24 August 2019 Ijumaa
(Friday) High stress last
week due to mid-term oral and written Kiswahili language exams, plus completion
of online quiz on safety and security response. Our Mashindei unit of 5
trainees have no cell service in the mountains, so I can only access online and
get connected to the rest of the world while in the training town, and for the
quiz, I had three tries. My second try was worse than attempt one.
Well, my third attempt
was finally resulted in 81 points out of 100. I passed - needed at least 80% to
pass. This week, my language tests came back. I bombed the written one, but at
least I passed, barely. The score must be above 60% to pass.
I was rated as novice
medium, very likely the lowest rank among 51 of us.
Folks, I was a A/B
student before, in most of my school years, so now I have to admit that I am
not a top student anymore.
Vote With Feet
I admire the people who
designed the training program; they are excellent project managers because I
can recognize most of the places where they need to troubleshoot and solve
issues on the fly.
There are sessions where
facilitators ask participant feedback on questions/talking points. The facilitators
use participation methods to engage trainees. I like the parts where we vote
with our feet. The facilitator would ask a question, and we walk to the line of
neither agree nor disagree, or to the line of agreement, or the line of
disagreement. For example, walk to a line if we think most chefs are mostly
men, and walk to a line if we think cooks are mostly women. That was a session
on gender roles and perceptions.
Brief on the Kiswahili
Language
·
60% Bantu, 30% Arabic, 10% other (e.g., Hindi, some English, French words,
etc.)
·
Global top 10 language out of 6000 languages
·
Top 12 critical languages recognized by the US government and the world
·
Estimated 250 million speakers
·
Tanzanian speak the best Kiswahili among the East African countries of
Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan.
Peace Corps-Tanzania has
the best language teachers, who are our teachers. Case in point, Kiswahili in
the online language learning software Duolingo is developed by Peace Corps
language teachers.
Some of us learners find
the language very interesting. It can be very condensed, s single word, a verb,
alilalafofofo, is all it takes to say she was asleep, in a deep, deep, deep
sleep. Yet, on the other hand, the color orange is three words, rangi wa
chungwa.
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| A dance troupe on traditional dance |
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| Our language teachers in traditional clothes dancing |
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| with the Duolingo language instructor |
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| With another senior language instructor |
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| making ugali, maize (corn meal) paste |
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| We had a sports day for fun |
