First impressions from Liz Rose, VSO volunteer

When I was first asked by VSO to consider working with ZAP, I sat down and read the proposal with total amazement. It sounded like the perfect placement; a wide and interesting brief that was totally geared up to working with a particular community. And of course, in a beautiful place. I could not wait to get started.

“Shoulder to shoulder” (‘Bega Kwa Bega’) is the slogan for ZAP here in Jambiani and it certainly sums it up. Since I arrived, everyone has gone out of their way to help me and to make sure that I am settling in easily. Not that Jambiani is a difficult place to settle into. I have a feeling that the difficulty might be in leaving. Everyone is so friendly. I have a little house on the beach that is simply wonderful to live in. It only has two rooms and a bathroom but after a mind-boggling effort by Janie, I now have a kitchenette, hot water (total luxury here) and double sockets everywhere. The house also has a covered veranda where I can chat to visitors and eat my meals whilst watching the sea.

Obviously I am not here simply to enjoy the beach and my lovely house. I actually have a very wide brief here with community as well as school involvement and so I decided that I first needed to find out what is going on in the village and what agencies were around in Zanzibar that might help us. This was a great excuse to meet all manner of people busy teaching free evening classes, developing alternative agricultural systems, teaching about the environment and promoting health advice. There is an amazing amount going on here, some things, like the clinic, are already well supported by ZAP. The clinic is excellent and widely used by people from the local villages as well as from Jambiani. It is good to be somewhere where the local people are working hard to develop their own lives and to protect their environment, and it means that they are very receptive to the sustained support and financial help which ZAP provides. It also means that any support goes a very long way.

My main brief is to improve the level of maths and English teaching, working with both teachers and students and so I have also been meeting people from the Ministry of Education and various NGOs concerned with in-service training for teachers. I hope to make use of their expertise and knowledge of the system here. I helped out with the collation of exam marks from the recent mock exams for Standard 7, Form 2 and Form 4 last week, as the marks will provide us with a benchmark for improvement. The pass rate was extremely disappointing However, not only are the exams themselves really hard but they are in English, which is of course the second language, so this failure rate isn’t so surprising. It is however very depressing for both the students and their teachers.

I have been into quite a few maths and English lessons and it is a bit daunting. Sixty plus students squashed into desks for forty, not enough books and no resources and a very big, very complicated syllabus to cover. The teachers and I have to work together to find ways to improve the methodology (and consequently the results), that are viable in these circumstances. Still I have started to collect resources and thanks to Amy and Linda (ZAP supporters) I now have plenty of pens, pencils and colours, so I will make up some resource boxes for teachers to take into the classroom. Another VSO (just finishing), has also given me all her material. I am busy collecting bottle tops, empty rice sacks, wooden spoons and clothes lines plus pegs! All well tried out and tested VSO teaching resources here. The classrooms are not closed and only have waist high walls so posters cannot be put up; a clothes line and pegs will do that job. The spoons are to make puppet families for rehearsing social language and story telling. I am going to ask the ZAP sewing ladies to make simple clothes for them. The rice sacks are used to make posters and the bottle tops are for all manner of counting and spelling activities.

However most of these things will go into the nursery and junior schools. In the secondary school, we need many more writing materials, especially exercise books. The students have to provide their own and so they have a tendency to squash everything in when they write, to make their books last longer. Consequently their notes aren’t much use for revision. They are not impressed when I fuss about layout and leaving space between questions. We also need gallons of blackboard paint. It would really help if the students could actually see what is written on the boards in the first place.

Thanks to ZAP, we will be able to make sure that all the students taking national exams (Standard 7, Form 2 and Form 4) next month will have a pen and a pencil.

Yesterday Mr Pandu helped me collect a lot of resources and a table from town. He decided that it would be easier for me to bring the table home on the bus - and I did. I sat on the table at the bus station, which was great as there aren’t any chairs, and read a book until the bus came. A lot of people came up to find out what I was doing! The table was put on to the top of the bus. At Jambiani the table was taken down for me and three little boys came rushing over to help me get it home. I felt quite proud about managing it. The buses here usually carry luggage on their roofs and sometimes the pile is higher than the bus itself.

I am off now to teach one of my English classes for the local ladies. It is great fun. Four ‘gap year’ students came to visit us last Friday and we had a party to practice our social language. The ladies are getting very good at “Would you like…” “Yes please.” and “No thank you.” as well as “Cheers” and used all the phrases enthusiastically as we drank our sodas and ate chocolate and crisps. Today it will be a little less fun – simple past tense according to the book.

Liz Rose
September 2008

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