The Curriculum Begins!

Now, that I’m finally assuming the role as teacher and peer, I am finally moving forward. As part of this curriculum, my first task was to determine what the students wanted to do. So, I had them draw their family, their life now, their life two years from now, and finally, their life ten years from now.

For me, I benefited tremendously, as I realized some wanted to become workshop owners, others wanted to become welding teachers, and some completely different, like hotel management. In the end though, they all wanted a family.

I also talked to them about what makes them different and what skills they have. It was basically just to get them thinking about what they can do with the skills they have. And then I asked them what they valued most—money, happiness, or food. For most of them, if they had to choose one, they would choose money. I figured that would be the result, but with this confirmation, I realized how to focus the curriculum—how can we help the students make more money? For one, it comes with specialization, and I’m going to help them find that.

As for the appropriate technology aspect, it is well on its way. This weekend, I spent the night with one of the students. Grace was an amazing host. We came home, and we immediately went to the duka [store] to buy kerosene. The store owner filled our coke glass with kerosene, and then we were ready to go. We started boiling a pot of water and as we waited, we washed the dishes in a few buckets of water.

I thought the pot of hot water was for food, but the water was actually for me to bathe with. Mixing it with a little bit of cold water, I now had some warm water with which to cleanse myself. I put on the kanga cloth, and with a bar of soap and bucket of water, took my shower.

We made dinner by kerosene light, which consisted of ugali [staple food of Tanzania, dough-like food made from cornmeal] and cabbage. Grace cut the cabbage into tiny shreds, which took nearly an hour. It was definitely a skill, holding the cabbage in one hand, knife in the other. There was no cutting board; I’m sure I would have cut myself. And then after dinner, Grace taught me a bit of Swahili. We learned a few the body parts: kichwa [head], macho [eyes], pua [nose], mdomo [mouth], masikio [ears], mkono [hands], mgongo [back], tumbo [stomach], and nywele [hair]. Then, we were off to bed within the mosquito nets. In the middle of the night, Grace’s sister got up to pray, and in the morning, we arose to wash clothes. And then we had breakfast, and then I went to visit Grace’s family, who were absolutely wonderful.

We spent most of the day cooking lunch, and then we washed clothes; this time it was all the underwear and clothes that Grace’s baby had peed in. At the end of the day, I was completely exhausted, and upon sitting on my bed, I immediately fell asleep.

As for some future inventions, I’m looking at a way to shred vegetables in under 5 minutes, some way to charge batteries pretty cheaply, and of course, a new cookstove, at least for those that require firewood. I’m going to have to do some analysis on how much these things cost and how cheap we can make these things. Updates to come soon!