LTP Arusha Exhibition, July 25th, 2008

Swahili Proverbs

Representations of five Swahili proverbs created by Form 3 students at St. Joseph’s Secondary School in Arusha, Tanzania

 

Don’t Play with the World, If You Will Play with the World, You Will Regret-Usicheze na Ulimwengu Ukikulemea Utajuta

Don’t Play with the World, If You Will Play with the World, You Will Regret-Usicheze na Ulimwengu Ukikulemea Utajuta

 ”This picture shows the woman who is a drunker. She use a lot of money to buy alcohol instead of using her money for the benefit of her future.

Since she used a lot of money to drink alcohol she become poor and also begers (begs).”

Turia Duara-The Earth is Round

Turia Duara-The Earth is Round

“There was once two friends, Amy and Michelle, they were very best friends and helped one another during every moment they spent together.  One day as they were doing their final exams, Amy panicked and forgot some of the answers to the questions. She had no choice than to cheat by asking Michelle for the answers. Since Michelle loved Amy a lot, she decided to write the answers on a piece of paper and passed it on to Amy. Unfortunately, the investigator saw them and pinched Amy so hard and took her to the Headmistress. 

In the headmistresses’s office, both Amy and Michelle were called. They were so sad because they knew that it was a very bad mistake to communicate in the exam. The headmistress was very furious and angry too because she knew her students had disobeyed her so she took a very fast decision of chasing Amy away from the school. Amy was sad and she was kneeling in front of the headmistress trying to apologize but the headmistress wouldn’t listen to her. Michelle was sad as Amy was leaving but she was also happy at the same time because she wasn’t chased from the school.
 
After three years, Michelle shifted the school she was in because she couldn’t have the life without Amy. So she decided to go out to another school and start a new life. The school she joined was a very nice school with big buildings and nice surroundings. People over there were so friendly and nice to. Amazingly, Michelle met Amy again and Amy was so happy to see her. They apologized to each other and they were friends again. They both loved their new school and promised never to cheat again in their exams no matter what.

Amy and Michelle were the best friends ever and this is to say, What goes around will surely Come Around.”

 

Five fingers, which one is important- Vidole Vitano, Kipi Bora

Five fingers, which one is important- Vidole Vitano, Kipi Bora.

 
“In this picture we can see one person. She is trying to carry a big load and she failed to carry it. So we can see one person, he/she can’t carry a big thing or to do a big work.In this picture we can see that there are many people who are carrying the big log, so if we are shared something we can do better or faster. This is help to save time and to do many work at the write time.”

 

Mambo Mazuri Hayataki Haraka-Good Things Do Not Need Hurry!

 
Mambo Mazuri Hayataki Haraka-Good Things Do Not Need Hurry!

 
“On the picture there is a boy who is trying to approach a girl while they are still students but the girl refuses and tell him to wait as good things do not need hurry.

10 Years Later… 

And on the second picture a girl has finished her studies and she had graduated. She has accepted to be the boy’s girlfriend and they are ready to get married.”

 
The Day of Monkey’s Death, All Trees Slides-Siku Ya Kufa Nyani Miti Yote Huteleza

The Day of Monkey’s Death, All Trees Slides-Siku Ya Kufa Nyani Miti Yote Huteleza

“The rich woman in the bar drinking and having fun without thinking of what will happen next. After a while all money was over and she couldn’t do anything again.

The woman sitting down and regretting how she was using her money carelessly. Her daughter is asking for the school fees. She can’t give her. That proves that “the day of monkey’s death, all trees slide.”

“Pole, pole.” By Minette Yao

“Pole, pole.”

Since the very first day, this little catchphrase, (“slowly, slowly”) has been thrown out at us, the hurried wazungu (foreigners), nearly everywhere we go. Take your time, there’s no hurry, … relax. But by virtue of the very fact that I am mzungu, it took me a very long time to slow down and really do that.

Had I listened to the two things Tanzanians always repeat—nenda pole (go slowly) and hakuna matata (no worries), maybe I wouldn’t have gotten so caught up in the initial, inevitable hindrances we encountered getting LTP started here in Arusha. The process of finding a place for LTP here has definitely had its share of bumps in the road, but slowly, slowly the project seems to be finding a comfortable spot for itself.

The range of settings we’ve experimented with over the past six weeks have been like little wiggles for settling into this vastly new cultural context.

Tripping Over Our Feet
We began with a project at Arusha School, the English-medium school just down the street from our apartments. We followed the LTP process as outlined in a mini-workshop we had participated in alongside some teachers from the area—beginning with reading pictures, making lists of details, crafting stories about what the pictures showed. The LTP methodology got a little lost in our encumbering American accents; the teachers, eager to allow the class to remain uninhibited, made sure to stay away from the classroom. Our limited amount of Swahili meant that neither the students nor us were able to fully understand each other at all times. Not such good news for a project focused on self-expression.

