Sneaky Snakes and Silly Schools

Once again, I've fallen down on my blogging.

To re-cap: Zanzibar=amazing. Check my Flickr pictures.
Mid-Service Conference: boring, waste of time. The only good sessions were things we should have had last year at IST. The rest was the “lets talk about our feeling after being here a year” stuff that I could do without. The only worthwhile part was the medical and dental check-ups. During the massive amounts of downtime, I managed to upload all my pictures and videos from this year using the computers in the volunteer lounge.

How are things in the village? Hard to say, I only spent one week there in August. As far as I can tell, its mostly the same. The primary school finished the Standard 7 national exams the day I got back, so the 7th graders are done and the rest of the school is sliding to the end of the year and Christmas/Id/New Year holidays. I have not been able to teach my girls program since July, for various reasons, the most obvious being my absence.

Secondary school has their first graduating class this year!! And the celebrations have already begun. If that sounds exciting, check yourself. Tanzanian events are BORING. Long, speech after speech, in the hot sun, too many formalities. The school is having 5 graduations, one for each of the religious organizations and the big one. I missed one while I was at MSC, but since I work with the school and my Mali Hai kids are in each of the groups, I feel obligated to go to the rest. Had one last week for the Catholics. Longest 5 hours of my life. What about our trip? After a solid week of harassing the warden's office, I FINALLY got our reservation made with the park for Sept 27. Unfortunately, the hostel that students usually stay at in the park is under renovation, adding a new wrinkle to the plan. We have a few irons in the fire for places to stay, so we've all got our fingers crossed that one of the work out. The most likely option is to get permission from a school in Morogoro to use their dorms for a night, since they will be on break also. Oh, also that's within a week of the national exams for Form IV students, and the students are supposed to stay at their “testing site” for a full week before the exams. I will point at that back in July when they picked the date, I asked, “Isn't that awfully close to the Form IV exams?” and was told that it would be no problem. Well, now it is and the teachers' solution was to cut the form 4 students (half the club) from the trip and replace them with other students. Um, no? These kids earned the trip by working with me all year! Why should some other kid who has done nothing for me get to go instead? So now we're also trying to get the park warden to change the date, which he doesn't want to do. We're appealing to the district ed officer to talk him into it.

PLWHA group chicken project is stalled. The Grants manager didn't like my grant because... wait for it... it was printed funny. I had printed it out in the office in Tanga, Ind they had set the printer to do double sided, but the back side was upside down. Hence, my grant was too hard to read and could not be processed. I'm not even kidding. Also, one of the forms required a witness to my signature. Since I printed the forms in Tanga, I had another PCV sign as my witness. The grants manager does not approve. In his mind, the witness should be a counterpart. In my mind, a witness is just someone verifying that no one forged my signature. We're at an impasse because I won't re-do the form, there's nothing wrong with it. And he insists on things not required by the contract.

I found a snake in my backyard last week. More correctly, I heard the snake and ran to the headmasters house to tell him to come kill it. between his house and mine (only across the road) three other men saw him carrying a big stick and asked stuff like, “Is there a snake? Where? Let us help.” So there are 4 guys with sticks in my yard and I thought, “If they don't find a snake, I am going to look like a moron.” Of course, they start poking around in the corner where I heard it and... no snake. And I start looking lie the girl who cried snake, all I can say is, “No, really guys, I heard it!” As they're leaving, one of them points to the ground and says, “What's that?” My honor redeemed, that's what it was. Snake tracks coming out of my yard, around the house, and back into the woods. Must have gotten away when I was getting the teacher. At least that proved there really was one.