grab some snacks to distribute to the kids as I figured out Plan D of a viewing location.  While I was running into my room, I realized how dark the hallway on the first floor was.  I wished to myself that the dining area could be as dark as the hallway.  Then it hit me.  If, big if, there were not any guests on one of the floors of the lodge, maybe Teddy would allow us to sit in the hallway and watch the movie.  The hallway would not be as fancy or nice – we could have to sit on the floor – but if we could actually see the movie, it would be a better alternative than our current spot.  I passed out the snacks, crackers with peanut butter in the middle, and made my way to Teddy to ask for another favor.  Teddy definitely looked at me like I was kichaa, crazy, when I originally asked to move my 27 loves to the hallway to watch the movie.  But, when she realized that there were not any guests staying on the second floor, she was agreeable.

I grabbed a couple of kids to help me move the computer, projector and the cables up to the second floor hallway, and to test this somewhat-crazy, hallway-viewing idea of mine out before moving 27 kids for the second time.  Thankfully, the width of the hallway was just wide enough from one spot in the hallway for the projector to display the image on the opposite wall large enough for all to easily see it. And, it was definitely dark enough to see the image clearly.  But, the only place where the hallway was wide enough to do this, of course, had a column in the middle of the floor - meaning that we would have to sit around the column, but beggars can’t be choosers and we were definitely beggars at this point.  So, with the assistance of my helpers, we got everything set up and went downstairs to collect everyone and move to Option D of a movie-viewing location. 

Just before 2:00, almost three full hours after our movie watching was supposed to begin, we actually started the movie in a space where we could see it. :) The kids were great.  They didn’t complain once about having to sit on the cold, hard floor.  They were so excited to watch the pages that we read in class come to life.  They controlled their responses to the silly/funny/odd parts of the movie, people flying, people running through walls, Harry talking to a snake, so well and they were captivated by every moment of the movie.  It was a great time.  We had popcorn and laughed a lot.  As the movie continued on, the kids got more ‘comfortable’ on the floor, sprawling out and leaning on one another.  I brought every pillow, sweatshirt, blanket, etc that I could find from my room to make the hallway more comfortable for my 27 loves. 

Location Option D: Success!

Getting comfy on the cold, hard floor!

One pillow, six girls? No problem!

About two hours into the movie, the movie that another American volunteer so kindly transferred to my computer so that I did not have to run around trying to find Harry Potter in Tanzania or rely on the internet to view the movie, the movie just stopped.  I had never watched the movie on my computer before our P5 viewing party, so I did not know that for some reason the entire movie did not transfer to my computer.  However, the part of the movie where it cut off was somewhat of a natural pause, read not in the middle of a cliff-hanger scene, and since we got such a late start of watching anyway, the kids were all fine with our movie watching stopping there.  I promised them that I would find a way to get the entire movie to them in the next couple of months, even if meant mailing the movie to the lodge from America. 

Quite an eventful day.  Not what I expected the day to hold.  But that has always been one of my favorite things about Tanzania: things often don’t go as planned, but somehow they almost always work out.  All of the logistical glitches and moments of stress were far worth seeing my P5 loves smile from ear to ear and belly laugh throughout the movie.  So glad that this was the way that P5 and I got to say our final farewell.   

One of the hardest goodbyes of my entire life.