BRIGADOON!

When I went out the front door yesterday morning to go to work, I glanced up and I could not believe my eyes!  My own personal Brigadoon had re-appeared!!

If you are a devoted follower of this blog, you recognize the structure in the foreground as Mama Kuku's chicken farm, and, yes, that is Mount Kilimanjaro rising over Mama Kuku's.  It was breath-taking!  By the way, before I forget, if you are a devoted follower of this blog, I also need to tell you:  GET SOME HELP!

 I get to my work at the Juvenile Jail by (1) walking a half mile down Shanty Town Road to a paved road.  (2)  At the paved road, the staff member and I wait by the side of the road until a "daladala" that has room for 2 more people comes along.  "Daladalas" are unregulated free enterprise taxi vans.  You take a regular 8 person van, squeeze in two extra rows of seats, so that it seats 12 people, and then put 30 people in it.  Seriously.  If you are in a daladala and people are not pressing you from all sides, it is worse for your ego than not getting invited to the prom.  "What's the matter with me?  Aren't I cool enough for you to share my sweat?"  (By the way, I believe that the better translation for "daladala" than "bootleg taxi" is "rattling death-trap", but then again, I do tend to only see the bright side of things.)

(3)  After the daladala ride of near-death and exchange of bodily fluids, we walk another half mile, this time uphill, to the Juvenile Jail.  The whole process takes about 45 minutes.  Then we meet up with the other volunteers (2 or 3 of them most days) who came by bicycle.  Sometimes the boys are not done with their chores, but usually I am able to start the first lesson pretty soon after I get there.  I teach for 40 - 45 minutes, then give the boys a break.  Some do individual activities, such as making bead bracelets, but most of them play soccer.  After about 30 minutes of break time, I tell them it's time to continue and they come back inside.  Until yesterday, there had not been any problem in getting them back in class and getting them doing their work.  By the way, here's a picture of the classroom:

Yesterday, one of the boys playing soccer tore the toenail off of his big toe.  I don't know how it happened, but playing barefoot on rough concrete probably was a lot of the explanation.  Anyway, the top of the toe was bleeding and the boy was crying and wailing with pain and shock.

What happened then was very interesting.  The other boys moved away from the injured boy.  The adults from the center looked at the toe and talked among themselves.  And the Finnish volunteers, all three of them, were saying the same thing: "We must take him to the hospital!"   I found that very odd, because it seemed to me that this was a decision that the people in charge of the Juvenile Jail should make.  Plus, "hospital" here is a synonym with "wait 8 hours and then we will not be able to help you."  And, when the staff people at the jail brought out soap and water, antiseptic liquid, cotton swabs and bandaging, then I really couldn't see taking him to a hospital.

Nonetheless, the Finnish volunteers still were trying to arrange permission to take the boy to a hospital, but both the Tanzanian person from our volunteer organization and I kept telling them, "the hospital will do the same thing that has already been done, and you will wait for 4 hours for that.   There is no reason to do this."  Eventually, they agreed.

Also, though I didn't tell the Finnish volunteers, I overheard one of the older, mouthier boys saying something when the Finnish volunteers were showing concern for the injured boy, and while I could only catch a little of it, he was saying something derisive about "the foreigners."  My reading of the situation was that, if the boy went to the hospital with "the foreigners" he would be labelled as "a weakling" or "a baby," and even though it is juvenile jail, there is still a jail culture there.

I waited until the injured boy was back in the classroom, but without other boys around, and I went over to him and told him in a flat voice (in Swahili)  "Be brave.  I have lost a toenail many times.  It's nothing."  [Which is true, by the way.  One more piece of evidence that ultra distance runners, in general, are idiots.]  He nodded back at me seriously and for the rest of the day, I noticed that he was hobbling, but he was getting up and moving around.

 My chore for this weekend is to learn the names of all of my students.  I have started by matching names and faces to the two most difficult students, so that I can call them by name if they seem about to embark on mischief.  But I want to match the names and faces of all of my students, so that I can demonstrate to them that there is an adult that notices when they do something well.

My other chore this weekend, if two other volunteers are successful in arranging it, is to go to a local hot springs for the day on Saturday, with swimming, soaking in mineral springs, sunning and relaxing.  And, not that this influenced my willingness to go, but there will be seven other volunteers--on male and 6 females, all in their twenties.  Oh, and there will be bikinis.  But I'm just going for the healing waters, you understand. 

So, as you see, there are some pleasant features to this volunteering in Africa gig.  Including, of course, the chance every morning to get a beautiful view of Mama Kuku's.

