Kazi Ningi (Kiswahili for much work)

It has been a very busy time here. Just to follow-up on my last post… people here are very excited about the Obama presidency. I have been asked about him many, many times. I was at the market (somewhat similar to a farmer’s market) a few weeks ago and a seller asked me (in Kiswahili) where I was from. I answered and he asked if Obama “was my man” and I replied. Just last Saturday I was at a party and the Master of Ceremonies (MC) was talking about a young man and saying he was dressed in the Obama-style because he was wearing a nice dress shirt and tie, but no jacket. It seems like Obama is fully permeating the society and culture of this country 10,000 miles away from Mr. Obama’s new home on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Anyway… I thought I would share what I did last week because it was an interesting and busy week. Last week was the study or reading week for most students at Msalato. This week comes at the end of the semester and before the examination week (which is now). In theory, students are supposed to spend the week preparing for exams and nothing else. However, it appears that many teachers give written assignments that are due either at the end of the study week or the beginning of the exam week (I am guilty of doing this in one of my four classes, but gave them the essay assignment three and a half weeks ago). This caused huge strains on the computing resources of the college during last week.

So last week was a study week. I intended to do two things: first, mark all of the essays and quizzes I had from my students this semester and to work on addressing a major problem in the network here. The signal from the server that drives all of the desktop computers here has not been reaching the administration building here which houses a computer lab and several staff offices. I have not really had the time to address this problem because of my heavy teaching load this semester. Well, I didn’t get a chance to fix that problem or to finish my grading (got the quizzes marked). So what did happen?

Well, the week began with an interesting, though long, seminar about “Customer Care” on Monday. “Customer Care” you might ask? Well, this was a seminar that has been given to several hundred employees of the Diocese of Central Tanganyika (DCT). Dioceses here are very different from in the West in at least one major way. DCT owns and runs many, many different businesses, most of which actual are profit making. This is done to subsidize the overall work of the church, not to gain wealth. Some of the businesses include: clinics, schools, a pharmacy, a bureau de change, a print shop, a high volume fruit distributor… and much more. So this seminar on “Customer Care” was given to most of the employees of DCT to encourage better service to the customers. This seminar was held at Msalato for the same reason - to improve the staff’s relations with our “customers” (the students). The seminar was interesting and helpful for many people. I had some (and still do) philosophical issues with the idea of calling students “customers.” For one thing, I know the saying “the customer is always right” and that certainly does not apply to students. Anyway… that was a very long day (the seminar, with breaks, lasted about seven hours.

On Tuesday, I hoped to get some grading done, but I ended up doing something quite interesting… and sort of ironic. I helped to interview applicants to become part of Msalato’s Diploma in Applied Theology program for next year. I interviewed with the Administrator of Msalato who is a wonderful man and a Tanzanian. We interviewed four people. Three of these were under the age of thirty and one was in his mid fifties. All four were from DCT.

Now the way the ordination process works here is that you start seminary and then once you are there you go through a formal process for applying for ordination. This means that when students are applying to come to Msalato they have not yet talked with anyone on the diocesan level about seeking ordination or their call. In theory, they have talked to their parish priest and have his/her support, but not always. So a significant part of the interview process here is about the “call” of the individual. That was a rather difficult part for me to deal with. Partially, because of my baggage from the ordination process I went through, but also because trying to discuss one’s “call” with complete strangers and in your third language cannot be easy. (The first language of almost all Tanzanians is a tribal language, the second is Kiswahili or Swahili, which is the national language, and third is English, which is the language of instruction in secondary schools and at Msalato). Some of the students had good answers to the questions about their “call” and others didn’t. One of the questions was about the health of the potential student… a question I found a bit odd, because in America you couldn’t really ask that question I think — could open up a school to discrimination charges.

One of the most interesting parts of the experience of interviewing these potential students was a bias the developed within me. We interviewed two younger men first, then the older man, and a third young man last. Over the course of the interviews I realized that I kept thinking that the younger men were not experienced enough and didn’t seem sure or confident about what they were saying. The ironic part of this is that one of the priest’s I was closest to back in West Virginia when I started the process toward ordination cautioned me that he thought only people with more life experience than a 25 year old should be ordained. This wonderful priest, the Reverend Esber Tweel was the only person I really heard that from. However, I think he was somewhat right. It is good to have a mix of ages, but often there is a lot to be gained by some life experience.

Well… on Wednesday of last week we had a four hour staff meeting. Most of the time for this meeting was devoted to assigning courses to teachers for next semester. This was hard because there are a lot of classes and not that many teachers. Part of the difficulty is that there is still one group of students in a Kiswahili program and none of the six foreign teachers can teach those classes. Another long part of the meeting was the discussion about the teacher’s program. This program will offer both a certificate and a diploma (don’t ask me the difference, I can’t tell you) and will, in theory, start in August of 2009 here at Msalato. This is a mandate from the board of Msalato and is needed both to improve the quality of primary school teachers and to increase revenue for the college. The Kiswahili theology program will be completely phased out by the end of this academic year and last year it accounted for half of the total number of students at Msalato. So, there is a clear need to replace those students with some other program. Other issues were discussed… it was a long meeting.

On Thursday I was schedule to go into town and do several things. However, I was awakened early and informed of numerous computer problems. The computer network was not working, nor was the internet connection. I was supposed to go to town to help fix a problem at the diocesan headquarters in the Carpenter’s Kids program which is an outreach ministry here (largely supported by the Episcopal Diocese of New York). However, I could not deal with that because of the numerous problems here and I was frankly a bit sick. I did get into town so that I could get a package that had been sitting at the post office for about a month waiting for me. Anytime a package larger than a VHS tape (remember those?) comes into the post office, I have to go in between 9:30 and 10:30 am on a weekday to meet with a customs official from the Tanzanian equivalent of the IRS. Well during the regular semester the only day I was available at that time was Mondays and I tried several Mondays in a row to get into town at that time and was unable to do so. So, I had to take advantage of the opportunity to get to town. The package contained an updated book about the operating system we use here (Ubuntu 8.04) that I needed for diagnosing problems. So I went to the post office and picked up that package and mailed one home that had some gifts. I also did some grocery shopping… always exciting.

On Friday, I spent the day doing marking and preparing for exam week. As for Saturday… I will cover that in a posting later today. Have a great day!!!

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