Uru Secondary School visit... by Sarah W

Hey everyone! Sarah here. So, today we got the luxury of an 8 am breakfast, however, Rylee and I still found it impossible to get there. They had to come wake us up! Oops! Anywho, after breakfast we had about an hour and a half to do whatever we needed. After that, we headed to Uru Catholic Secondary School. This school is an English speaking (except for Swahili class) boarding school, which forces the students to learn English fast. All of the students I talked to were fluent, and some of them you could barely even hear their accent, which made conversation A LOT easier and much more fun :D.  At first, we did this thing called speed dating where we stood across from one of the 16 Tanzanian students. We would introduce ourselves and talk about a question that was given to us for about two minutes. One of the questions was, “What would you like to be in the future?” It was weird to see that none of them answered with “teacher,” they all said things like “doctor” or “accountant.” When it was later asked why, they said that most teachers are poor and don’t get enough money. Another question was, “If you could go anywhere in the world where would it be?” The girl I was talking to right away said New York. I then went on to tell her about how I had taken a school trip to New York earlier this year. It was just cool to see how when I was explaining to her what New York was like, her eyes would just light up! She was so intrigued to hear what I had to say. Most of the time, two minutes wasn’t long enough. The conversations would just end in the middle because you had to move on to the next person. It surprised me to see that they were just as interested to talk to us as we were to talk to them. They were also very friendly and always had huge smiles on their faces while talking to us! All of the conversations seemed easy and not forced; as if you were talking to one of your friends. After sixteen rounds of speed dating, we sat across from the other students and asked questions out loud as a large group. It was really interesting to hear some of their answers. For instance, a question came up that asked about going on after secondary school to a “University” (college) and what motivates them to do so. While most of our answers were kind of like, “It’s expected” or “I want more opportunities,” their answers were more on the lines of, “So I can provide for my widowed mother/family” or “For a better future in my life.” This really stuck with me because I feel like I always hear about this on commercials or other places at home. I always knew it was true, but it never really seemed real until today when I actually heard it come from one of them.  Another interesting question was “how do you celebrate birthdays?” It was weird to hear them say that they also have cake and blow out candles, just like we do. A question also arose that had to do with dating. We told them that dating in our culture is fairly common, and we tend to hangout with them alone. Their answer was very different. They said that dating was looked down upon and happened in secret. They thought it was a distraction from their studies. After that, we met up with the student we started the speed dating with and gave them a gift that we brought from America. Then we said goodbye and left. We then went on our way to Jesca’s house where we ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. After that we did our manual labor with the women’s group. Then when that was done we took a dala dala back to our place. While in the crammed dala dala we came upon backed up traffic. We sat in the traffic for about 15 minutes then we decided to take a different route. We found out later that there was a pretty big accident. Once we got back to our place we hung out for a bit then ate dinner and hung out more and then went to bed. It was a pretty swiggity day I’d say.

           

            Ps. I’m sorry I know I should miss you family, but I don’t. I mean I still love ya and all. <3 <3 But it’s so awesome here!! Also HAPPY EARLY BIRTHDAY ERIN!! (: (from me and dad) Don’t miss us too much ;D and shout out to Buck Buck Loberg! Lawlz.