The Regional Commissioner, staff changes and some family favourites.

More heat, no water. Well, when I say no water, I don’t, of course, include the torrents that turned every path and road into a ruddy mire. We walked to Mass in our Crocs which made a particular impression on the smart gentleman getting out of the large shiny car with Tanzanian flags.

“Whose is that car?” I asked him when he approached.

“That’s the Regional Commissioner’s.”

“Is he here?” I asked, stupidly.

“I am the Regional Commissioner.”

The Regional Commissioner is the most senior civil servant in the region, reporting to the Prime Minister, appointed directly by the President, he is responsible for all state-run health, education and infrastructure projects. My mind whirred during Mass with all the questions I might ask if I got the chance.

I didn’t get the chance, because, although he was keen to talk, offering us a lift home in his beautiful car, it was to present us with a token of Our Lady of Carmel. The Colonel, for, as a retired officer from the Tanzanian army, that is the title he prefers to use, wears the scapular at all times and was keen for us to do likewise. He has an official residence, rather like a stately home, overlooking the harbour, but chooses to live in a more modest house in the quiet affluent district close to college. He has soldiers at his gate who salute as you leave.

There have been developments in personnel at college, with new tutors arriving through the week. They are posted by the Ministry without consultation and with very little notice. I met Neema, a new English tutor, in my class as she had been given my second year diploma students to teach. She seemed embarrassed, so I smiled and laughed it off. The Academic Tutor, emollient as ever, tried to assuage everyone’s feelings by suggesting I teach at the secondary school next door. In the end, I announced that I will now be the English specialist offering support to tutors and students alike in spoken and written English and preparation for teaching. My friend Roger, summed it up nicely when he asked,

“Very good, Adrian. But what exactly will you be doing?”.

I’m not at all sure.

I am teaching a few hours each day at the secondary school, having great fun with Forms I and III. They have all completed a rigorous course in English language at primary school, which means that they know their adverbial clauses and prepositions, but their vocabulary is so frail, they have few functional skills. Like me with Kiswahili, we can read and write modestly, but become jabbering idiots whenever anyone speaks to us.

We have also started teaching in the Montessori training centre three afternoons a week. There are fifty students, all of them women, training to become nursery nurses and primary school teachers, using the Montessori method. The Centre is the work of the Sisters of the Holy Redeemer, an Order founded in Wurzburg, Bavaria, and active in Tanzania for nearly forty years. They run the kindergarten where Caroline works each morning, they run a dispensary caring for the destitute and have created a farm, offering self sufficiency for landless people. The difference between this small, efficient, beautifully clean college and the Ministry-run Teacher Training College where I was placed by VSO, demonstrates much of what is so challenging here.

So we are busy. We have started doing something productive. The training centre offers us the chance to have some fun. The women love singing and this week, we were royally entertained with,

“Miss Polly had a dolly that was sick, sick, sick

So she called for the doctor to be quick, quick, quick.”

We will be covering the Communications Skills syllabus and developing their proficiency in conversation, but we also feel compelled to teach them the words to “Michael Finnegan”, “Deep in the heart of Texas” and, of course, “The Sound of Music”.