Saturday, September 19, 2009
Two years in Tanzania
It's been exactly two years since the day I first came to Tanzania.
When I came here, life felt like an adventure. Everything was new, exciting, unpredictable. I was excited to practice my Swahili by talking to the person sitting next to me on the bus, excited and a bit afraid to try the local transportation and to see new parts of the country. Life was hard at times, but at the end of the day, I always had a good story.
Now, life here feels normal. The lack of entries in this blog lately aren't due to a lack of good stories, but rather to the fact that what used to strike me as an interesting story now strikes me as normal life. I talk casually about cars running out of gas in the middle of the road, about marriage proposal from the person next to me on the bus, about having 50 students in the lab using bunsen burners at once at school. A good book I just read (Collapse by Jared Diamond) refers to our changing perceptions of what is normal over a long time as "creeping normalcy". Normalcy has crept up on me in Tanzania, and now it's here.
This has its ups and its downs. The good news is that life here takes much less effort. I know where to find the things I need. I know what I can expect to take a lot of time, and how much I can expect to get done in a day. On the other hand, the loss of the feeling of adventure makes the downs a lot harder. Since I no longer have a sense of excitement to get me through hard days, annoyances become simple annoyances, frustration becomes simple frustration.
Exams are approaching at school, and it will be exciting to watch the students I've been teaching biology for two years take their exams. I'll post some stories on that once the exams are over (practical exams always lead to some interesting stories...).
Once Form 4 finish their exams, I'll be left with my Form 3 chemistry students, who I plan to teach for another 6 months before leaving.
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I'll try to catch up once national exams are over.
When I came here, life felt like an adventure. Everything was new, exciting, unpredictable. I was excited to practice my Swahili by talking to the person sitting next to me on the bus, excited and a bit afraid to try the local transportation and to see new parts of the country. Life was hard at times, but at the end of the day, I always had a good story.
Now, life here feels normal. The lack of entries in this blog lately aren't due to a lack of good stories, but rather to the fact that what used to strike me as an interesting story now strikes me as normal life. I talk casually about cars running out of gas in the middle of the road, about marriage proposal from the person next to me on the bus, about having 50 students in the lab using bunsen burners at once at school. A good book I just read (Collapse by Jared Diamond) refers to our changing perceptions of what is normal over a long time as "creeping normalcy". Normalcy has crept up on me in Tanzania, and now it's here.
This has its ups and its downs. The good news is that life here takes much less effort. I know where to find the things I need. I know what I can expect to take a lot of time, and how much I can expect to get done in a day. On the other hand, the loss of the feeling of adventure makes the downs a lot harder. Since I no longer have a sense of excitement to get me through hard days, annoyances become simple annoyances, frustration becomes simple frustration.
Exams are approaching at school, and it will be exciting to watch the students I've been teaching biology for two years take their exams. I'll post some stories on that once the exams are over (practical exams always lead to some interesting stories...).
Once Form 4 finish their exams, I'll be left with my Form 3 chemistry students, who I plan to teach for another 6 months before leaving.
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I'll try to catch up once national exams are over.
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