St.Theresia Videos now on YouTube

I managed to get the video that the kids and I at St. Theresia made last year up on Youtube. I had to break it up into two parts. You can access from this site in the my videos bar at left. The captioning isn't visible, but I think you will be able to understand it well enough. Nick and I are raisiing funds to buy books for the kids. He'll be going back to Tanzania in January and will purchase novels, dictionares there to help the local economy and to involve the teachers at the school in the process of selecting books and setting up a lending library. More on all that at tanzaniabooks.blogspot.com

Video Uploads

Well, I have finally uploaded some videos of my time in Tanzania and Rwanda. If you select My Videos that will take you to my YouTube page where there are four videos from Tanzania and Rwanda and soon one from Ecuador (See deniseabroad@blogspot.com for blogs from Ecuador). I wasn't able to upload the one I made with the kids at St. Theresia...too bad, so you'll have to contact me for a DVD of that one!

cheers

Home

I've been back in California for nearly 48 hours now, readjusting to the new time zone and managing re-entry shock. I am staying at my sister's house in San Leandro until the weekend when my house will be vacated. Maybe once I get there, I will feel like I am home again.

Although, I won't be posting much to this blog in the next five months, stay tuned for some short films that I will be making soon on my trip to Tanzania and Rwanda which I will post here. Also, I will post information on some of the charitable organizations I am supporting from time to time as well.

Thanks for taking an interest in my travels!

Geneva and the WHO Solidarity Fair

I arrived in Geneva yesterday evening just in time to help my friend Maria and some of her WHO colleagues decorate the WHO lobby for the 13th Annual World Health Organization (WHO) Solidarity Fair. Maria founded this event to set up a fund to assist WHO staff members when they find themselves in emergency situations. These can range from losing one's job or suffering a reduction in hours to health problems causing loss of work. The Fund lends money to staff in need who later pay back the Fund when there are able to do so. The fair is great fun with lots of fabulous food from around the world, music, and crafts. Most of the crafts support NGOs in the developing world and the Solidarity Fund takes a 20% cut. They typically raise around $13,000 through this event. I am on photography duty (taking a wee break here as I wait for more favorable lighting conditions -- it is mighty sunny in Geneva today).

Ali and I spent my last weekend in Morocco with two friends touring the wonderful city of Chefchaouen. This town is nestled in the Rif Mountains and reminded me a lot of Tangier in the late 60s. Lots of hippy types and a wonderful Medina with touts around every corner offering to sell hashish. Well, they don't hustle to women or older people it seems, but our young friend Nate got a 7-10 offers a day. The town consists of white adobe structures, many of which are painted bright blue and soft purple. The Medina is small enough to get around without getting lost and it is very hilly as well. We did some hiking both days (one quite strenuous) ate well, and laughed a lot. Anyone going to Morocco should definitely put Chefchaouen on the must-visit list.

It's hard to believe that I will be home in less than a week. A few more days in Geneva and then one in Amsterdam and off I am homeward bound. Fabulous.

Winding Down

>Well, I have less than a week left here in Morocco, and I must say I won't miss the frigid temperatures, although melancholy is beginning to set in as I contemplate leaving Ali, family and friends here. I fly out of Morocco next Monday and after a week in Europe I will head home. Ali will join me in Berkeley for a few weeks, but he will return to Morocco for the spring semester at Al Akhawayn University of Ifrane (AUI). That means I get to come back for spring break! In January, Ismail, the youngest of the Khejjou clan, will start graduate work in international relations at AUI. Ali are I are very proud of him as being accepted at AUI is no small feat.>We spent a lovely Thanksgiving with American teachers from AUI last week. Ali and a colleague went out the night before to find a turkey for the event. He came home after three hours with three, rather lean turkeys. The turkeys were alive when he picked them out and they were still warm, although perfectly plucked, when he brought them home. They were undoubtedly the freshest turkeys I have ever eaten. They were well received at the Thanksgiving table and just like home, we ate and drank too much.They say it is about to snow in Ifrane and I believe it might. Ali and everyone else around here are thrilled at the prospect, but I am not moved. I have started to store water for him though as they say the pipes freeze up, which interrupts the flow of water into the house, sometimes for days and a time. Lovely. One friend said that it got so bad after three days of no plumbing that she and her husband had to leave town.

I have come down with a virus of some type so I have been passing the days huddled on the couch wrapped in my heating blanket and eating chicken soup. I will be fine as long as the plumbing doesn't freeze up.

The Fez Medina

Yesterday was my third visit to the Fez Medina and I still may go back. It's an amazing experience wandering the more than 500 streets and alleyways that make up this ancient city (Fez will celebrate it's 1300th year anniversary next year!). In fact, this Medina is thought to be the largest contiguous car-free urban area in the world. It houses more than 150 mosques, has the oldest university in Morocco, maybe the world, and is a UNESCO World Heritage site. It has more than 13,000 historic buildings.