(This morning's view from the front yard here.)

The Horror! The Horror! + The Rhythm Section Was The Purple Gang

Last Saturday morning, we lost our internet at the Volunteer House and it wasn't restored until Monday afternoon.  Which meant an entire weekend without the Web.  And even now, the download speed of the WiFi is as slow as DSL.  My suffering is beyond all imagining.  As Coldplay said, "Nobody said it was easy, No one ever said it would be this hard."  Of course, the lead singer of Coldplay also named his daughter Mango or Kumquat or East Asian Breadfruit, so maybe I shouldn't rely too much on his opinions. 

So what does one do for a weekend when one cannot check baseball betting lines or play internet poker?  I mean, besides not losing money.  Well, one can take a 2 hour walk on the road that leads to Mount Kilimanjaro and then run back--since it is all uphill in the direction of Kili.  And during the walk one can enjoy the following view of the tallest mountain in Africa:

Yes, in general, although Kilimanjaro is only 20 miles from Moshi, almost invariably, what you see when you look in its direction is lots and lots of clouds.  However, I actually have seen Kili twice in the 7 days I've been here, so it would be completely unfair to question its existence.  Though you could persuade me that it is a cousin of Brigadoon.

The second high point of the weekend was having a creaky old person wash my clothes by hand with a hose and a bucket.  Or it would have been a high point.  If that creaky old person had been someone other than me.  As it was, I discovered that washing clothes by hand in the back yard is almost identical to washing clothes in a washing machine in my basement.  In that, in both instances, I go to the store and get laundry soap.  Then I put the soap, the clothes and the water together.  (It's actually easier up to this point because I don't have to choose between water temperatures--it's whatever temperature comes out of the hose.)  Up until this point, I am seeing only upside from this experience:  clean clothes and a dynamite tan!  And then I get introduced to the "machine" aspect of using a washing machine, namely, scrubbing, twisting, squeezing, draining, adding clean water, and repeating the process.

The only good thing to come out of the experience is that now I understand why, in the olden days, washing clothes was considered women's work.  Because it's too damn hard for men to do.

On Monday, I started my volunteer work at the Juvenile Jail, or "Mahabusu ya Watoto."  (While writing this blog, I simply throw letters together randomly and pretend that it's Swahili.  I mean, really!  Who's going to catch me?)  I think what surprised me most was this one guy with his hair worn long and swept back, who suddenly burst into a song and started shaking his hips.  I just didn't realize that's how prisoners behave in jails.  Ignorant me!

Actually, the fellah pictured above was not at the Juvenile Jail.  But there were a number of boys there that looked just like him.  Well, without the pompadour.  Without the fancy clothes.  And without the shoes.  And smaller.  But other than that, they could all have been clones of Elvis.  Because they all liked math (which is what I've been teaching them).  And we all remember that Elvis was a math fanatic himself.  ("One for the money; Two for the show;   .   .   ."  A big fan of infinite sequences, obviously.)

I haven't presented ideas at quite the Elvis level of math proficiency yet; I have restricted myself to much more advanced stuff.  Multiplication, division, word problems.  All the stuff that made you hate math.  It's okay; you can admit it.  When you were first taught long division, you were convinced that it was as punishment for something very bad that you had done.  Now, as a math teacher I can let you in on a secret.  Of course it was!  We use long division purely as a mechanism of torture.   Yet, my students here have been working long division problems for me.  They are simple problems, but not so simple that you can solve them without doing long division.

I am teaching in Swahili, which was a novelty on the first day, but now, on the third day, they expect me to be speaking Swahili.  (It is no doubt hard for you to remember--now that you are older than Joan Rivers' first face lift and just as petrified--that when you were young, you were very adaptable.)  Well, so are these kids.  So they thought it was very funny today, at the end of the second lesson (I give them 2 math lessons every day--hey, it's jail; it's supposed to be unpleasant) I intended to ask them if they had had enough math.  Only the phrase I used is only used with food: "Have you had enough?" in the sense of "Are you full of food?"  So they all had quite a good laugh. 

Between lessons, they get a break when they can play.  The play area is pictured below:

There are 19 children in the facility right now, so it looks like there is plenty of play area.  However, the favorite game is soccer (you can see the painted net) and this area is about 30 feet by 35 feet.  Not much room at all for a soccer game.  The games tend to be limited to 5 on 5 or 6 on 6.  More than that and there's no room to move.  Plus, they play it like indoor soccer, so the ball is always in play.  Off the wall?  Play on.  Off the roof?  Play on.  Off someone's face?  Play on.  I guess the game it is most like would be ice hockey except (1) no fighting; (2) no missing teeth; and (3) the "ice" is actually concrete.  Oh, yes, and the boys play barefoot.

