This unpredictable life
- jeremyskoler
- Apr 22, 2018
- 12 min read
2/29/18 - 3/27/18
Today I made soap. It was ridiculous. Every measurement had to be weighed against an equal weight in water in my three-meter-long scale. We only have volume measures and with water’s standard mass it was the only way to get the correct weight of each ingredient. We also only have a couple different measuring cups; I had to use varying sizes in complex patterns to subtract and add different amounts of water in order to reach the target quantity. That said, we ran out of coconut oil and splashed in a little extra lard to make up for it, so it wasn’t the most accurate of procedures. Soap is made with lye, a highly toxic chemical, that combines with oil to become soap. As our recipe isn’t the most accurate, I’m the lucky guy that gets to lick the finished bar to make sure there isn’t too high of a lye level. If there is, I should feel what has only been described as a zap. I want to thank Erin Piorier for all her help and advice about soap making.
I went to staff bicycle club. I brought the bicycle that I had found and gotten fixed by the bike fundi (technician). It has no gears or front brake and the most inefficient back break I’ve ever experienced. It was an adventure for sure. On the downhills I had to desperately try and avoid the students I was accompanying because there was no way to slow down.
I went on a walk with two of the kids to explore the property (and a bit of the neighbor’s). We used different fruit trees as our destinations and wandered around collecting a bounty of sweet treats. There were some berries that were essentially grape-sized passion fruits, a couple questionably ripe guavas, some real passion fruit, coconuts, and a lucky mango. Mangoes are totally not in season but the kids told me there was one tree that was out of seasonal sync and we found a perfect mango on the ground underneath it. There was an attempt to teach me how to climb a coconut tree which ended in abrasions up and down my forearms, although I am determined to master it. The highlight was the passion fruit escapade which involved me on tiptoes with a child on tiptoes on my shoulders. We had a very satisfying snack afterwards.
Juma took me into town and around for the day. We started with a visit to the Stronger Together program which brings together HIV positive youth in a safe environment. It was started by Terri and symbiotically linked to the Baobab Home. The members danced for us and put on a short contortionist show. I saw them riding a tiny unicycle and I’m now determined to find them a larger one. Next we went to some overpriced ruins but I saw a monkey so totally worth it. Also the oldest mosque in Tanzania was there and Juma showered in the holy water from its well. This was good because earlier he’d accidentally disturbed a ritually placed egg at the foot of a baobab, so we figured his karma counter was evened out by the spiritual wash. We then
went to a crocodile farm were we saw varying sized crocodiles in cement enclosures. It wasn’t the most exciting but they did say that if we came back with a chicken we could feed it to the crocodiles. I’m super psyched about that. As we walked back through town we saw a crowd gathering. Someone had brought a knife to stab their brother and now the brother was hiding in a house. Juma casually commented that “Shit happens” and we continued on our way. It’s been nice spending time with him because we spend most of it siting out on the street where I’ve been able to observe the less touristy side of Tanzanian life, that is how I like to see a country. Also, I found a new favorite drink called Stoney Tangawizi which is a super strong ginger soda.
I’ve discovered two things: I really want to be a math teacher, and I could never be a teacher. I’ve loved being in the classroom watching as the students have that “AHA!” moment when they finally understand a concept. Plus math makes sense; teaching people to read the illogical English language is ridiculous. When a kid asks me why the ‘e’ is silent here or the ‘gh’ there I can’t offer much besides “because it is”. Why the 3 is carried in the multiplication problem, however, has a perfectly reasonable answer. That said, I can’t stand when the whole class understands something except for the 4th grader in back, because you can’t stop the lesson to explain it to just them. I watch that student give up, loose interest, and fall farther behind. It’s why I could never be a teacher, because it’s suddenly out of my power to help everyone, it becomes the child’s choice to seek help and this system is not set up for that. So maybe I could tutor, but teaching just doesn’t appeal to me, because no matter what, someone is always behind the others, and without their complete commitment and cooperation it is impossible to catch them back up. At least that is how I’ve seen it in school here. Today I played barefoot soccer until I created massive blisters on the bottom of my feet.
The reading has gotten easier. I have developed techniques, with letter cards I made, to start to reach the students. We have been learning the alphabet, the letter’s sounds and how to piece together sounds to make a word. Today was hugely inspiring as one of my kids got fed up with me because obviously he knew how to piece together sounds. The kid knew half of the letter names when we started, now he’s getting sassy because I’m not moving fast enough, man they pick it up quick. I’m excited and ready to see how they progress during the rest of my stay here. I’ve created a schedule to maximize time with the worst readers and I made a filing system to track everyone’s progress. What a treat to be living through these children’s incredible learning process.
