I think I've learned that the best way to get material to write a blog is to wait long enough for stuff to happen, even if that means just about two weeks. I apologize for not posting anything (although, in my defense, there wasn't much last week). This week on the other hand.... oh boy. It's been psychotic. I am so ready for it to be over and for life to go back to normal for one week and then I'm off to Europe for Christmas with my mom.
Truly, last week was pretty normal, still learning how to teach Class IV and so far science is a lot harder than math. I got to experience my very first skype failure; I tried to talk to someone on skype and it just didn't work. The internet here can be very entertaining. Sometimes it works great, other times it's terrible. Sometimes your email will work, sometimes it won't, sometimes facebook is on byt skype is off, it's keep you on your toes. I always find this entertaining because at my missionary training we were asked to name one pet peeve, and I said slow internet to which the room groaned empathetically (I didn't quite realize the internet situation at the time). For the most part, it works. I've learned to be flexible and always have non internet activities ready. I've been waiting for this to happen with skype. So far, I've always gotten my skypes to eventually work some, but this one just didn't. However, I ended up later having a perfect skype with that friend and then later another perfect skype with a different friend, so that was wonderful!
This week was annual exams at the school; since our school year runs with the calendar year, the students have end-of-the-year exams, then we for some reason do one more week of class, and they have a month off for Christmas. I'm spending two of those week in Europe, the other two here. Anyway, although the school made sufficient effort to be organized and timely about the exams (they actually had a printed time table!) we got off by Tuesday because the printer didn't have a number of exams ready. We ended up having to do exams Thursday as well, and then Friday the class teachers spent the day compiling scores into yearly reports, all by hand. It really was a boring week in a sense too then. It was just an odd tension all around. Our whole job during test days was for all the teachers to sit in the empty classroom, the one I use math for, waiting for test times because they became very unpredictable in timing. Meanwhile, we were correcting, which went relatively fast, sometimes teaching Class IV who didn't have to test because they just took national exams, but mostly just not knowing what was going on. After a few days, it's very tiring. I did at least help with the marking (correcting) so I'll felt like I at least contributed. Interestingly, I corrected the Swahili exams; I even got a few right! :D
This Sunday is also the church's youth service. We've been preparing pretty much since I got here. I'm so ready for it to be over for a whole host of reasons. The biggest is I was asked to give the message, and I am utterly terrified. This isn't just any old sermon, this is the message for the Youth Service. This is like a mega service; usually our services are two hours long, this will be three to four. There will be tons of music, a drama, a meal, and my sermon. Please, everyone, pray for me. Multiple times a day, or hour or minute. I have been an orator, debater, tutor, teacher, but I really don't think I'm a preacher. Especially for a minimally twenty minutes speech. This may come as a shock to some people who know me, but I don't like to give long speeches. I'm a former philsophy major and debater; we were drilled with make your point, move on. Here the opposite is expected. There are many Sundays where we can tell that Sunday School is going long, which means the sermon is going long. I have seen some up to 45 or 50 minutes. Mine will have to be translated, so it will automatically double in time, but my portion alone needs to be twenty minutes. Thus far, I'm doing something very similar to what I've talked about before, 1 Timothy 4:12. I'm talking about the role God wants for youth in the church and how we can fulfil that. I'm really focusing on how we're Christians today, not of the future. Again, still no idea how culturally relevant this actually is. There will be a blog entry about this, so, stay tuned for next week's episode!
At the same time as this other stuff, the church hosted a seminar for Tanzanian and Congolese pastors this week. A pastor from Florida came! It was really fun getting to discuss with someone else life here and working internationally with the chuch. He has a lot of great ideas, and is really enthusiastic about Tanzania and the people here. He introduced some really counter cultural ideas in the seminar such as financial transperancy and time management. I know those seem like overdone topics in America, but here they're not heard of. Time is a funny thing here. It exists but that's kind of far as it goes. Money in smaller amounts is also not as managed. Hopefully some of the things got through.
Ironically, this whole blog was supposed to be about this next issue for other reasons. Then, the Floridian pastor mentioned this to me, and we had a very long chat about it. It's not something new to me being here, but it's been on my mind a lot more recently. Last Sunday, the pastor's daughter was in Dar on Sunday, so I was more or less the head teacher for Sunday school. I had a ton of kids, and they don't speak as much English. I can't really yell at them then if need be or scold them or anything. I have to have one of them translate, and I don't even know their names. I really struggled controlling them that day, and I was visibly frustrated. These kids are at least 8 or 9 years old, they know better. In Tanzanian culture, children are taught to respect their elders. I am clearly older, and I'm a mzungu! I don't usually have so many problems with this. After the class, the girl who was translating for me (who is also a Class IV student and I know fairly well) looked at me and said,
"Madam, you need to hit them. Then they will listen to you."
