Valentine's Day and Lupanga

I didn't actually realize that it was Valentine's Day until maybe half-way through the day on Thursday. I've never been much of a fan of Valentine's Day in the past, and without all of the commercial cue: pink and red hearts all over, over-stocked candy and card isles, ads and billboards, and everything else, it would have passed me right by. However, a student or two reminded me by wishing me a Happy Valentine's Day.

At break time, I passed by some kids during break time, and one of the girls ran up to me and complained that the other girls in the class were saying that her valentine was a particular boy from their class. So, I jokingly decided to pair up the other girls with boys from their class. Somehow, this escalated and a list was written out, pairing up the boys and girls from Class VI. But, of course it couldn't end there because we were all having WAY too much fun. Kjirstin, the other students, and I all paired up all the boys and girls from Classes V and VII as well. (There are significantly fewer boys at the school, so quite a few boys were partnered with multiple girls. Then, Kjirstin and I decided to take everything the next step and make the kids write Valentine's cards to their partner/partners. Luckily, one of the teachers was absent, so we used his periods to let the kids have their fun with paper and colors!

Here are some pictures of them:

In case you have trouble reading what they say:
The one on the left says "Bad Boy" and the one on the right says: "Mr. Good Boy"

A student in Class VII with his card

Girls in Class VII working on their cards

A boy in Class VI working on his card

I must say that we got some pretty interesting results from quite a few students. The girls in Class VI seem to be at the stage of REALLY not liking boys. Thus we got cards like this:

If you have trouble reading it, it says:
"I like Valentine, but I hate boys of Class Six"

Some girls, who Kjirstin and I consider to be particularly sweet and well behaved, wrote things like "I'm not yours forever", "I hate you", "You are not my type", and "You will never be mine". We had to have a serious talking to some of those girls about writing things that are nice. We insisted that they they could just write the card as if they were writing it to a friend or a brother. Valentine's Day doesn't necessarily have to be all romantic. Surprisingly, many of the boys actually wrote decent cards. One boy started his letter something like this: "I've never written a letter to a girl before, but Madam Christine and Madam KJ say I have to. So, here it goes..." The letter was so precious!! I wish we had gotten a picture of that card, but we didn't. Oh well!!

The other big recent news was my hike up to Lupanga, the highest peak of the Uluguru Mountains and probably the most challenging climb up the mountain. I spent the night at a friend's house on Friday so that it would be easier to meet up with the group in the morning. At about 6:30am on Saturday, I met a fellow missionary, and two sons of another missionary couple and we began our ascent up the mountain. It was a very steady and grueling uphill climb the whole way to the top. There were only 2 or 3 short spots where the path leveled out a bit. Honestly, going up wasn't so bad (especially compared with coming down). I was able to find enough footholds and handholds, mostly by grabbing onto tree roots, to pull myself up when the path got super steep. And, it wasn't too hot since we made it to the shaded forest area before the sun rose over the mountains.

Some make-shift ladders and bridges were built in various spots to make the hike "easier"

We reached our destination just before 12pm which is a pretty good time. At the top of the mountain, we found ourselves completely surrounded by a strange and ancient forest. There's also a small tower that was built at the top of the mountain by the Germans. I can't imagine who would want to haul up the metal and tools to build it; even if it was rather small.

The tower at Lupanga Peak

By far, the way down was far more intense and dangerous than the ascent. My feet slid out from under me a number of times because of the steep path. The others found a walking stick for me, but it was still pretty tough. There were many places we had to turn all the way around and climb down the same tree roots we had used to pull ourselves up with. Sometimes it was really hard to find a foothold and I found myself dangling by tree roots a few times. Luckily, there were so many trees around and the path was pretty narrow, I certainly wouldn't have fallen too far down. It was an exhausting climb down and my thighs were put to the test. I still run a lot here (I'm even going to be in the Kilimanjaro half marathon in a couple of weeks from now), but my body was not quite prepared for this. 

About an hour/hour and a half away from town, storm clouds began to gather around Morogoro. We watched the clouds dump buckets over Kihonda before making their way closer to the mountain. It was a bit unnerving as we began to hear thunder and still had another hour to go before returning home. At that point we had left the forest area and were back into the farmland areas where it was a little less steep. But, as we tried to move faster, it almost felt like we were tumbling down the mountain. The moment I smelled that fresh "rain smell" in the air, I knew it was all over and we were not going to make it back before the clouds opened up over us. It started slow enough at first, but before we knew it, we were walking in a torrential downpour. We were drenched all the way through within minutes, but we had no choice but to keep going. On a normal, sunshine day, there would have been no need to keep the walking stick. But, I held onto it because small rivers were rushing down the dirt roads and the dirt had turned to a slippery mud. At some points we had to cross the small rivers and I slipped and fell down. Lucky me, it was raining so hard that the mud was completely washed out of my kitenge (my wrap skirt which I had to wear over my shorts in the populated areas so that I could be "culturally acceptable") before I reached the house in town were I had spent the night. There, I was thankfully able to wash up and change into dry clothes. 

Overall, I really feel a sense of accomplishment and I'm really glad that I finally have made it up to Lupanga!! When I first moved here and saw those mountains, I was very eager to hike all over them. Now, I've had the chance to hike to Bondwa, Lupanga, Morning Site, and the Bahati Camp. I can't say that I'm ready to go up again just yet (I'd like to recover a bit first). But, I certainly wouldn't mind heading up one more time before my departure in June!! :D

Overall, school is continuing very well and the students are progressing at back-breaking speed through their books. All of the classes are ahead of where I projected they'd be at this point in the school year!! I don't think that I could be more proud of their work ethic and their excitement about learning. I'm continuing to throw in different creative activities for the students to do so that they can have a more rounded English education. I've continued with the journaling activities, vocabulary, while adding my own units on tenses and how to write using complete sentences. The unit on complete sentences has significantly improved their writing this year which has been a huge relief for me! The students in Classes VI and VII have even written essays!! Now, they don't know that's what they've done because I made it into a charting activity, but they've done it!! I gave them the topic of "People from other countries should come to Tanzania." They had to give reasons why those people should come and then "unpack" those reasons. They also had to do the same thing with the topic "All students should go to school." I'm planning to do a more extended version of these charting/writing activities with Class V in the near future (since they're SOO far ahead in their books), and I'll explain more about it then. What I've been doing with Classes VI and VII has been more of a small warm-up/experiment to see how the students would respond to it. But, I'd say it was pretty successful and I'm definitely going to do it with Class V!

Well, that's all the updates I've got for now! I hope that you're having a good start to your week and a happy Monday!

May the Lord Bless You and Keep You,
~Christine