Today one of the orphans taught me how to make a kite. We are saving it for the next windy day; I’m pretty excited. We used a plastic bag, two sticks and strips of material from what I can only describe as a plastic burlap sack. These children are so resourceful!
Today we spent a good hour in the rain pulling nails out of scraps of wood. One of the kids told me he was going to get a rabbit if he could build a cage for it. They kept wanting to start building but I told them we had to gather the wood and nails first so we could make a plan. We took a short break from the work and when I came back one of the kids told me someone was going to build the cage for them. Well that’s probably good, though I was kind of excited to see how proud the kids were of their hand built enclosure.
I was disturbed in my blog writing by a little swarm of tiny red ants marching over my bed and pillow. After 10 minutes of detective Jeremy mode, I found that my bed was between their home and a food source, my backpack, seven meters away. Why they are swarming over my bag beats me as it hasn’t had food in it since I arrived. Their journey begins from a hole in the cement brick doorframe of an abandoned bathroom turned storage closet at the back of my room. They march up and over the doorframe and then along the wall next to my bed. When they reach the head, they wait for the breeze to blow the mosquito net then jump onboard as it brushes the wall. They move down and around the bottom edge before coming back up to make another bold jump onto my bed. From here they cross the pillows and perform the same feat on the mosquito net on the opposite side. When they are on the outside they leap to the adjacent bed, that serves as my closet and shelf, and make for my stuff. I moved the bag and hoped that would disrupt the trail moving across my mattress. Now instead of marching along the edge determined to reach their destination they are scurrying all over the sheets searching for a new place to go. This is not going to be a pleasant night sleep.
Now that rainy season is upon us, I’ve been trying to think up things to keep the kids occupied indoors. We tried cards. One of the orphans had a deck, but those monsters managed to destroy it in two hours, so he won’t let us use them anymore, fair enough. We did origami but then that evolved into them just pestering me to make them things. They haven’t grasped the concept of clean, precise folds. My next brilliant idea was chess. I didn’t really think about the age group I was working with, 2nd through 5th graders. Luckily, I made the genius decision not to play them, just to instruct while they played each other, I lasted three games. I think maybe one of them understands how the pawns move, other than that they would just ask me every turn if they could do this or that until finally, by chance, they guessed a legal move. I thought the fact that we were using multiple rock stand-ins for lost pieces would complicate it more, but really they had no clue which piece was which anyway. Besides the frustration of repeating the same thing a billion times (“Pawns only move forward,” “They don’t jump,” “That isn’t your piece”) I got some smiles. Watching two opponents celebrate a pawn for a queen trade with equal jubilation just made me chuckle. Plus they were all so happy and surprised (frankly so was I) when one of them managed to win. It was a good time, but I think we will stick to reading books from now on.
The children’s ‘mamas’ helped me make coconut oil for our soap. First we cracked open 16 coconuts with a short piece of rebar. Then a tool called a “kibaw chabuzi” (probably not spelled like that) was used to scrap the hard white meat out into a fluffy pile. The tool basically looks like a short stool with a protruding limb wielding a small flat metal piece that has sharp points on all three edges. You sit on the seat and scrape the coconut up and down the blade until the pieces fall into the bowl beneath. Next we mixed the coconut scrapings with water and kneaded the mixture until the water was white. The coconut was removed and wrung out leaving the milky liquid. This was repeated twice. The liquid was left to sit overnight so the oil and water would separate. The next day we scooped the oil from the surface, along with floating white gunk, into a pot. This was boiled until all the water was gone. Then it was boiled some more so the white stuff sunk to the bottom and the pure oil floated to the top. This was poured off and the white stuff was boiled again so more oil could be coaxed from it. This went on for 20 minutes. Now we have coconut oil! Added bonus we filled the cooking space with a delicious roasted coconut smell. So I broke my toe playing soccer barefoot, again. On top of that, I can’t hear from my left ear because it is all blocked. Good news though, both happened at the same time so it meant only one trip to the doctor! Of course he told me I need to come back in three days so he can blast the condensed chunk of wax out of my infected ear, so I guess really it’s taking two trips. The doctor is two to four hours away depending on traffic, so that is a bummer. On the bright side, he is in Dar es Salaam so we were able to conveniently run errands and buy stuff that is otherwise unavailable. Unfortunately, the store didn’t have the tiles we needed, we went to the wrong car shop to buy a blender, and there were too many broken tiles to fit on the way back. Oh, and the store didn’t carry the tape I need for my broken toe or school erasers. Then again, we are headed back in a couple days so we can try to run all the errands again!
