Big Changes at School

Remarkably few changes took place at school during the first 6 months that I had been here at Songea Girls. In Tanzania teacher turnover is ridiculously high, especially at rural schools. It is not uncommon for a Peace Corps volunteer to be the most senior member of the faculty by the time they finish their 2 years of service. At Songea Girls during the March break between school years we added one new English teacher and lost one teacher.

But it seems changes that were supposed to take place during the break are just now coming to fruition due to the lethargy of the Tanzanian government. All school positions from the headmistress to the driver are appointed by the central government in Dar es Salaam. Teachers can request to be transferred, but they do not have the opportunity to apply for specific positions.

Apparently a new administrative position overseeing all of the secondary schools in the Mbeya Region was created, and the government appointed my headmistress at Songea Girls to take the post. She did not apply for the job; she does not really have the option of turning it down. The government has told her she is to move 300 kilometers away to Mbeya within the next month. Our second headmaster has also been promoted to a new position in Mbeya. They are leaving in two weeks and we do not yet know who will replace them. The government hasn’t told us who has been selected. At least 3 teachers are leaving as well. We probably will not get replacement teachers until fresh college graduates are hired in October.

Mama Chiguru, the current headmistress, has been the head of Songea Girls for the last 15 years. She pretty much is Songea Girls. I can’t imagine how she can ever be replaced, especially if the new headmistress does not arrive until after Mama Chiguru leaves. I honestly will not be surprised it things kind of fall apart at Songea Girls over the next few months. Oh well, I will just keep pushing on, doing my best to teach physics.

The Songea Girls community is not taking the departure of Mama Chiguru lightly. We are planning a big party for her to take place during the middle of August. She will already have moved, but Mama Chiguru will make the trip back for the celebration.

For some reason the other teachers appointed me to be on the party planning committee. I love how committees are formed here. Basically we have a meeting with all the teachers and it is announced that we need to select a committee for a particular project. Teachers nominate each other, and after each nomination is raised the group votes by a show of hands as to whether or not this person should be on the committee. The nominee herself has no say in the matter. So I’ll go to the extremely long meetings (held completely in Kiswahili) and try to be a good committee participant, but I really don’t know why they selected me.

Mama Chiguru and teachers are not the only ones are leaving. School opened at the beginning of April and it has taken a couple of months for all of my students to trickle (in fact I just got another new student this week). But now finally as pretty much all of my students have reported (I think), they are starting to trickle out. Many of them are transferring schools. I guess Songea is too far away from Dar es Salaam where most of them are from. I have lost two of my top three students and I am afraid more top students are planning to leave. It is frustrating to have spent so much effort and time with these students and now not be able to finish what we started.