Form V's took their final exams this week and then left for a month-long break. That meant invigilating (proctoring) exams again. This time, I made sure that they all had pencils and many used them as straight edgse as well. I did not proctor exams needing calculators, and the students used leftover national exam answer booklets to write their responses in. The wind was not blowing through the broken windows, and the rain was not dripping through the roof, so there really was not much to do, other than to think.
Have you ever experienced a moment of confusion, like the feeling you get when you fall asleep in the afternoon and then wake up thinking that it is morning and that you are late for work? That sudden jolt? That moment of disorientation when you wonder, where am I? This can't be real! I have felt this way many times. In fact I wrote a poem about it many years ago, and it has seemed to fit every phase of my life:
At times I seem to step out of myself
And I see a strange woman
Living a life I never imagined.
But I do not know her
Then they call her by my name
And she turns and I am surprised to see
That she is me!
I have become reacquainted with this feeling here in Tanzania. Standing in the classroom watching the students writing so furiously, I thought about how important a single test grade is to their future education. I thought about how much American students take their education for granted. The disparity was so overwhelming that I felt like this could not be real. I looked out the window and saw a parade of students coming up the hill carrying big sacks of flour. (Deliveries are made to the shop by the road. Students carry them to the school). I looked out the back window to see the progress on the new classroom building. There was a group of students shoveling dirt/sand into empty sacks and carrying them away on their heads. Another group was mixing cement. This is all during the school day. What about learning? Why were they not in the classroom? Was this punishment? Or was this reward? Probably neither, it is just part of an ordinary school day. Students do all of the work at school, cleaning, chopping grass with long blades, picking up trash, sweeping classrooms, carrying heavy loads. It seems odd to me, but that is life in a developing country. Then I think about our own traditional school calendar. Wasn't that designed to give the students time to work in the fields and on the farms?
Each exam is three hours long and there is no place to sit, so I look for distractions. The first that I found was a cute little baby lizard, with a little baby face and a little lizard tail. He was running across the floor in the front of the room straight towards me. Oh no! I am the only thing in the front of the room. What if he thinks I am a tree or something and runs up my leg. That would be awkward. So I tried to distract him without being a distraction myself. However, I only ended up diverting him toward the students! I did not want someone to unknowingly step on him, so I had to detour him again. My efforts were successful, and I had him turned around, and then I saw the spider, bigger than the lizard! I turned my attention to it until I was sure that it had crawled up the wall. Then when I looked for my lizard again, he was gone! See, you do not want me to tend your goats. I cannot even look after a small lizard in a classroom. (I checked thoroughly after all the students had left the room and I did not see any signs of the lizard, so I believe he found his way out safely).
After losing the lizard, I noticed another group of students come out to the school yard, followed by a teacher with a stick and a teacher with a small board. The students were told to squat and put their hands on their hips and bounce up and down. This went on for about five minutes while the teachers chatted (they are both nice people) and occasionally smacked students who were not doing the exercise correctly. I was relieved when I saw all the students stand. I thought it was over, but no, now they all squatted in a chair pose and held that for about five minutes. Then the boys began doing push ups while the girls resumed the original squat and bounce pose. When the punishment truly ended, the students lined up for their two smacks with the stick or the board, and then they returned to the classroom.
Corporal punishment is part of the culture here. Students and parents expect it. Teachers are expected to administer it. It is their life. However, for me, it was one of those "where am I?" experiences. "This cannot be real!" I especially felt this way when I saw students called before the whole morning assembly for a public beating. They were to be an example to others not to get caught drinking on school grounds. After the beating, the students were suspended for three weeks. Another morning when I arrived at school, there were some small girls kneeling on the staff room floor. A teacher told them to hold out their hands, and then he smacked them so hard that the stick broke. The girls then held their hands in the air and wiggled their fingers back and forth and tried hard not to cry. They may be tough, but I could not help the tears in my eyes. Students are hit for misbehaving, for being tardy, and for failing tests! Sometimes they are even hit for things they did not do. How different it is from our schools.
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