Maybe we had been gradually been getting through to our students, but where was the sustainability that LTP was looking for? We moved on to a much larger workshop with teachers from further reaches of the area, many of them from the teacher’s college a few towns over. This workshop seemed to be the answer.

I was comforted by the way a generous handful of the teachers had picked up on our LTP mindset, hopeful for their ability to then take it back to their schools and implement it. But with the end of the workshop, it seemed that a number of the teachers were hesitant to actually use the methodology in practice for the very first time and unsure of its practicality. They hadn’t really been able to experience it yet.

Strolling
So, we struck up a 3-day project with two schools where especially engaged and enthusiastic teachers worked. My school, in this case, was Shalom Primary School, a rather selective private school where we worked last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Rather than inserting ourselves into a classroom, a few of the brightest students were pulled from standards 4, 5, and 6, (ages ranging from 9 to 13). The isolated group of 30 students explored LTP with the helpful guidance of three Shalom teachers who had attended the second workshop.

For me, who initially felt bogged down by the slow discovery process, I began to see a steady progression of improvement. With each new setting, we were discovering more about the workings of the education system and getting to know exactly what we were working with. By fully exploring the possibilities of our surroundings, we are slowly, slowly figuring out the best way to navigate it.

Maintaining the Pace
The work we began this Monday only confirmed this unhurried realization. Three of us began work at Uhuru Primary, a Swahili-medium school. Our initial doubts about the seemingly impenetrable language barrier were swept away when we saw how much better it worked out for everyone involved.

After the students trickled in to the classroom following their morning assembly, Fabian, the teacher in our classroom of standard 7 students, conducted the class. Following closely along with what we said in English to the class, he would translate, explain, and embellish in Swahili. Watching him engage with the LTP method hands-on, it soon became clear that this set-up was an effective learning process for all of us involved. While Fabian spoke, the three of us were able to witness his involvement with LTP methods, and saw the gears start to turn in the students’ heads, who were not hindered by unfamiliar words. Fabian picked up on the process and practice of really using LTP with the guidance of our experiences from the past month and a half. During the reading pictures exercise, his students were able to do things like make their list of details in Swahili. This really seemed to facilitate their ability to pick up on details they would not have been able to even begin to name in English. And all the while, the three of us were able to pick up on a tiny bit of Swahili!

Nenda pole, ufike. (“Go slowly, arrive.”)
Though it seems wearisome that we could not have immediately begun with this sort of arrangement, I think it was necessary for us to first experience everything we had done leading up to the point. The first experience in the classrooms at Arusha School was what gave us the familiarity and comfort of working with LTP methods, which we were then able to effectively share with the teachers whose classrooms we join. The second workshop showed the basics of sustainability, allowing us to implement LTP here in Arusha, able to operate independent of a Duke presence. And the work at Shalom reassured me of the vast potential of students here to grasp the concepts that LTP tries to share.

The collection of experiences has allowed me to see our struggles as context for the relative success that I saw today as so rewarding. Looking at where we started, it’s actually satisfying to know how much we’ve learned through going pole, pole. With this relaxed stroll, we’ve been given to opportunity to take it all in. And stumble upon a much better idea of how to implement LTP here to work with for the future.

LTP workshop in Arusha, Tanzania with 40 teachers

Teacher Workshop Reflections, Lindsay Kunkle

Workshop #2
We began our second workshop with nine teachers who were completely new to the Literacy Through Photography methodology on Monday, June 30. For the first time in Arusha we worked with teachers from secondary schools and local teacher’s colleges in addition to primary school teachers. With the added guidance of Wendy Ewald and the rest of our increased knowledge of how LTP will function best in Tanzanian schools we had a very smooth first day in which the teachers learned how to read images and photographed a childhood self-portrait. Each teacher seemed to take on his or her childhood persona as they took pictures of themselves on the playground, dancing in the field, or displaying a wide range of dramatic emotions.

The Workshop Continues….
Day two of the workshop brought us nearly thirty more teachers who had attended the 2007 LTP workshop held in Arusha last summer. An alphabet project themed around the core Tanzanian school subjects split the group into seven smaller groups of teachers each accompanied by a Duke student.

My group was in charge of creating a history alphabet. I followed along as they led me across town to a local museum in order to get the pictures we needed. Upon returning to the Arusha School grounds I was pleasantly surprised by my group’s creativity as they recruited several Arusha School students and played with various camera angles to help us in creating the rest of our alphabet.