I didn't realize that she didn't know I would never beat her. I just looked at her and said,
"Dear, we don't beat in the US. I will never hit you." And she was floored.
Now that I'm in a full teaching position, corporeral punishment has been on my mind a lot more. It's a pretty big thing here. I was at least warned by my coworkers this summer (many of whom are native Africans) that I would probably see it. The reality is some days I feel swarmed by it. Parents do it at home. Teachers walk into a classroom with sticks. I've actually reached the point where I can tell you just by the sound of a whack how much it actually hurt. Sometimes, when it's just the kid's bottom or even the arm, because the sticks are relatively thin, they don't hurt that much. However, getting hit to the back of the hand, calves, or the face always hurts. Depending on the teacher, they will use the stick for discipline, noise control, etc., but many will beat students for poor academic performance. There is one teacher in particular who students are terrified to make a peep in her classroom or do poorly (and sadly, it's one of our worst subjects).
It took me a long time to learn how to stomach it, but I'm not here to tell these people that this is wrong. It's a cultural practice. They aren't trying to hurt the children for the sake of pain but for discipline. I rarely see them overdue it or do it for pleasure; it is purely about rearing children, and everyone (including people associated with the church) does it. I don't mean these as reasons to excuse the act. No matter what, I think it's wrong, but it helps me to understand why such an act seems reasonable. And everyone grew up with it. When they were in primary school, they were beat. Thus, as adults, they see that as the reasonable response when a child is misbehaving. Children then grow to expect it, and this is where the problem lies. Insert a teacher who refuses to pick up a stick but does need to discipline at some times, your options become an issue.
So far at school, I haven't had too many problems with this. We've come up with other options to avoid beating. Sometimes we assign lines, we'll make the students kneel beside their desks (which doesn't seem terribly awful, but they hate it!) or even running around the building a few times. If worst comes to worst, we can send them to the head teacher's office. I have threatened this a few times, but this almost an empty threat. If I do that, all he's going to do is yell at them, beat them, and send them back. I really didn't avoid the beating that way; I just made someone else do it.
As a missionary, I'm here to spread the word of God. The only standard I feel I can judge by is that of the bible; western culture is not something I'm here to promote. Obviously, hitting a child with a stick in American would consitute immediate termination in a school setting like mine, and probably lawsuits. Here, it's everyday life. These cultural differences are something that the visiting pastor and I ended up talking about; for him in the seminar, such topics as time management are really American minded. Those are not African concepts, but he presented them as good ideas in general, not because Americans say so. He really had a very loving and respectful attitude towards Tanzania, something I appreciated so much. Some missionaries aren't as conscientious of their attitudes sometimes (and I might be just as guilty, although I do make an honest effort to not do it).
He did say that the one Western concept that he does challenge Tanzanians on is corporeral punishment. The head teacher took him on a tour of the school, and somewhere in the process this came up. He was pretty honest with the teacher; some people in America would be upset and unwilling to support the school if they learned that this is something that happens. The head teacher was pretty shocked apparently, and they had a good discussion on it. As the American pastor pointed out, here they would never beat a teacher, there are other ways to punish that they recognize. Therefore, there should be other ways to discipline children that don't involve physical hurting a child.
I'm very glad this conversation happened. It's something I would love to say, but as the pastor and I talked about later, I don't have that opportunity. He so bluntly put it as "I'm only here for a few days, and quite frankly, I'm from a large church with a lot of money. I can say something. You have to stay here for months, you really can't." And he's right. This sadly isn't worth causing contention over because I alone can't change the attitude here. People would likely be more offended, and no more likely to change their minds. In the meantime, I'm doing my best to show alternatives and hope that my example will say something, even if only quietly.
Ok, that's enough for now, so much is going to happen in the next few weeks. In a way, I'm looking foward to January when the school year starts again and we have a few months of just school. Nothing crazy. I hope your Christmas season has started off joyously and continues to do so!
God bless,
Kjirstin
PS: My advance account got set up! If you feel like called to donate to me, here is the link:
https://www.umcmission.org/Give-to-Mission/Donate?type=1001&project=982465
Go to the drop down list of place to donate, find my name, and fill out the rest. Thank you so much!
