Final exams

Final exams



Months really fly by in the blink of an eye, still... Last week flew by faster than ever, probably because last Monday was a holiday. Here in Tanzania they value Islamic holidays too, and last week it was something they call “Idi”, though I don’t know its spelling. It’s a two day holiday at the end of their period of fasting, they did so between sunrise and sunset for the past thirty days or so. They do make things a little difficult, since they have to wait for the moon to show up to know when the holiday starts, which we could only know the night before the actual holiday this year. Fortunately for the school one of the two days was on Sunday, which meant we only lost one day of teaching. Somehow time seems to be more precious before an exam.



Half the class was even present that holiday, so we did some teaching anyway. Well, with “we” I mean “I”, in this case - unfortunately Bebe, on of my fellow teachers, got very ill, because of a rather wrong advice from a doctor. She had to be rushed to the hospital. Fortunately, with great amounts of medicine, milk and fruit she’s now doing well again.



The last day of teaching came and went though, right now we’re just supporting the students with their studying as well as we can. Last Friday they had their spelling exam, they had to know about 160 words. Coming Monday they have their written exam, which will probably be a fair bit more difficult. They have to know all active tenses, eight parts of speech, contractions, questions, opposites, irregular verbs, perspectives, how to write out numbers, plurals... On Tuesday they will have their oral exam, so they need to know pronunciation as well. We’re trying to fix the last few errors there too. Especially keeping the r and l apart remains a problem. For instance, in this Christian environment it’s quite common to wish someone to be blessed if you thank them. If you helped Rehema though, she would sincerely wish you to “be breast”.



But that’s corrected now, quite fortunately. After the tests everyone will have to get ready for the graduation. Here in Tanzania, as opposed to many neighbouring countries, they are allowed to wear the typical master’s graduation robes, with the funny square hats. So everyone is of course quite happy with that – the pictures would certainly look nice on their walls. The graduation itself is on coming Friday afternoon. After that, we’ll have to say goodbye to the students... Which may be a hard thing, again. I was sleeping in the same room as all the male students all this time, often sharing stories, talking about things... The subject of same gender love was certainly food for thought for our Maasai Onesmo. Or for being horror-struck, I do suppose. “This world now...” he sighed. I’ll miss them, though I hope to visit some of them again if I’ll get the time.



Yesterday I visited Asheri and his Brittish wife Beverly at their home, which was lovely again. I was able to transfer the money, so that problem seems to have been solved. Asheri and I formed the plan of travelling up to Arusha together, a six hour journey. We want to visit the computer school at the YWAM base there, see how it works and ask the staff the ears from their heads regarding it. We might be able to take back a copy of their curriculum too, which would be of great help. Visiting Joshua, who’ll happen to be there, would be a plus... As would climbing mount Kilimanjaro, though that’s probably just wishful thinking.



Other than that I’m not sure what the coming weeks will bring. I hope to work on the computer school full time, but I think there may be a lot of waiting involved. Bev already welcomed me to work at the primary school, which would be interesting, to say the least...