Two of our volunteers joined in a game last week, taking off their shoes.  Care to guess what happened when they began to stop and start and change directions on rough concrete?  You are so smart!  You are exactly right.  They both ended up at the local hospital having cuts on the soles of their feet cleaned and bandaged.

Here is a picture from today's soccer game.  The same two volunteers (both from Finland, by the way) are not playing.  See if you can pick them out.

Wow!  You are right again!  I think you are the top genius of all time!  Well, you and Elvis.

Good News for Turtles

This morning brought good news for turtles, in that I am now sure that the meat in last night's dinner was chicken and not turtle.

Not only were both of the turtles I saw yesterday back in the front yard this morning, but when I walked around to the back of the house (for the first time of my visit) here is what I saw:

So our cooks don't even have to walk across the street to Mama Kuku's to get really fresh chickens for dinner.  This also explains why each morning the roosters have sounded like they were sitting on my window sill as they greeted the morning (starting an hour before the first light this morning).  Because they just about are. 

The other surprise I had when I explored the back yard was even more unexpected, in that it was not at all connected to the food that ends up on our table.  At least, I really, really hope not.  Take a look:

If we have hamburgers one night, and the next morning, the donkey is gone, I am going to be very upset!

Unless they were really tasty hamburgers.  Then I'll only be upset if we don't have any more donkeys.

As you can see from the various pictures, the Volunteer House sits on a sizable bit of land.  That seems to be typical in this particular neighborhood, though you can't actually see much from the street because the houses are behind high hedges and gates.  Here's a picture looking down the street from across from our gate:

The wall and wire fence on the left is the back of Mama Kuku's chicken-raising farm.  The house that you can see on the right is our immediate neighbor.  And, yes, that is a dirt road.  But a wide, important dirt road.  About half a mile down the road is the Police Training Academy.  And about a mile away down a cross street is the Moshi Golf Club.  (Really.)  On the other hand, about a half mile in the other direction is a district of Moshi named Shanty Town.  I haven't been there, so I don't know if "shanty" means the same thing here as in the U.S., but I'll admit I was a little nervous when I learned that the name of the road in front of the Volunteer House (the one you are looking at now) is "Shanty Town Road."  Tomorrow I may go for a walk/jog on one of the main roads to Mount Kilimanjaro, which runs along the edge of Shanty Town.  If so, I'll report back on what I find there.

However, right now, I must engage in a serious cultural exchange--i.e., where I exchange my money for local Tanzanian craft work:

Cheers!

Giving Americans a Good Name

I flew to Tanzania via Addis Ababa, where I had a 3 hour layover and changed planes.  The waiting area was small and the number of people waiting was large, so I had the delightful experience of observing for an extended period two groups of the classic Ugly Americans.

The first group was a pair of young people, a boy and a girl in their 20's (or 30's or teens--no one under 40 looks to me like they should be let out of the house on their own).  I overheard the boy saying that he had brought 20 pounds of Power Bars.  Then the girl said--and it was so impressive that I wrote it down--that she had bought for the trip "bulk peanut butter, bulk Nutella and bulk granola bars."  Just what Americans are known for--wanting to visit other countries without having to experience anything unfamiliar.

And the second group was three middle-aged couples.  They were all carrying their brand new backpacks, and the men--all pudgy and 50+ years old--were every one of them dressed like they were going to a costume party as Papa Hemingway.  Khaki shorts.  Khaki safari vest.  Big camera with a big shoulder strap.  And they had stopped shaving.  They looked incredibly macho.  Well, in their own imaginations they did.  And I'm not one to argue with that definition of manly.

So how was this a delightful experience for me?  Because these Ugly Americans were Canadians (first pair) and Germans (the 3 couples).  It was so wonderful!  I mean, it was so wonderful, eh!

Speaking of foreigners, there are 9 other volunteers living in the Volunteer House:  8 from Finland and 1 from the Netherlands.  I can talk with the guy from the Netherlands about the things that Dutch people care about: drugs and cheese.  But with the Finns?  I know less about Finland than I do about Ruritania, and Ruritania is purely fictional.  Though, to tell the truth, until yesterday, I thought Finland was also purely fictional.  And now that I've heard them speak their language, I am even more certain that it's all a big hoax.