I started the three week process of making ginger beer with the kids. We ground up the ginger and mixed it with honey and water. We will keep adding honey and ginger for a week then throw in a bunch of lemon juice and more water and bottle it all up. Two weeks later, if all goes according to plan, we should have ginger beer.
I went to Dar today and on the way back we picked up a bunch of broken tiles for the floors at Baobab. We rented a big truck to carry it all home. Unfortunately, I sat in the window seat in traffic for hours and now only one of my arms is severely sunburned. The kids were extremely curious about my ‘weak skin’. The brand new rain water catchment system on one of the school buildings turned out to be completely inadequate. It had a capacity to hold 880 liters of water. Then I did the math, turns out we can expect over 140,000 liters of water to come off the roof annually. Soon we will be installing two large 5,000 liter tanks. Still inadequate but better than before. Juma and I borrowed the useless 220 liter barrels and built an aquaponic system! First we had to saw two of them in half. This was great for the first 5 cm until the handle on the saw hit the plastic and we could go no further. We had to remove the blade and gripping it in a fist continue all the way around the barrel. It was painstaking. Next, we built a fire and heated a metal rod. This was used to melt holes through the barrels for the plumbing. We scavenged scrap wood and built a small structure to support the system. Now, we are just waiting to get some gravel for the grow beds and fish for the tank!
I invented a new game today that the kids love and doesn’t have complex rules. We stand around pretending to play catch with my frisbee then when the kids least expect it I strike. I grab a screaming, helpless child and throw them over a shoulder. I then lug them wriggling to the dog that they are so afraid of. Once we get close, I lay my flailing offering before the mighty beast. At this point it usually pays no attention and continues licking its privates. If I’m lucky it will lick on of them instead and they will jump ten feet up and scramble away crying tears of joy at having survived. Unfortunately, the orphans figured out that if they fake an injury or start crying I will release them, at which point they spring away laughing and telling everybody about how they tricked me. I got to give that dog kudos for not giving a care in the world. I sure would if frantic children were being dropped around me.
We just finished reading Matilda and now they want to see the movie. I’ve warned them it is nothing like the book, but they insisted. Reading to them was quite a culture shock. I realized how different our worlds are when we started talking about how poor Miss Honey is. It wasn’t far from the conditions the orphans are living in. Explaining why Matilda’s dad had to move the family to Spain to escape the repercussions of his illegal car dealing business was a bit tricky as well. All the cars the kids have seen are broken ones that have been fixed up somewhat sketchily. Nothing, though, beat the conversation about televisions and refrigerators. They were shocked to hear that most people in America have them. “How do the people with televisions make money? No one would pay to watch it if everyone has their own!” Now I have to find a computer and get the movie for them.
The ginger beer adventure ended with a bang, or more like three bangs. We managed to somehow grow the culture even though we messed something up every time we added more ginger and honey to the mixture. From there we began the sticky process of mixing the culture with a lot of water, a pot of honey and some lemon juice. It was made messier by the 10 eager children who all wanted to do everything while simultaneously trying to steal the ingredients for a quick snack. We managed to get the soda all bottled up and stored away in my room. After wiping down the whole porch, it was nice to put the ginger beer out of my mind for the next two weeks while it fermented. A week later, I was talking on the phone with a friend when I heard a loud pop and a sweet gingery odor filled the room. The heat, or something, had sped up the fermentation process and one of the pressurized bottles had reached the max and blown up. The next morning, I checked all the bottles and found that about half were highly pressurized. I planned to crack them open with the kids after school. When I got home from teaching I walked into my room and a cloud of fermented ginger smacked me in the face. Another bottle had exploded. After another half hour clean up I removed all the dangerous bottles and left them outside. The kids, who had eagerly been awaiting the soda, all loved the very sour
carbonated drink. The mamas spit it out. Among some teachers and workers there were mixed opinions. Next time we need more honey. The orphans were excited to crack open the remaining three bottles the next day. I placed them all on the floor of my room facing the wall so if the lids blew off the content wouldn’t go far. What I didn’t account for was the distance the bottle would be propelled backwards, spewing its insect attracting nectar everywhere, which I got to find out the next day upon returning from school. We will probably start another batch very soon. I am back in paradise. My existence is a series of adventures and misadventures that just keep me giggling. What a stunning ending to a life altering year. Thank you Eliza for telling me about this place, you are my hero!!