This morning, I am teaching Basic Communication Skills to at least 100 students at the Moshi Town campus of SMMUCo. The campus opened last week, a month after classes started.
Three buildings on this campus, a former brewery, are still being transformed from beer-making activity to learning activity: the administration building, the cafeteria/library/classroom building, and a large lecture hall. The other buildings have not been transformed at all. An architect has yet to inspect one building to see if it has potential to be a dormitory.
The streets in this area of Moshi are a fine powdery dust, with large manufacturing enterprises making up most of the activity. Large lorries barrel in and out, stirring up large clouds. The campus grounds are also the same powder. Workers shovel the makings of concrete. Others pound away at old concrete, throwing out more dust. The small act of walking stirs up small billows.
When I dressed this morning, I thought of wearing a handkerchief over my hair. I thought of wearing worn-out clothes that I could easily wash and wouldn’t worry about preserving. If I had goggles and a face mask, I could wear them also. I chose instead a simple wrinkle-free skirt and wrinkled blouse.
The large lecture hall where I teach looks more like an airplane hangar with at least two sides open to the air and sunshine and dust. A chapel service is still in progress when I arrive, so I sit in a seat and discover that there’s a fine layer of dust on the desk, and I imagine that my skirt has nicely removed a layer for the student who takes my place. The evangelist says a final prayer, and I move to the front of the class arrangement. I would call it a classroom but it’s more an island of desks and chairs in a sea of concrete floor, all of them facing a white board.
The white board still has the previous class’s lecture on it. As students begin to wipe off their seats and chairs, I wipe off the white board and realize that really I’m erasing two or three lectures underneath the current one, plus the latest layer of dust. Finally one kind student takes the eraser from me, moves just beyond the hangar, dips the eraser in a water puddle and returns to wipe off the board. Now the board has smeared into it a layer of puddle. Later a second volunteer student will take the eraser to a room in the next building and return with a cleaner, wetter eraser. That will wipe out three layers of letters. And by creating a film of blue and black gray, this latest smearing will give a nice contrast to my blue letters.
Very little can happen in an airplane hangar with over 100 students. Surely the last row cannot read my handwriting mixed with dust, three lectures, and puddle. Surely they cannot hear me shouting above the workers pounding in the unfinished building next to us. Surely the dust already clinging to their fingers, their pens, and papers drives them nuts. Surely they have better things to do than wait ten minutes for me to wipe off the board.
But they have come wearing their finest clothes, the men in pressed shirts and ties, the women in dresses and scarves. Somebody’s perfume wafts pleasantly from the front row.
I am telling them the parable of the talents because I have witnessed two weeks before a pathetic set of student presentations. I tell them that as future teachers, they will be given five bags of talents and they should understand how powerful and life-giving those bags are. Their focus in preparing these presentations should not be fear, but the importance of what they do.
And in saying this, I see them lean forward. Some of the students in the back have turned one ear toward me. After I finish telling the parable, I will begin a painstaking process of writing on the board a sample essay rather than giving them a handout because circumstances discourage me from making over a hundred photocopies. And they will write patiently. The students in back will occasionally stand up to get a better view of what I’ve written on the board. Other students will help the ones beside them by showing their notes. Someone will ask me to explain something again. And afterward, students will come to me with drafts of the next assignment even though I hadn’t finished explaining it.
Next Monday, I will take extra care in pressing my skirt in spite of the dust.
Three buildings on this campus, a former brewery, are still being transformed from beer-making activity to learning activity: the administration building, the cafeteria/library/classroom building, and a large lecture hall. The other buildings have not been transformed at all. An architect has yet to inspect one building to see if it has potential to be a dormitory.
The streets in this area of Moshi are a fine powdery dust, with large manufacturing enterprises making up most of the activity. Large lorries barrel in and out, stirring up large clouds. The campus grounds are also the same powder. Workers shovel the makings of concrete. Others pound away at old concrete, throwing out more dust. The small act of walking stirs up small billows.
When I dressed this morning, I thought of wearing a handkerchief over my hair. I thought of wearing worn-out clothes that I could easily wash and wouldn’t worry about preserving. If I had goggles and a face mask, I could wear them also. I chose instead a simple wrinkle-free skirt and wrinkled blouse.
The large lecture hall where I teach looks more like an airplane hangar with at least two sides open to the air and sunshine and dust. A chapel service is still in progress when I arrive, so I sit in a seat and discover that there’s a fine layer of dust on the desk, and I imagine that my skirt has nicely removed a layer for the student who takes my place. The evangelist says a final prayer, and I move to the front of the class arrangement. I would call it a classroom but it’s more an island of desks and chairs in a sea of concrete floor, all of them facing a white board.
The white board still has the previous class’s lecture on it. As students begin to wipe off their seats and chairs, I wipe off the white board and realize that really I’m erasing two or three lectures underneath the current one, plus the latest layer of dust. Finally one kind student takes the eraser from me, moves just beyond the hangar, dips the eraser in a water puddle and returns to wipe off the board. Now the board has smeared into it a layer of puddle. Later a second volunteer student will take the eraser to a room in the next building and return with a cleaner, wetter eraser. That will wipe out three layers of letters. And by creating a film of blue and black gray, this latest smearing will give a nice contrast to my blue letters.
Very little can happen in an airplane hangar with over 100 students. Surely the last row cannot read my handwriting mixed with dust, three lectures, and puddle. Surely they cannot hear me shouting above the workers pounding in the unfinished building next to us. Surely the dust already clinging to their fingers, their pens, and papers drives them nuts. Surely they have better things to do than wait ten minutes for me to wipe off the board.
But they have come wearing their finest clothes, the men in pressed shirts and ties, the women in dresses and scarves. Somebody’s perfume wafts pleasantly from the front row.
I am telling them the parable of the talents because I have witnessed two weeks before a pathetic set of student presentations. I tell them that as future teachers, they will be given five bags of talents and they should understand how powerful and life-giving those bags are. Their focus in preparing these presentations should not be fear, but the importance of what they do.
And in saying this, I see them lean forward. Some of the students in the back have turned one ear toward me. After I finish telling the parable, I will begin a painstaking process of writing on the board a sample essay rather than giving them a handout because circumstances discourage me from making over a hundred photocopies. And they will write patiently. The students in back will occasionally stand up to get a better view of what I’ve written on the board. Other students will help the ones beside them by showing their notes. Someone will ask me to explain something again. And afterward, students will come to me with drafts of the next assignment even though I hadn’t finished explaining it.
Next Monday, I will take extra care in pressing my skirt in spite of the dust.
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