First of all, I am finding this so incredibly hard to write because I cannot figure out how to express the feelings I am having and the impact of my surroundings. I will try to do my best, but I will still not be satisfied in the end.
This morning I met with Aliza, the house manager, and she showed me how to get to my placement, St. Dymphina Special Needs School. We left the volunteer house and walked to the Oil Com (what is supposed to serve as a gas station). This is about a 5 minute walk if you are walking fast and it is where we can meet the dala dala if we need it. So we hopped onto a dala dala, the ride was pretty short so it only cost 200 shillings (about 12 cents). From there we walked about a mile uphill to the school. Not only uphill, but the roads here are dirt with gravel and huge jagged rocks jutting out everywhere. I have never been more thankful of the solid/flat/paved roads that we have in the US. The walk did wonders for the cramping that was already in my legs from Saturday’s waterfall hike.
I wish that photos and words could begin to describe St. Dymphina Special Needs School. I fell in love as soon as I walked into the school, but I was also very quickly overwhelmed. I didn’t bring anything with me today because I wasn’t sure if there would be a safe place to store it, but soon I will take my camera to take some photos of the building and the kids, and possibly a video.
The building is concrete and everywhere you look there is a part of the structure unfinished. The floors are pure dirt and there is dust everywhere. The playground consists of two swing sets, both of them metal and rusty, one of them is so rusty that the metal has eaten through it and it is no longer safe to swing on. There are four classrooms. One for the little bitty kids, one for the middle kids, one for the autistic kids and then the professional classroom that is the older kids. The classrooms are all painted with murals, the ABS’c and numbers, so they are relatively nice.
First thing in the morning they line up and we sing Tanzania’s national anthem. Well, they do, I do not know it and may not ever know it considering it is in Swahili. Next we all sing a song in English that has them practice their social skills by interacting with each other and us. The words are pretty funny and maybe once I learn it better I can write it on here. After this they had a bathroom break. The bathrooms the children use are squaters and they do not use toilet paper. I kind of expected this but it is still bazaar.
After this they break up into their classrooms. For about 45 minutes Mama Mary, who is the owner of the school and a certified special needs teacher, gave us an orientation and tour. She told us the history of the school and how she started the school in her home with one classroom. The school is not funded in any way by the government so all advancements are made by donations. Mama Mary is very passionate about working with special needs children and told us how people always ask her why she is spending her life making no profit off of all her hard work and she tells them, “If I can help a child in need, I will be blessed in the eyes of God.” She told us there were two special needs teachers that we certified in Tanzania, her and one other woman in Dar. When we asked she also told us that 92% of special needs children in Tanzania are not in any type of school. And that if they are in a regular government school with no special needs program, the school will not transfer them to a better placement after realizing their needs, because they are receiving money for that child and do not want to go without it. So the children will get passed from one grade to the next and will graduate not knowing how to read or write.
Their are two speech therapists volunteering the same time as I am so I chose to be with the littles children so that they could use their skills with the older children that are closer to learning English. My children, as far as I know, are from ages 3-7. Usually in pre-school, Tanzanian children are learning English very well and understand the concept of counting and letters. But in a special needs school, they have a hard enough time learning their Swahili, so none of my children speak hardly any English. Most of them can barely color with crayons. But there are a few I have seen that are pretty bright.
I have a few children with down syndrome in my class, a little boy with dwarfism, and the rest I am unsure of right now. Once I learn the background stories of the children I will be sure to let you know! They all have hard backgrounds and life’s because a disability in Africa is not understood by the people, even the parents most times. All the toys they have are old, broken and dirty. They play mainly with blocks on a straw rug on the floor, this helps with their dexterity, etc. We played for about an hour and then it was “tea time” for us and “porridge time” for them. I have never liked hot tea, but it is rude to not accept so I choked down a FULL cup of lemongrass tea. Although, I did politely refuse a second cup. After tea I went back to the little kids classroom and the teacher had them all sitting at a table coloring, some of them will not color and those that do scribble. She also uses the dot method to try to teach them to trace numbers and letters. There is one child out of the six than can do this.
