Wake, awake!

The Mwika campus is an active one. It’s a combination of two or maybe three educational institutions – Lutheran Bible School, a school of theology, and a third campus of Stefano Moshi Memorial University College. At its center is a church. There’s also a kindergarten and just beyond that past the hedges is a primary school. All of these form a collective routine.

At 5:00 a.m. the church bell rings, signaling all sleepers to wake up and pray. It rings 100 times, and then we are wide awake. At 6:30 a.m. it rings again. Perhaps that’s when our prayer should end. Or that’s when the hard sleepers should wake up.

At 7:30, the school bell is sounded. The bell is actually the rim of a car tire hanging from a tree. A teacher takes a stick and whacks away at it, but there’s a rhythm to the clanging. First, two short clangs when the rim sways. Then there’s a clang!clang!clang!clang!clang!clang!clang! finalized by CLANG CLANG.

At lunch, we hear the same clang thing all over again.

At 4:00, the primary school assembles outside and a student or two with snare drums tap out a cadence that the children sing to. All over Tanzania, children are taught to sing with all their might, which comes across as a sing-shout. This means that each song has the same melody and differs only by rhythm. At 5:00 p.m. a small brass band practices outside the church. They also have drums. By 6:30, the only ones left singing are the cicadas, who will sing all night.