No English, no service!

Sundays are the laziest day. It’s the only day when we need an alarm. As in most things there is a comfort to be had from a comfortable routine. Each Sunday we pass the women cooking jipati and mandazi on their open fires. They call “Salama” to Caroline and “Habari za jumapili” (How is the Sunday?). On the way home it will be “Habari za kanisa?” (How is church?)They sit or squat on haunches, usually a young child wrapped to someone’s back.

The walk to the church these days, before the rains, is less of a trial. We have to remember to amble or we’ll spend the first hour wiping the rivulets of sweat from our necks and arms, but the paths are dry and clear. We take a pew half way down the church. A door mid-way down the aisle is always open and if we’re lucky, a breeze catches us from time to time.

It’s Mission Sunday. I look around and see a church full of missionaries. They wear the most eclectic clothes, often bought from a branch tied to a tree and it’s often emblazoned with the name of a baseball team or ‘Rooney’ or ‘All Stars’. Others, including me, wear garishly coloured shirts made from kitenga, women wear big dresses, students wear blue trousers, nuns wear white. Each according to their station, women to the left, men on the right! The service last two hours. Whether there is a long sermon and few announcements or a short sermon and numerous announcements, Mass always finishes just before 9.00. The ‘late’ Mass starts at 9.00.

College is shaking with sport, as the week is scheduled as the inter-class tournament in volleyball, basketball and football, to select a representative team to compete in first the regional and then the national finals. Students, if they’re not practising their shots at the basket, are rehearsing drums and dancing. Our house looks over the sports field and all week, the entire college population has been camped there each afternoon, cheering, chanting, drumming and dancing. Maskat takes a strategic position under a large tree. The morning after the victory the day before is another story. Men and women, are unable to hold their heads off the desk at nine in the morning, some fast asleep, all docile, no-one interested to play games or learn new words and my entreaties to start role plays are met with stony stares.

At pre-Form I however, they can’t sing enough. After an hour of pronouns or adjectives, a hundred children call out to sing. And so we go through our repertoire, the words memorised. The skin-clad workers in the builder’s yard next door, look on grinning, as the class bellows, “You are my sunshine”. The class teacher Jenny and I work well together. She interprets my every word so I teach as though I were in England, joking, chastising, calling on the boy dozing at the back to read out his work – all possible only because each and every word is translated into Kiswahili. Without Jenny it would be impossible, as my Kiswahili is limited to “write this down”, “say it again”, “be quiet” and “open your books”. The children, although they know all their irregular verbs and their pronouns, have little functional spoken English. And my accent is incomprehensible.

Nearly every staffroom door in Tanzanian schools has the slogan, “No English, no service.” Thirteen year olds will start secondary school in January and see that each and every subject, save Kiswahili, is taught and tested in English; yet, they will not receive tuition nor be tested in spoken English. Should they succeed and so wish, they might go forward to do ‘A’ Levels and some, the Diploma in Teaching, without their competence to speak English having ever been tested. Once they start teaching, however, they will be expected to teach each lesson and set each examination in English. Little wonder that many teachers pay lip service to the requirement only to use English in school and little wonder too, that there is a widening gap between the high-achieving schools, where fluent English is spoken throughout, and the government schools where competent English speakers are in short supply. Educators, policy makers and government spokespeople maintain that for the country to advance and develop, the commitment to retain English as the medium of instruction as well as the medium of government must be maintained. The fact that the emerging economies of China, Brazil and Russia have no such predilection seems to cut no ice.

Mwakibe’s house is nearly ready for his family’s move there. His mum, Aisha, looked on silently earlier this week, as Eric the fundi explained how he had changed the arrangement for the toilet. Eric is a successful fundi. He has a laconic stance and from his motorcycle or his garish four-by-four, his voice on the phone always sounds like he’s firing someone. Still only thirtyish, his knowledge of the building trade has brought success to him early. He smiles rarely and unusually for Tanzanians, spends little time on small talk, but as he explains that the cement path around the house offers a path directly to the toilet, it is clear that he has taken a pride in his work. The wattle and daub shed with a tin roof, has a cement base leading to a deep pit; but this is all more than Aisha had planned. I ask if she’s happy. She has used rouge on her face for this visit and her cheeks shine as she grins, “Yes. I am happy.” She curtsies and tells me how happy she is for our kindness.

Mwakibe’s garden is being harvested just seven weeks after the first seeds were sown. Luscious green Chinese leaves are now ready to cook, tomato plants are in flower and soon there will be chillies and onions. Mwakibe spent hours yesterday, carefully making teaching aids for me but he is not an enthusiastic worker when it comes to hard labour and the maize field has been awaiting his hoe for several weeks now.

“Today is a good day, Mwakibe”, I suggested this morning. “It’s grey and cooler than usual.”

“But it’s a holiday, sir.” he reminded me, today being Eid al Adha.

“But yesterday you couldn’t work after you fell off the motorcycle, and you’re not even fasting.”

He sniggered as he often does, trying to understand my sarcasm and taking the safer option of ignoring me. He watered his lettuce and left the digging for another day.