More Pictures and Cultural Experiences from the Maasai and Wahaya

Ok, so I am finally up to date and have uploaded all the pictures I have taken. Here are the photos from my safari during orientation!

http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=1515420026&k=56DT6XTXUYYMZ1B1RE5YR

I suppose I should update you on what I've been up to since my last real post. I leave for Zanzibar on Sunday for my spring break trip! We will travel from Arusha to Tanga (5 hours) on Sunday and visit the Amboni Caves. On Monday, we will travel from Tanga to Dar es Salaam (another 5 hours) and then take the 2 hour ferry from Dar to Zanzibar. We will spend Tuesday in Stone Town (Zanzibar's main city) and visit slave trade sites around the city and go on a spice tour. Zanzibar is a spice island and I've heard the tours are very cool. Wednesday will be beach day. Yes! Thursday, we will head back to Dar and then drive up to Bagamoyo and visit another slave site and then spend the night in Dar. Friday, we will drive 10 hours back to Arusha, yuck! It will be a week full of driving, but I think it will be worth it and I am so excited for this trip after the week that I have had.

I've been taking midterms and working on projects all week which is so lame, but I'm almost finished. I spent most of yesterday afternoon and this morning running around like a crazy person trying get all of the shots I needed for my photography midterm before it started raining/got dark, but I finished! I have to turn in a project on the conflict in Uganda for Peace and Conflict Resolution Issues and take a midterm for Social and Economic Issues tomorrow. The Ugandan conflict project has been a lot of work because the conflict's been going on for 20 years and is super complicated, but at least it's interesting and it's not a project I would normally get to do.

Last Friday, I visited a school for Maasai girls and it was absolutely incredible. The school system in Tanzania consists of free primary school (grades 1-7) and then secondary school (8-12) that can be public or private (both have fees though). The school I visited, called the Emusoi school, is a secondary prep school, because many students fail their secondary school entrance exams. Secondary schools are very competitive because spaces are so limited. Before primary schools became free, there was room in the secondary schools, but now that there are so many more students, there isn't room for all of them. The free primary school initiative is relatively new and most primary schools are overcrowded, because of the increase in attendance after the schools became free, and many kids don't get the education in primary school that they need to move on to secondary school. That's where Emusoi comes in. Many of the girls are completely illiterate and innumerate upon arrival and the teachers usually have one year to catch them up. This reminds me a lot of my High School Practicum at Trinity where I tutored a student in science so she could pass TAKS (Texas' standardized test) and graduate. The only difference is that my student could read and write and add and speak English... Let's just say I have a lot of respect for Emusoi's teachers.

Emusoi is also a school specifically for Maasai girls. The majority of these girls have run away from home in order to avoid being married off (the girls are between 13 and 16 years old) and some of the girls that live on campus are attending secondary schools, but can't go home or they will be married. Most of the girls don't speak English or very much, which is yet another problem as all secondary schools are taught in English. The main reason they never learned English is that primary schools are taught in Swahili, even though the Maasai don't speak Swahili, but Maa. So the girls that get to go to school have to learn Swahili and then learn English from Swahili in a classroom with up to 200 other primary school age children with one teacher. Needless to say, the system is flawed.

Emusoi is very small, only 2 classrooms for about 90 girls, but seems like a really great place. We arrived at the end of their school day and came into the classroom and Kate, on of the directors of the school, introduced us and told the girls we would be playing outside with them. Their faces lit up and Kate asked them if they could show us how they could count and they went around the room counting off from 1. Each girl looked so proud and so excited to show what she knew as she shouted out 14! 15! 16! Then Kate asked them if they would show us some songs they knew. They sang us some songs in English that they knew like "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes".

Then Kate sent us outside with 85 girls running behind us with 2 soccer balls. All of my years of camp could never have prepared me for entertaining 85 teenage girls with 2 soccer balls. We were a little overwhelmed at first as they all looked at us with excitement about what we were going to do. We attempted to teach them how to play freeze tag, but that was pretty difficult as they don't speak English and we don't know any useful Swahili words. It ended up as a "run away from the white girls" game for about 30 seconds, but they liked to touch us too much so it faded quickly. Anyway, we ended up in a huge circle and kicked the ball around for a while, but eventually ended up in smaller circles where the girls taught us some songs and dances. They taught us traditional Maasai songs and how to do this crazy dance where you jump up and down and move your shoulders back and forth "like a kuku" (chicken) as one of the girls told me. I'm sure I looked like a complete idiot, but it was so fun.

After an hour or so, it started to rain so we ran under the porch and the girls taught me how to count to 10 in Maa. I don't remember any of it, unfortunately, but I do remember the Maasai song they taught me. This girl named Namnyaki, who was 13 and probably one of the youngest around, had a pen and wrote "I love you" on her hand and turned it around and showed it to me. I almost died. She was so sweet. Then she asked me to spell my name on her hand so I did and then the other girls passed the pen around and wrote their names on their hands to show me how they could spell. They were all so beautiful and I cannot wait to go back to see them after Zanzibar.

My other exciting cultural event happened on Tuesday at Makumira University (the school where we go to music class). We had a group from the Wahaya tribe who live near Lake Victoria come and perform for us. They drummed and sang and danced. It was beyond cool. Then, out of nowhere, one of the dancers comes up to me, grabs my hand and pulls me up to dance with her in front of everyone. Most of you know that I am not a dancer, nor have I ever claimed to be, but that does not seem to deter anyone here from trying to teach me. I danced with them for a minute or two and then snuck back to my seat. A few songs later, they grabbed some of the other students (and me, again) to dance some more. The professor that organized the visit is also planning a weekend homestay in a Maasai village for the weekend after we get back from Zanzibar and possibly one with the Chaga tribe that live on Kilimajaro. It looks like things are really starting to pick up and I'm getting to spend a lot more time doing fun cultural things and less time in the classroom. Hooray!