Invigilating Exams

December 22, 2009

It is two days before the night before Christmas but I want to wish you all a wonderful holiday while I am here in Moshi and have access to the internet.  Last night it rained quite hard, but when I woke up this morning, the sun was shining and there was snow on the mountain peak.  (Mawenzie Peak, Mt. Kilimanjaro. I took a picture from my bedroom window.  I can also see the top of Kibo peak from my school.  That one always has a snow cap.  Mt. Kilimanjaro's peaks are not quite as impressive when you are living halfway up the mountain).  I hope you all have a beautiful white Christmas.

Today I invigilated (proctored/administered) the last exam before the holiday break.  The procedures for giving exams are a bit different here in Tanzania.  Actually, I am not sure if there are any real procedures.  Each teacher writes out their exam on loose leaf paper and then the secretary types it up on the computer and then photocopies it.  Unfortunately, we had no power for four days straight and then only intermittently after that, so she had to type the exams on an old manual typewriter and then have someone take them to town to be copied.  This does not mean jumping in your car and driving to Kinkos.  It means walking down to the road and waiting for a crowded bus to come along and hoping that it stops to pick you up.  When you get to town, you find a shop that has electricity and a photocopier that works,then you wait in line while the employees attend to other business.  In Tanzania about the only thing you have is time.  After awhile your copies are done, and you carry them back to the bus stand, board another crowded bus (you are probably standing tightly crushed between several other people or maybe even sitting on some poor soul's lap), but eventually you make it back to school.  The remarkable thing is that during this several hour delay, the students have been sitting in their classrooms studying unsupervised.  After all, where would they go?

 In North Carolina we were always required to attend test training before giving exams.  Here the second master hands me a pile of exams and says to invigilate the form 6 PCM physics exam.  (We cannot give our own exams). I don't have to count them.  I don't have to sign for them.  I think I know where the Form 6 PCM classroom is but I am not quite sure.  When I get there, I ask the students if I am in the right place and they say "yes."  I only hope that they have understood my question.  The exam is 3 hours long and I must stand the whole time.  I could not sit down, grade papers, or read even if I had wanted to.  There was no where to sit, no empty chair, no desk, nothing but the cold, dirty concrete floor. I tried to lean up against the wall to rest my feet and my back, but every time I did, a student would rap on their desk and stare at me intensely.  This is the way students get your attention.  They do not raise their hands or call to you.  I would scurry over with a clean sheet of paper (answers to exam questions are written on lined newsprint paper, 8.5 x 14, and students write a lot).  In fact, a few times we ran out of paper, and I had to go out on the landing and call out to someone in the schoolyard to go to the office and ask someone to bring more paper.  One time I think it was just a woman passing through the yard, but she went.  Tanzanians are such helpful people.  The paper does not have any margins so students draw their own, always using a ruler.  Only a few students have rulers, so they would ask me to let them borrow someone's ruler from across the room.  So I spent alot of time shifting rulers around, the same scenario for calculators.  Answers to questions must be written in ink, but figures and drawings are done in pencil.  You guessed it.  Only a few students have pencils, so I had to carry these all around the room as well.  It was also a very windy day and since many of the windows in the classroom don't latch and most are missing panes of glass, it was also quite windy in the classroom.  I put a rock against the door to keep it from banging, and I just chased after students' papers when they blew off their desks.  No one complained.  This is Tanzania.  Life is hard here but they are used to it.  At the end of 3 hours many students were still writing. I had to tell them to stop and organize their many papers.  Then I sent a student to find the stapler (we share one with all classrooms) and I went around and stapled their novels together.  Invigilating an exam in Tanzania is quite a vigil.

I have now developed a fairly consistent daily routine: set my alarm for 5:30 am, get up when it goes off, go to the kitchen, put a pot of water on the hotplate to heat, go back to bed for half an hour, then go to the kitchen and using two wash cloths as pot holders, carefully carry the hot water down the hall to my bathroom.  Remember always to wear my flip flops when touching anything on the hotplate because  electricity here is grounded differently than ours (maybe it isn't) and I often get shocked.  Back in the bathroom, I take a delightful bucket bath after mixing hot water with cold water in my bathroom bucket.  The hardest part for me is getting the soap off my arms.  How do you pour with one hand and rub the soap off with the hand attached to your arm?  Maybe I need to pour the water with the hand attached to my arm and rub with the other.  No problem, I have two years to perfect it.

This routine works well for me if I have electricity and water.  When I have no power, I cannot heat any water, so I must wash my hair and other selected parts with cold water (no, all of Africa is not warm and washing with cold water in Kilimanjaro takes your breath away).  To minimize the unpleasantness, I have lowered my bathing standards.  Washing with cold water is painful, but I think having no water is worse.  A western toilet is nice in the western world, but with no water, flushing is a problem.  I could use bucket water, but it requires so much, and I have to go quite a distance to fetch it. My solution is to limit flushing. Washing clothes also takes a lot of water, so this week I skipped my Sunday laundry party and recycled my clothes.  I did the sniff test and did not faint, but how am I to know? I have only been taking sprinkle baths.  After school each day, I take my bucket to the well.  My students are usually there, and they insist on carrying mine.  Tanzanian girls are so strong.  I told them that over the holiday break, when they are all gone and there is no one here to help me, that I was going to practice carrying the bucket of water on my head.  They were amused but also concerned that I would be alone for the holidays.  Several invited me to their homes.  I told them not to worry.  My friend Cheryl was coming over and I was going to cook pilau (Tanzanian spiced rice).  That relieved their fears.  If I was going to cook pilau for Christmas, then I was certainly going to be all right. They could return to their homes in peace.

It will be a quiet Christmas this year.  Cheryl and I will have dinner together.  I will decorate an evergreen branch and play my itunes Christmas songs.  Maybe we will watch Chariots of Fire (the only DVD I have) on my computer.  Maybe we will even go for a hike.  However, Cheryl lives further up the mountain than I do and she has no electricity.  She may not want she to go because has quite a hike every day.

My students tell me that they dream of going to America one day.  I asked them why, and they said because life in Tanzania is so hard.  There are so many problems.  America has so much.  I told them that was true, we are blessed with abundance, but we have our problems too.  They asked what kind of problems could we possibly have when we have everything we need.  I said that sometimes when you have so much, you forget what is really important.  They asked what it was that Americans had forgotten, and I said that sometimes we forget that loving God and loving one another is what is really important.  They said "kweli" (truly) and made their characteristic little clucking sounds as a way of affirming what I had said.  Then they told me that here in Tanzania, I should not feel alone.  They will be my family. 

Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.  Sing a Christmas song for me.  I love "O Holy Night" but the high notes are a bit tricky.  Maybe the Spirit will be with me again and I will be able to sing some Kiswahili songs.  Enjoy your time with your families.  Give them all a hug, because loving people is what life is all about.  I will sing, I will eat, I will experience Christmas in my new home, and I will be ok, but still, I will remember all of you who have been such an important part of my life.

God bless you all (Kwa Herini),