One of the volunteers is studying Finnish literature at university, and I'm a very literate guy, so we had quite a good conversation about her favorite Finnish writers.  Well   .   .   .  "good" may not be the best choice of descriptive words.  It was good in the sense that she told me about many famous and admired Finnish authors, and I said things like "Who?"  "What?"  "Really?" and "I've always wanted to read some of his books.    .    .    .   Oh, right.  Her books."

They have put me in a single room here at the Volunteer House.  I believe that I am the only volunteer with his own room.  It may be because I'm American, and hence likely to be packing large numbers of firearms and eager to settle arguments by saying, "Slap leather, hombre!"  But I choose to believe that it is because of my maturity.  And by "maturity" I mean "tendency to fall asleep at the dinner table."  Last night I was the first to bed, probably by at least 2 hours, and this morning I was the first one up by the same 2 hours.

For those who are curious, here are two pictures of my room:

The room is about 10 feet by 10 feet, with a bed, a desk, two chairs and a closet with built-in shelves. 
The only thing that suggests I'm not in a dorm room is the mosquito net suspended above the bed.  Oh, yes, and the lack of empty vodka bottles in the trash.  ("A guy down the hall brought those with him when we had a math study session, Mom and Dad.  Really.  They're not mine, at all.")

And here is the front of the house:

The rainy season is just ending, so all the trees and plants are green and there are blossoms galore.  And that object in front of the left-hand window is a turtle.  I don't know what the story is regarding that turtle, but I hope it's an elaborate and exotic one.  And that it doesn't involve the turtle being some night's dinner.

Tonight's dinner was a diced tomato and avocado salad, mashed potatoes and a dish that's something between a stew and a curry--it seems to be a standard way of cooking here, and it's been very tasty.  Tonight's stew/curry had vegetables and little light-colored pieces of meat that tasted like chicken.  Now, what is it that people say about turtle?  "It tastes like  .  .  .  chicken."  Oh, no!


Actually, I'm pretty sure is was real chicken.  I discovered when we walked into town this morning that across the road from the house is "Mama Kuku's".  "Kuku" is the Swahili word for "chicken", and it is a chicken-raising operation.  Our guide said that you can go to a window at the front and buy a (really fresh) chicken.  By the way, for you urban planners out there, Moshi (the city I'm in) doesn't have the tightest zoning laws on earth, as was proven this morning at 5:30am when about a thousand roosters announced the new day.  Not a problem for me--but for the young Finns, maybe not such a delight.

I'm going now to study my Swahili so that I can be the teacher's pet in Swahili class tomorrow.  Since there are only two of us in the class, I figure I have a 20% chance of success.  "Math is Hard!" for both Barbie and me.

ME ME ME

In the past week, I have come across two articles describing how insufferable those Americans born between 1980 and 2000 are.  They are often referred to as the Millenials or, as Time put it:

That cover pretty much sums up both the Time article and the other article I read:  "Millenials are lazy, entitled narcissists."

As the parent of two Millenials and teacher of hundreds more, and as a baby boomer, let me just say, "Compared to whom, jerk-face?"

The sense of entitlement, the demands for special treatment, the lack of a work ethic?  Hey, my generation perfected all that.  And all the things we baby boomers get credit for--the peace movement, the civil rights movement, women's liberation, the environmental movement?  At most, five percent of the baby boomers were actively involved in furthering any of those ideals.  Many of my generation were--and still are--as self-centered, bigoted and aggressively ignorant as the worst members of any other generation.  (Though these same folks are ready to claim credit for causing the social achievements that the five percent accomplished.  When, 180 years ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. wrote the words, "Nothing is so common-place as the wish to be exceptional," he was clearly foretelling the coming of the baby boomers.)

So, with that preface, let me turn my attention to   .   .   .   you guessed it   .   .   .   ME  ME  ME!

I am close to having everything in order for my 2 1/2 months in Tanzania.  I just got the 6 passport photos I will need for my visa and work permit.  As so frequently happens when I have my picture taken, a disaster occurred.  In that the photos look just like me.  As opposed to the dashing, handsome man I am firmly convinced is the real me.  Those damned cameras and their objective reality.