Truly, last week was pretty normal, still learning how to teach Class IV and so far science is a lot harder than math. I got to experience my very first skype failure; I tried to talk to someone on skype and it just didn't work. The internet here can be very entertaining. Sometimes it works great, other times it's terrible. Sometimes your email will work, sometimes it won't, sometimes facebook is on byt skype is off, it's keep you on your toes. I always find this entertaining because at my missionary training we were asked to name one pet peeve, and I said slow internet to which the room groaned empathetically (I didn't quite realize the internet situation at the time). For the most part, it works. I've learned to be flexible and always have non internet activities ready. I've been waiting for this to happen with skype. So far, I've always gotten my skypes to eventually work some, but this one just didn't. However, I ended up later having a perfect skype with that friend and then later another perfect skype with a different friend, so that was wonderful!
This week was annual exams at the school; since our school year runs with the calendar year, the students have end-of-the-year exams, then we for some reason do one more week of class, and they have a month off for Christmas. I'm spending two of those week in Europe, the other two here. Anyway, although the school made sufficient effort to be organized and timely about the exams (they actually had a printed time table!) we got off by Tuesday because the printer didn't have a number of exams ready. We ended up having to do exams Thursday as well, and then Friday the class teachers spent the day compiling scores into yearly reports, all by hand. It really was a boring week in a sense too then. It was just an odd tension all around. Our whole job during test days was for all the teachers to sit in the empty classroom, the one I use math for, waiting for test times because they became very unpredictable in timing. Meanwhile, we were correcting, which went relatively fast, sometimes teaching Class IV who didn't have to test because they just took national exams, but mostly just not knowing what was going on. After a few days, it's very tiring. I did at least help with the marking (correcting) so I'll felt like I at least contributed. Interestingly, I corrected the Swahili exams; I even got a few right! :D
This Sunday is also the church's youth service. We've been preparing pretty much since I got here. I'm so ready for it to be over for a whole host of reasons. The biggest is I was asked to give the message, and I am utterly terrified. This isn't just any old sermon, this is the message for the Youth Service. This is like a mega service; usually our services are two hours long, this will be three to four. There will be tons of music, a drama, a meal, and my sermon. Please, everyone, pray for me. Multiple times a day, or hour or minute. I have been an orator, debater, tutor, teacher, but I really don't think I'm a preacher. Especially for a minimally twenty minutes speech. This may come as a shock to some people who know me, but I don't like to give long speeches. I'm a former philsophy major and debater; we were drilled with make your point, move on. Here the opposite is expected. There are many Sundays where we can tell that Sunday School is going long, which means the sermon is going long. I have seen some up to 45 or 50 minutes. Mine will have to be translated, so it will automatically double in time, but my portion alone needs to be twenty minutes. Thus far, I'm doing something very similar to what I've talked about before, 1 Timothy 4:12. I'm talking about the role God wants for youth in the church and how we can fulfil that. I'm really focusing on how we're Christians today, not of the future. Again, still no idea how culturally relevant this actually is. There will be a blog entry about this, so, stay tuned for next week's episode!
At the same time as this other stuff, the church hosted a seminar for Tanzanian and Congolese pastors this week. A pastor from Florida came! It was really fun getting to discuss with someone else life here and working internationally with the chuch. He has a lot of great ideas, and is really enthusiastic about Tanzania and the people here. He introduced some really counter cultural ideas in the seminar such as financial transperancy and time management. I know those seem like overdone topics in America, but here they're not heard of. Time is a funny thing here. It exists but that's kind of far as it goes. Money in smaller amounts is also not as managed. Hopefully some of the things got through.
Ironically, this whole blog was supposed to be about this next issue for other reasons. Then, the Floridian pastor mentioned this to me, and we had a very long chat about it. It's not something new to me being here, but it's been on my mind a lot more recently. Last Sunday, the pastor's daughter was in Dar on Sunday, so I was more or less the head teacher for Sunday school. I had a ton of kids, and they don't speak as much English. I can't really yell at them then if need be or scold them or anything. I have to have one of them translate, and I don't even know their names. I really struggled controlling them that day, and I was visibly frustrated. These kids are at least 8 or 9 years old, they know better. In Tanzanian culture, children are taught to respect their elders. I am clearly older, and I'm a mzungu! I don't usually have so many problems with this. After the class, the girl who was translating for me (who is also a Class IV student and I know fairly well) looked at me and said,
"Madam, you need to hit them. Then they will listen to you."
I didn't realize that she didn't know I would never beat her. I just looked at her and said,
"Dear, we don't beat in the US. I will never hit you." And she was floored.