The only method of transportation in and out of the Medina are the donkeys who run the streets and alleys earnestly transporting goods in and out. Well, okay, there are carts that men push in, and bikes too, but it's the donkey that keeps that city of 150,000 (2002 figures) thriving and well stocked. And those donkeys carry a lot. There are something like 11,000 retail businesses inside the Medina walls. It's virtually impossible to navigate the Medina without a guide and guides are plentiful. I usually take off on my own for awhile, but then resort to hiring a guide after I have walked for a while in one direction only to find myself back where I started a half an hour earlier. My last guide was a charming 15-year old who knew all the nooks and crannies of the Medina and most of the history as well. We spent five hours walking around and taking photos which you can check out by clicking the Morocco link on the left sidebar.

Most of my time here during the week, I spend here at the Villa Inshallah, Ali's Ifrane home (homes here have names rather than numbers). This area is an old section, full of old stately villas previously owned by the French. Most of homes are remain shuttered, in this and most of Ifrane, because except for the university faculty and staff and service staff who work in the restaurants and markets, most of the homes here are vacation homes. It's said that this town of 15,000 swells to 150,000 during the winter and summer holidays. So, it's a nice quiet place to hang out in and it's easy to get work done because there is essentially nothing to do. Well, there are nice walks to take and people to visit in the evenings, but not a lot to lure you out of the house away from your projects. Ali and I have taken many driving trips to the surrounding towns villages, and forests in his fancy new car too. One would never know he hasn't driven in Morocco for 26 years. Of course, it helps to have a vehicle that intimidates everyone else on the road.

Reflections on volunteering

Volunteering in Tanzania was a rewarding, at times frustrating, yet totally inspirational. Here are the things that worked and didn’t work and what I would do differently the next time.

Volunteer Work: Like most volunteers, my expectations going into Tanzania were quite high, and as it turned out, fairly unrealistic. I imagined that by sharing my more than 25 years of expertise in teaching I would be able to positively impact teaching in Tanzania, at least at the school in which I was working and that I would also improve my own methodology by working with colleagues in Tanzania. I suspected that the language teaching methodology in Tanzania was out-dated, relying on rote memorization and language practice that was abstract and archaic, and I wanted to do what I could to raise awareness of more communicative teaching methodologies. As it turned out, there weren’t many opportunities to discuss teaching methodology with my Tanzanian colleagues primarily due to time restrictions and multiple interruptions in the teaching schedule. The time we did have together during our 20-minute morning breaks, we spent talking and arguing about issues outside of teaching and sharing ideas on broad and diverse topics. The one teaching issue that came up a lot centered around the question of disciplining students through corporal punishment. (While our colleagues politely listened to our reasoning against corporal punishment, I don’t think we influenced them at all on this issue).

My Canadian teaching colleague, Nick, and I essentially replaced faculty at the school, freeing them up to attend to extra-curricular matters. The irony is that Nick and I did a fair amount of team teaching together, which allowed the two of us to explore ideas and teaching techniques and learn from each other. But this did not happen with the Tanzanian teachers. So, if I were to do this again, I would strongly recommend that I team-teach with in-country teachers, on some sort of regular basis, to afford us the opportunity to learn from each other in planning and implementing techniques and strategies.

Living in Tanzania. In Tanzania, I lived in a house with, on average, 28 other volunteers, and 13 or so African staff who lived and worked at the “home base.” It was great to get to know so many sensitive, caring and committed individuals from Tanzania, Europe, Australia and the U.S. I learned a lot from them and developed friendships that I know will be long lasting. Two months, however, was a long time for me personally to live in such a communal setting (I was lucky that we were never more than three in my bedroom), and living in the very comfortable home base, both sheltered and isolated us from the realities of life of most Tanzanians. So, when I do this again, I will sign up with a volunteer organization, such as Cross-Cultural Solutions, for a shorter time, say two weeks, to get oriented to the country, area, culture, and volunteer opportunities and need. Then I will branch out on my own for the remainder of my time. In Moshi, for example, I saw ads for apartments and houses that looked comfortable and safe for around $250 a month. I could have rented one and either continued to work at my placement (assuming that would be possible) or approached other schools and NGOs in the area to do volunteer work on my own. There is plenty of need there.

While I feel I fell short of my goals with regard to teaching, most of my other expectations were surpassed. Living and working with Tanzanians was a richly rewarding cultural experience that will impact my life for years to come. I am also satisfied that my work there had a positive impact on my students at St. Theresia Secondary School. They certainly learned a lot about American and Canadian culture through our work with them as we dispelled myths and stereotypes about our cultures and explored the universalities of the human experience. I am sure that they benefited from the exposure they had to new ways of teaching and learning. I also hope that the pen pal project we initiated will continue to enrich their lives in the future.

Finally, I had hoped that I would find ways to continue to lend a hand in Tanzania after I left, and those opportunities are in certainly in abundance. I look forward to working with woman’s organizations and orphanages in Tanzania and Rwanda to assist them in developing projects that are sustainable and improve the lives of women and children there. And I look forward to returning to Tanzania in the future to following up on my work and preserve the unique friendships I made there.