Pour Some Coke On It – Day 5 (St. Agnus Secondary School, Chipole)

More roosters.  The bastards.  ...I guess they did have their charm.  First breakfast in Chipole was at 8:30.  Ish.  As I mentioned, everything happens when it happens, but this was pretty close- Sister Mkombelewa runs a tight ship.  After the morning meal, we went on a tour of the compound, lead by the sisters of St. Agnus.  Mkombelewa was the head mistress of the secondary school, so she lead the tour of that simple school.  Academics included things like hygiene, cooking, and farming.

A few of the lay-faculty (men) accompanied us, and one told me that he had noticed that all Americans’ handwriting looked exactly the same, and he really (really) wanted to know the secret to how that is so.  It took a little back and forth before I understood what he meant.  Eventually I realized that in Swahili they are taught with an emphasis on the content of subject, and little regard to letter formation.  Consequentially, everyone has a dramatically different style of forming a letter.  It should be noted however, that later in Hanga, the headmaster at that school disagreed entirely that this was so.


The school was very simple and absolutely crumbling and filthy by American standards.  But this private school was the best in the region, and among the best in Tanzania.  We toured classrooms and faculty rooms, taking note of the equipment and facilities. It struck me that in contrast to the effect we want to give when we give a tour at Delbarton, the purpose of this tour was the very opposite- to pint out where the school needed help because of low funding.
Outside the school, we toured the farming plots where vegetables are grown, and grid where the maize (corn) and sunflowers are dried.  it was kind of crazy- it just lies there in a pile on the ground until its dry.  Next we saw the posho, or mill. This is something the BEADS trip from Delbarton bought for St. Agnus last year.  They use if to mill maize into flour, and it saves them many hours of tedious work per week.  Right next to the posho shed is a shipping container where they store the maize flour they've milled.

After the tour we had some free time, and our boys sat with the St. Agnus girls and had Swahili (and singing) lessons.  Almost all of the girls spoke some English.  A few of them were very good at it.  The lessons lasted an hour or so, then we had lunch in the big all-purpose room where they served us all our meals.
After lunch was a tour of the dam, a 10 minute drive from the secondary school.  We climbed aboard the bus and were about to head out when one of the drivers hopped out and inspected something on the side of the bus.  Apparently, the battery on the bus was corroded and needed to be cleaned to improve the contact.  Samson asked for a bottle of coke, and upon receiving it, promptly dumped it on the battery contact, saying that the acid would eat the corrosion.  I guess it worked, because we were on our way a few minutes later.

The dam was built by a Swiss national in 2004.  He died in 2006, and left the remainder of his money to the sisters.  His daughter was actually planning a visit for a few weeks after we were there.  The dam is hydroelectric, and powers the whole compound.  We met Sister Hildegard, who is one of the Sisters who run the dam plant.  She was exceptionally sweet and shy, but knew what in the heck she was doing.  It was weird to see a nun, in the middle of 200 miles of nothing but dirt, running a high- powered hydroelectric dam.  Weird, but awesome.  I loved Hildegard.

Besides the plant, the area around the dam was amazing.  The red aluminum clay dirt was everywhere there, and there was a fresh clear river.  When we arrived, a man was herding cattle on the far bank, but he moved on when he saw the mzungu’s arrive. We took a walk and found a small "bridge" that crossed the river.  There was a crew there building a real, concrete bridge, but the little wooden stick bridge was still up, and we all crossed it just for the fun of doing so.  It was truly a bridge built with sticks lashed together!  I’m sure the girls wondered why it fascinated us so much.  Along the way, Grace, one of the girls, found a millipede and had a good laugh at my expense when she put it on a stick and surprised me by waving it near my face.  I may or may not have screamed like a little girl.  And had to change my pants.

For the rest of our stay in Chipole, she would regularly come up to me and quickly whip something out from behind her back to see if I would do it again.  I admit I played it up a little to hear her giggle.  As we walked back towards the bus, we had a confusing conversation (for both of us) in broken English and very broken Swahili about “why mzungu’s are afraid of the insects”.  I can tell you, any false sense of superiority I may have had went out the window right there. Also seen on that brief adventure were termite mounds that were waist high.  I didn’t get close enough to see any termites, and I’m totally cool with that.  I still have the willies from the millipede.

We stayed at the dam longer than we were supposed to and ended up hurrying back to be there for some musicians the Sisters had hired for the evening meal.  They played a variety of percussion instruments, and they were fun to have.  We danced for a while, and then went into the hall for dinner.  The musicians followed and played inside while we ate.  It was very loud, and that further complicated my efforts to understand the thick accent/lisp of the man I was seated next to at dinner.  I had the poor guy shouting.

He had interesting questions, though.  For instance, he wanted to know how the American government, who is renown here, at least, for doing a good job, handled street vendors.  He explained that this is an issue in Tanzania, especially in Dar Es Salam, because the government regularly comes around and tells people they have to close their shop or move elsewhere.  Here, street vendors are absolutely everywhere.  They line every road, and in the more heavily populated areas, there is a seemingly interminable ocean of them.  Just dirty handmade shack after dirty handmade shack for as far as you can see, selling everything from tv’s and stereos to furniture and clothing to food.  You name it. But these street vendors just go wherever they think they can make money and set up shop.  There is not rent, or permits or permission or taxes on them.  They just do it.  Before long, they crowd the streets and the traffic cannot move, so the government drives around every so often and makes a large red X on any shack or structure that is not in an approved location.  This makes them angry as you might imagine.  Anyway, that was a tough one to explain. After supper we broke out the s’mores we had brought to share with the girls.  We had a brief training class on how to make them, and they enjoyed the treats, calling them “very sweet”, and we all spent the remainder of the night talking and teaching one another as well as dancing and singing of course.  Jeez, those girls love to dance.  Oh, and by the way, I may or may not have taught them a few of my kickass moves.  I rock.

One funny moment came after I had used my phone to show some of them photos of Jen and the boys.  One of the students who spoke better English came up to me and asked if my phone was an iPhone.  I said it was, and she said (and I swear this is true), “Can you use your phone to make someone look like a zombie?”  My jaw nearly hit the ground!  I was of course very happy to make zombies out of a couple of them with my “Zombify” App.  They were delighted by this, though after a bit I began to worry that I may be sending the wrong message, so I put it away.  But it was really, really funny. One other funny moment was when one of our boys, Justin, got a small cut on his finger, and came over to Brian and I to ask if we had a band-aid.  We gave him one, but nearby, Sister Christma had seen this and I later caught her giggling with the other sisters and imitating Justin- indicating that she found it funny that this giant man-boy was whimpering over the tiny boo-boo on his finger.  It was very funny, and we revisited that several times during our stay...