Now that I'm in a full teaching position, corporeral punishment has been on my mind a lot more. It's a pretty big thing here. I was at least warned by my coworkers this summer (many of whom are native Africans) that I would probably see it. The reality is some days I feel swarmed by it. Parents do it at home. Teachers walk into a classroom with sticks. I've actually reached the point where I can tell you just by the sound of a whack how much it actually hurt. Sometimes, when it's just the kid's bottom or even the arm, because the sticks are relatively thin, they don't hurt that much. However, getting hit to the back of the hand, calves, or the face always hurts. Depending on the teacher, they will use the stick for discipline, noise control, etc., but many will beat students for poor academic performance. There is one teacher in particular who students are terrified to make a peep in her classroom or do poorly (and sadly, it's one of our worst subjects).
It took me a long time to learn how to stomach it, but I'm not here to tell these people that this is wrong. It's a cultural practice. They aren't trying to hurt the children for the sake of pain but for discipline. I rarely see them overdue it or do it for pleasure; it is purely about rearing children, and everyone (including people associated with the church) does it. I don't mean these as reasons to excuse the act. No matter what, I think it's wrong, but it helps me to understand why such an act seems reasonable. And everyone grew up with it. When they were in primary school, they were beat. Thus, as adults, they see that as the reasonable response when a child is misbehaving. Children then grow to expect it, and this is where the problem lies. Insert a teacher who refuses to pick up a stick but does need to discipline at some times, your options become an issue.
So far at school, I haven't had too many problems with this. We've come up with other options to avoid beating. Sometimes we assign lines, we'll make the students kneel beside their desks (which doesn't seem terribly awful, but they hate it!) or even running around the building a few times. If worst comes to worst, we can send them to the head teacher's office. I have threatened this a few times, but this almost an empty threat. If I do that, all he's going to do is yell at them, beat them, and send them back. I really didn't avoid the beating that way; I just made someone else do it.
As a missionary, I'm here to spread the word of God. The only standard I feel I can judge by is that of the bible; western culture is not something I'm here to promote. Obviously, hitting a child with a stick in American would consitute immediate termination in a school setting like mine, and probably lawsuits. Here, it's everyday life. These cultural differences are something that the visiting pastor and I ended up talking about; for him in the seminar, such topics as time management are really American minded. Those are not African concepts, but he presented them as good ideas in general, not because Americans say so. He really had a very loving and respectful attitude towards Tanzania, something I appreciated so much. Some missionaries aren't as conscientious of their attitudes sometimes (and I might be just as guilty, although I do make an honest effort to not do it).
He did say that the one Western concept that he does challenge Tanzanians on is corporeral punishment. The head teacher took him on a tour of the school, and somewhere in the process this came up. He was pretty honest with the teacher; some people in America would be upset and unwilling to support the school if they learned that this is something that happens. The head teacher was pretty shocked apparently, and they had a good discussion on it. As the American pastor pointed out, here they would never beat a teacher, there are other ways to punish that they recognize. Therefore, there should be other ways to discipline children that don't involve physical hurting a child.
I'm very glad this conversation happened. It's something I would love to say, but as the pastor and I talked about later, I don't have that opportunity. He so bluntly put it as "I'm only here for a few days, and quite frankly, I'm from a large church with a lot of money. I can say something. You have to stay here for months, you really can't." And he's right. This sadly isn't worth causing contention over because I alone can't change the attitude here. People would likely be more offended, and no more likely to change their minds. In the meantime, I'm doing my best to show alternatives and hope that my example will say something, even if only quietly.
Ok, that's enough for now, so much is going to happen in the next few weeks. In a way, I'm looking foward to January when the school year starts again and we have a few months of just school. Nothing crazy. I hope your Christmas season has started off joyously and continues to do so!
God bless,
Kjirstin
PS: My advance account got set up! If you feel like called to donate to me, here is the link:
https://www.umcmission.org/Give-to-Mission/Donate?type=1001&project=982465
Go to the drop down list of place to donate, find my name, and fill out the rest. Thank you so much!
Kjirstin - glad to hear that you didn't get frustrated enough to hit the kids who were misbehaving! As I was reading this I thought, Oh no, she lost her temper and hit them - but no, I'm glad :-) It is wonderful that you and Christine are showing them examples of other ways to discipline the children without hitting them. Maybe when they grow up, they will make their own children kneel in the corner rather than beating them, and you will have made a difference for those kids. Keep up the good work Sunshine!
ReplyDeleteThis is a delightful post... Because you're sharing your feelings. And exploring cultural Norma. And perhaps making decisions about how to discipline others. Very profound. The other day I was given a copy of The Anatomy of Peace. I haven't touched it, so I can't endorse it. But I am struck by the peace ethic of Quakers. And when I lived and worked with them I was astounded at how violence was expressed in verbal or passive aggressive ways. Perhaps you will add some nits insight nto the universal struggles we seem to have about violence...
ReplyDelete