Only in Our Dreams
Ndoto za usiku, sleep dreams; ndoto nzuri or mbaya, good or bad dreams; ndoto za mchana, day dreams; ndoto za matumaini, hopes and dreams; ndoto za alinach, illusions and fantasies—first with the teachers attending the workshop then with the students in Arusha Schools’s 5C and 6C classes we explored our various types of dreams. I was amused to watch one of the teachers act out her dream of her family making a band and I was deeply touched by the work of one student who has lost her father, but depicted a dream of her father being alive again, making her family complete and helping her to overcome the bullying she sometimes receives from her peers. However, I was somewhat taken aback by how many teachers dreamt of receiving money from a ‘mzungu’ or foreigner.

Making Our LTP Dream a Reality
Overall, our LTP dream of making a positive impact on the Tanzanian education system has become less of a dream and more of a reality. I feel that both the students and teachers have embraced LTP and are beginning to understand the value of our goal of teaching students visual literacy, encouraging students to begin to look critically at their surroundings and question their environment, as well as realizing the value of using creativity in the classroom in order to move away from a memorization based education methodology.

Picturing French Verbs

Standard Three students from Arusha School learned new French vocabulary words through an LTP lesson. Duke Engage students took pictures as the children illustrated how to fly, dance and so on.

DukeEngage Students at Work in Arusha

Standard 7 Science Lesson, HIV/AIDS and Family Planning

Several DukeEngage students worked with science classes at Arusha School and used photography and writing to review material in their lessons. They made pictures about the endocrine system, circulatory system, respiratory system, first aid, HIV/AIDS, and family planning.

"This picture is showing a person suffering from HIV/AIDS. It tells us you should not avoid a person with HIV/AIDS."

"This picture shows a friend who is giving her friend advice to have a VCT test before getting married."

"This picture shows bad family planning because they have too many kids."

"This picture shows someone who died of HIV/AIDS."

Reflections on our 4th Week in Tanzania, by Hilary Robbins

The week leading up to the halfway point of our trip was somewhat complicated by midterm testing at Arusha School, but we still accomplished a great deal. Besides being our second week of teaching LTP at Arusha School, this week was also the second and final week of our homestays. It was the first week in which we held after-school activities, and it brought the arrival of Wendy, Kaitlin, and Michael. For many of us, this week was the one in which we began to feel less like we were simply visiting here and more like we were living here. As we become more comfortable communicating in this culture, our work here is becoming more efficient, productive, and meaningful.

Standard Seven (Hilary, Minette, and Michelle)
On Monday afternoon of this week, all seven DukeEngage students worked with our class of standard seven students on a project about misemo, which are Swahili proverbs. The students worked in pairs and each pair chose a misemo, then planned and shot photographs to illustrate that misemo. On Thursday and Friday, the students wrote stories from their pictures and created artistic displays of their misemo.

We were extremely pleased with the progress our class had made since their first LTP project, which was a review for their science midterm exams. The first clear sign of improvement was that unlike in the first project, the students were able to formulate a clear plan for their photographs and draw it on paper. Secondly, I noticed a marked difference in the students’ leadership skills while shooting their photos. They were much more confident in speaking up about their preferences and about making decisions concerning framing, perspective, and other aspects of their photos. Finally, the students’ post-shooting writings were much improved from the science project.

A student in standard seven shooting her picture.

A standard seven student’s misemo project. Her misemo, “Mambo mazuri, hayataki haraki,” translates roughly to “good things should not be hastened.”

Once upon a time, there was a small village. In that village there was one family which was very poor. All the people in the family were weak. On day while the father was walking to the market, he met a very rich man. The rich man asked, “How are you?” The poor man answered, “I’m fine.” Then each proceeded with the walk. When the poor man reached the market people were gossiping. One of the people told the poor man, “I can see you need help. Here is a man who is very good at helping people.” The old man ran back to look for the rich man, but the rich man was not there. The poor man went back home and told his wife, “I met a very rich man who can help us. But maybe until then I will sell my daughter.” “What?!” the mother shouted, “You can’t sell my child. Even if I die, don’t do this because you just want to be rich. I can’t accept that.” At that time, the child came and said to her mother, “Mother your love is so sweet, I can’t have enough of it.” The father was ashamed of what he did.

-Another student’s misemo story. Her misemo stated, “Penzi la mama tamu, haliishi hamu.” Roughly translated, “A mother’s love is so sweet, one cannot have enough of it.”

Pictures from Arusha, Ami Kabadi

Me and my homestay sister Sophia.

The whole group on the last day of Swahili class with our teachers Beatrice and Godson.

Alia and I with some of our kids in the classroom. One of their projects is on the wall behind us.

Our group at the Arusha Declaration Museum. With out friend Pelle (left) and his son Shafi (right).

Some of the girls in front of a crater at Arusha National Park.