I have my letter from the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences confirming that I am required to return to Ivy Tech in the fall.  It seems that Tanzania is wary of letting people in the country that might overstay their visa.  Apparently they don't appreciate our willingness to do a job that Tanzanians refuse to do.  That unpleasant job being  "to pay ridiculous amounts of money to be subjected to 6 days of misery on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro and/or on the plains of the Serengeti."  Oh, I forgot the rest of the job description: "while wearing clothing with the colors and styles of circus clowns."  Ah, that is a form of "exceptional" that many of my countrymen and women have actually achieved.  My pride is limitless!

  I have the bulk of my stuff packed already and still have some room left in the suitcase.  I'm debating whether to take both my Real Analysis and my Complex Analysis textbooks (along with my Topology textbook, of course--what sensible person would ever travel without one of those?), but I keep reminding myself, "Jim, this is a working vacation, not a pleasure trip.  Mathematical Analysis may have to wait."  So I may just leave both books behind.  It's probably time for me to give up some of my freewheeling, fun-loving ways, anyway.  (At least, that's my story for leaving my suitcase half empty.  And it that leaves me room, at the end of my trip, to smuggle into the U.S. a dik-dik to be my pet antelope, well, no one can prove that that was my plan all along.)

There's no doubt that this is a pet that would only belong to a dashing and handsome, yet deep and sensitive, man, is there?    ME   ME   ME

A (Small) Number of Ideas (Concerning Numbers)

Like Winnie the Pooh, I am a Bear of Very Little Brain.  I can only retain a small number of thoughts and, hence, use each thought with great frequency.  This works exceedingly well for me, as I do not have to search through huge numbers of options before selecting what to say.  Now, some people tell me that it can be annoying to hear me endlessly repeat my ideas, but I fail to see why that would be of any interest to me. 

I would compare this situation to my recent calamity with my cell phone.  I dropped it into a puddle while out for a run on a rainy day, and the sound stopped working.  Everything else still functioned--I could text, check emails, see the time and weather updates.  I could even make phone calls.  It was just that, when I made calls, the person at the other end could hear what I was saying, but I couldn't hear a word they were saying.  In other words, I had the perfect cell phone for me.

So if you've already heard the thought I'm about to express and would prefer that I skip over it, let me gladly acknowledge that "I can't hear you!"

Here is that oft-cited thought:  Cory likes to point out that there are three kinds of people in this world:  those that are good with numbers and those that aren't.  Cory would be in the latter category.  That fact is relevant in that, after my last post, which suggested that Cory was a moderately fit and successful older runner, he told me, "Your post suggesting that I am not slower than a turd on a log is so false.  I am not happy with what you wrote."

Which was exactly the reaction I was hoping for, of course.  If praise would have made him feel better about himself, I never would have suggested it.  Nonetheless, if you were to review my last post, you would see I was not praising him without a sound basis.  My praise was based on documented numbers:  race times, finishing places, years of age.  Or, in Cory's words, mumbo-jumbo and magic.  And now I have more of the same to offer.  In last Saturday's 500 Festival Mini Marathon, Cory finished second in his age group.  Out of 286 finishers.  And it wasn't close--the third place finisher was more than three minutes behind him.  So, in mathematical terms, Cory was easily in the Top One Percent.

To put that into perspective, consider the Occupy Wall Street movement.  If you recall, they had the slogan "We Are The 99%".  So Cory's race finish in the Top One Percent would make him the equivalent of the CEO of AIG.  (Which, from a moral standpoint, is reasonably accurate.  But I digress.)

(Cory actually posed for the cartoon above.  But then Linda made him shave off the mustache.)

Beyond serving as proof of Cory's continued running BRILLIANCE (hear that Cory?), numbers also provide such a great variety of entertainment.

 Why, just two days ago, I was reminding my Calculus II class of how to solve a problem using logarithmic differentiation.  (Yeah, I know, you have a hard time believing that anyone could forget logarithmic differentiation--I'm baffled by the concept myself.)  Anyway, when I got to the point where you go back to the original equation to substitute in for the "y" value, I mentioned that this need to return to the beginning of the problem has made a strong impression on people in all walks of life.  For example, it's obvious that when T. S. Eliot wrote the lines, "This is the end of all our searching, to return to where we started and see it for the first time", he was talking about logarithmic differentiation.  My students were quite taken by the Eliot quote, I can tell you.  Because it was the first thing I've said all semester that made sense to them, I suspect.

Actually, I think the Eliot quote they are most likely to understand is more apropos to the end of the semester this Saturday: "Her mind allowed one half-formed thought to pass; Well, that's done, and I'm glad it's over."

 T. S. Eliot solves a five-dimensional matrix equation.  Or explains The Wasteland.  (I'm not sure which is a more impossible task.)