Math Competition, prepping for end of year and some odds and ends

November 30, 2019

Morning Parade with Kilimanjaro peaking out between the building and the tree.

I would like to apologize for missing the last two weeks. It was due to a combination of factors. My computer once again succumbed to the heat, dust and travel conditions of living in remote areas that are difficult to travel to and from on a weekly basis. I am using a computer that is based on Windows 8 so everything is different. Now add the fact that the school needs the end of year student report in a completely different set up from the previous letters. So different in fact that I had to reprogram all the database functions to create the data they wanted. They delivered their end of year tests to me four days late and still expected me to produce them by Monday despite the fact no one was willing to come in on a Saturday to review them (they actually tried to tell me it was against the law in Tanzania for teacher to work on Saturday).

Add to all this but since we had our new septic tank and soak pit installed we now need to fill in the existing soak pit that failed because every time it rains more of the walls fall in making the hole bigger. If not checked up and stopped and hopefully stabilized it would eventually cause our latrine building to fall in. While we are probably two years away from that happening, now is the time to stop it. So I offered to help the day laborer and driver who sits around all day fill in the hole. Instead they have sat on the sidelines. Previously when this has happened (It is a common problem to get people to work) I have used the old shaming technique of the oldest person on the site (me) and the only American on the site (me) doing the work and shaming all the young men. Not this time. The driver actually pulled out a mattress and laid down.

That is the worker laying on a mattress during the time of work

So I have moved dirt every morning and every evening during the cooler hours. So far I have moved an estimated 10 cubic yards by myself. I am going to be honest, I was struggling with if I should tell everyone about this or just handle it. I promised myself when I started this blog I would try to be as honest as possible and not hold back on some of the bad stuff. So here it is in all of its ugliness. We are having to put pressure on the Tanzanians we work with to remove the lazy and replace them with workers that will strive to help our site and our school succeed.

Now on to some fun stuff. There are some groups that make us pillow case dresses and shorts for the kids. This year I put some of them aside because we have some small kids in the baby class that often have "accidents". Bryton (pronounced Bray-ton) did exactly that this week. So while his clothes were washed and put out to dry, he had on one of the pair of shorts which he modeled all day for everyone.

We also had our math competition over the last couple of weeks. Once again I am going to be honest with you and not hold back. The baby and middle class did as expected with their counting. The pre-unity preschool class did horrible with only three kids showing they could do the math which I took from one of their tests. Standard I did only slightly better with the teachers complaining it was too difficult of math problems when all I did was take their test questions and change the numbers slightly. Standard II however did a great job showing they not only could handle the questions from their tests in a timed competition but that they could apply the math they had been taught in new and different ways. Even one of the worst students in the class got 12 out 20 questions right and only 14 were based on math they already knew.

Math competition set up. The questions show up on the screen through a timed powerpoint. The kids all have dry erase sheets and markers to work the problem and provide their answers.

When faced with situations like I found in the Pre-Unity class I question what is going on. So we gave them their August Math test again with their normal teacher being sent to another class. The headmaster, Fredy, our newest teacher Augustino and myself proctored the test. I then graded it. In August the class average was 82. This time it was 45. It seems he was teaching them the test before hand and they were memorizing the answers. That teacher will be demoted next year to a lower class so we can bring someone in to help the kids grasp the concepts and not memorize the answers. Unfortunately this is again a common thing here.

Gladness continues to dominate most things Standard II related.

Dorice has come out of left field to start leading her class. (spoiler alert she took top honors on end of year testing also)

Betrice has come on strong and actually showed she could do the math throughout the competition for Pre-Unity

Ester (left) is our top student in Baby Class where she was able to count the fastest. Saliepu was top in Middle Class where he is moving up the ranks also. Teacher Josephine continues to do well with the Middle class.

It continues to rain here. The road from Msitu Wa Tembo to TPC is constantly getting flooded. The condition when not flooded is horrible. The dalla dalla is running less frequently meaning they are always overloaded with passengers and cargo. Fortunately some folks in the area are proving to be enterprising and have planted an off season crop which are doing very well since most of the fields are flooded.