Wake up feeling quite relaxed... it's my last day, and as hard as these past few weeks have been, I've made it. I've accomplished far more than I could have hoped for, not just with my group, but personally. Kia decides not to go to placement because it's his "day off"... pretty typical of his volunteer placement. Kendell, living up to her word, faked being sick and didn't show up to her last day of placement. What ever happened to her grand "revelation" of being here to help people. Jennele was quite right about the label "pageant volunteer"- someone who only volunteers to say that they've been a volunteer in Africa and to put it on her resume. Apparently the other day she also told the new volunteers that the Ngorongoro crater was just "another hole in the ground" like the grand canyon. uge. So on the bus ride to placement there are fewer people, since kendell and kia are usually on our trip and claire took a three day weekend to go to uganda and raft the nile :how amazing would that be...??: I ask Sarah, another volunteer, where Robyn, my replacement is. She tells me that Robyn was so horribly intimidated by the work ahead of her that she switched placement and is now at a primary school (which, they are keeping open through their break just so the volunteers can volunteer there... a little counterproductive..?) This crushes me a little, since I had such high hopes. Juli is furious... We were able to forge the first relationships with this town and had probably the most intimidating experience out of all the volunteers... sitting uncomfortably for a few hours while our volunteer director spoke about us in Swahili to the members of the town and then didn't even bother to translate it back to us... Though I suppose that many volunteers do not realize the difficult situation into which they will be placed... As much as the volunteer organization will attempt to coddle you, you are alone at your placement... entirely responsible. I guess I just wished that she would have discussed it with me, instead of jumping ship while I wasn't looking. I spent the rest of the ride imagining the horrible things that my group would be yelling at me when I told them they would probably not have a volunteer for the next two weeks... thus no English, computers or business. (Did I mention she was an accounting major... so she would have been perfect for figuring out their accounts?)
So when we got to Mlingotini, I asked the driver, Amani, if he could talk to my class for me. He agreed to do so during our break. First though, we had to figure out what we were to do with the students who didn't have teachers... Kendell's and Claire's classes. Juli agreed to take Kendell's class, since they would be at the same approximate level of English as her students, bringing her class to 30-40 students (oy). We also noticed that Claire's class was filling up and so we added them to Ashley's class that was one standard lower. Once that was taken care of, I returned to my class to finish teaching my last class ever. I taught a bit on possessives and then had them each write a paragraph about themselves. For not having known any English prior, they were very good. Then I saw them carry in three packages labeled "Claudia". I was a bit shocked, given the economic situation they were all in. I hoped that they hadn't spent too much money on me. Then Leonard came in and had me pretend to teach for the CCS calendar (which I didn't know at the time). The members of the group had prepared a speech in English and had Leonard read it since they were not very confident in their English skills. Though in somewhat English, I was very touched by it, as they told me how much of a difference I had made in only 4 weeks. Then they presented me with the gifts, each given to me by a member of the group and of course involving the obligatory photo op. I received a straw mat that is green, dark pink, and purple... very cool considering I had told them my favorite color was purple. They also gave me samples of each kind of their seaweed (Spinous... and I can't remember the other kind). Finally one of the older women handed me a little artificial rose bouquet that said "Be my Valentine" on it. I thanked them, and then tried to think of random things I could teach them. I thought it would be best if I told them things mzungus might say.. like replying with whatever word was said to them "Mambo".... "Mambo", because that is how English generally works. Also the mispronunciation of certain words. Finally I told them about the phrase "poa kichizi kama ndizi"... which translates into "crazy cool like a banana". Now, this is a phrase that all tourists to Tanzania and Zanzibar know for some reason. Apparently someone got it in their mind that this was a relevant phrase... but besides the touristy areas, you will never hear this phrase. The phrase was even in one of my CCS handbooks. My class was literally on the floor laughing. For the rest of the day it remained a bit of a running joke.
I then told them that they could ask me anything they wanted. They asked about the weather, whether people were nice, race relations, and one man even asked if "that young man who came to class for a few days" was my husband... I said "hapana... hapana" and explained that I had a boyfriend, because that was customary in the US. Lastly, they asked me about myself, so I told them random things about me, like my age, where I was from etc... Then it was time to go. Some of the students almost cried, and Joey, one of the leaders had a particularly hard time saying goodbye, standing by the van and talking to me until it was really time to go.
Back at home it was a bit eerie. I was waiting around a bit, hoping that Amani might show up to take me to talk to the field agent about the German Boma. Alas, he never showed. I ended up chilling for a bit then attempting to go to the internet cafe, but the internet was down, so I ended up walking to Summer house with Katie D and Steph. We chilled there for a bit then came back. I talked with dad a bit on the phone. Apparently he had gotten a mystery blank text from my US phone... which was kinda impossible given that it had been off since my arrival in Tz. We spoke until we got cut off for the 4th time. Then dinner and chilling as usual, preparing for my last weekend.
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