The teachers at the school have no certification but have a little bit of training from Mama Mary. I didn’t quite know what to do during this time because the children do not speak English and the young girl who is the teacher does not either. So I just walked around praising the kids and clapping for them.
For lunch the children all gather and we go back into Mama Mary’s house for our lunch with her. I am not sure what the children ate today but we had a surprisingly good meal. We had white rice, beans, a pea and carrot dish with a ginger sauce and a green bean and carrot dish that was so very good. I am surprised I enjoyed it so much because I have been in a rut the last few days because I have been needing something so familiar and have been craving Western food. Yesterday I felt that if I ate rice and beans one more time I would go crazy. We ate it and I did not go crazy, my craving just got worse. So when I saw the rice, beans and veggies today for lunch I was not so excited, but it was good! Needless to say I think tomorrow night we are going to go out for dinner at McMoody’s. It is a Tanzanian restaurant that serves Western food. Hamburgers, pizza, chicken strips. I cannot wait...!!!!! Mama Mary kept telling us to eat more and more and more and I ate until I was stuffed. Tomorrow I would like to see what the children eat. I am assuming they eat rice and beans. They have to eat soft foods because most of them have poor facial/mouth muscles from their disabilities and lack of talking.
After lunch the professional class works on bead making. I talked about in an earlier post how they are teaching the older children to make goods so that they will be able to support themselves when they get released from the school. They have a small store where they sell their products. The rest of the children do different things after lunch every day and today’s activity was they sat on a straw rug under a tree and listened, or tried to listen to a book being read. I got to spend some good cuddling time during the story. Sammy, the little boy with dwarfism loves to hold hands, and Lucina (down syndrome) loves to sit in my lap.
For now on the school bus (a metal jeep with way too few seats) will pick me up from the Oil Com stop and also drop me off there after school. Today I got to ride the bus back and those rough rocky roads are even worse under a dala dala. I have hear horror stories from other volunteers of these dala’s tipping over because of the terrain. The ride was so bumpy that my body came off of the seat multiple times. I do not know how their tires do not pop and their tires rims do not bend. Or maybe they are, and they still drive on them.
Sammy also has horrible rales when he breathes, so bad that you can hear them sitting across the room. Mama Mary said that she isn’t sure how long this has been going on but that if he needs to, they will try and take him to the hospital. I will take my stethoscope tomorrow and try to see what I can hear, hopefully it is just a cough and will go away. All of the kids have runny noses and drool, and for someone who is not a germ freak.. I have used a LOT of hand sanitizer today.
Something I have noticed a lot already is that in Africa, nurses are basically doctors. Mama Mary knows that I just finished nursing school and is already asking my opinion about Sammy. She also called me over during outside play time to tell me about a boy who they say has “chiggers” which they pronounce “jiggers” and they say he itches all over his body. Tomorrow they want to undress him so I can take a look at his skin and see what I think. In my mind, it is probably not chiggers... possibly scabies? I guess I will take a picture and see if I can figure something out. But really he needs to just be seen by a doctor. I tried to explain to her that I am not a doctor or even a practicing nurse.. but they just do not see it that way here. I feel a lot of pressure and have a feeling I will keep being asked to take a look at different children. I wish I had more experience.
Something very cool is that tonight I did take some stitches out of a fellow volunteers foot. Pretty neat.
For dinner we had “Chips Miaye” and “Chips kuku.” Chips are french fries and Miaye is eggs. So “Chips Miaye” is an omelette type egg with french fries cooked into it. Pretty strange but not too bad if you eat it with hot sauce. “Chips kuku” is fries with chicken. We have had this twice in the three days I have been here. It is definitely a nice change from rice and beans though. I just realized today that the chicken, after cooked, still has hairs on it. But I still ate it, this is how desperate for familiarity I am!
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