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.)
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