Relax, It's SpedEx

From the June 7th edition of The Guardian: Tanzania Lacks Special Needs Education Experts

Tanzania has only 134 special education experts distributed in several municipalities, the Parliament was told yesterday. 

Out of them, seven have certificate qualifications, 51 are diploma holders, and 76 attained a degree in special needs at the University of Dodoma, Sebastian Kolowa Memorial University (SEKOMU), or Patandi Teacher Training Institute. 

Aggrey Mwanri, the Deputy Minister of State in the Prime Minister's Office (Regional Administration and Local Governments), told MPs that the government was aware of challenges in the provision of special education and was working hard to improve the situation. 

He was responding to a question from Special Seats MP Al-Shymaa Kwegyir (CCM) who wanted the government to state the number of special education officers in the country, following an outcry on the dire shortage. 

The MP also wanted to know their level of education, if it goes with the challenges facing students with special education, saying that special education teachers are mostly deployed to normal schools.  This leaves special schools with serious shortage of teachers, she stated. 

"Can the government tell the House if it plans to recruit more teachers for special education in the ongoing teachers' recruitment?" she demanded. 

Jennister Mhagama, the Deputy Minister for Education and Vocational Training, responded saying the government would recruit students for special education training. 

There is a big problem in the provision of special education due to inadequate staff in the sector but plans are underway to reduce the problem, she said. 

Another Special Seats MP, Dr. Mary Mwanjelwa (CHADEMA) said the needs and rights of disabled children in the country are neglected in education programs.

There are poor enrollment rates and high drop-out rates, and children and parents who are left out feel disheartened.

"Disabled children should be able to learn in regular schools, just like others," she emphasized, maintaining that the special education system only meets the needs of a few. 

A breadth of education experts assert that special schools are expensive to establish and run, and by segregating disabled children they inadvertently contribute to their permanent exclusion. 

Quite apart from this, the best chance a disabled child usually has for an education is through inclusion in a mainstream school. 

Records of the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training show that fewer than five percent of disabled children in Tanzania go to school.

Even if they can get there, sustaining that vital education isn't easy; inaccessible buildings, a lack of suitable teaching materials, and a shortage of teachers make for a difficult learning environment.  Especially needed are teachers who know sign language and understand Braille.

All of this is compounded by the negative attitudes of education authorities and society in general.

"There is a growing concern on whether we care for education of people with disabilities," the MP intoned. 

People feel that there have not been effective plans to ensure that students with disabilities are given adequate support to access quality education at all levels.

Saving Grace

 

Meet Grace.

She is a nine-year-old Tanzanian girl who was brought to The Toa Nafasi Project by an American volunteer named Gavin.

Grace lives with her mama in the Moshi neighborhood of Majengo, but does not attend the local government school in that ward.  The teachers refused to accept her because she has a developmental delay and some mild physical disabilities.

So, instead of Mama paying the approximately $25usd it regularly costs to send a child to school for a year, Mama had to search far and wide for an alternate school that would accept Grace with her impairment.

Mama found said alternate school in the ritzy nabe of TPC (Moshi's sugar plantation) where she enrolled Grace in an English medium school, paying upwards of $60usd PER MONTH in order to obtain for her child what she felt was a decent education.

However, with Grace's learning difficulty, the investment wasn't really paying off: Grace's intellectual "needs" don't particularly require English language skills (she will unlikely ever be an academic superstar and really just needs to master the fundamental literacy and numeracy in order to be self-sufficient).  In addition - guess what? - the teachers at the TPC school were ignoring Grace and her special needs, so she was basically receiving the same treatment she would have gotten back in Majengo.  For a hefty price.

Enter Gavin.  A recent college grad from the Midwest U.S.A., he found Toa Nafasi through a common friend who runs a hostel in town and thought that Grace could benefit from an organization supporting children with learning difficulties.  He was right.

We brought Grace to Msaranga in April and assessed her.  We interviewed Mama and got Grace's history from birth and the story of Mama's pregnancy.  Vumi did not think that Grace needed to be enrolled at a special school such as Gabriella which we had initially thought, but did think that she could benefit by participating in Toa Nafasi tuition.  Well, that proved easier said than done.

I felt that Toa Nafasi needed to be contained (at least for the moment) in the village of Msaranga with students from the local primary school.  I mean, it's tough enough tracking all those kids and their comings and goings without then adding into the mix kids from outside the village.

So, Vumi suggested that Mama send Grace to us after her regular school hours to study with Vumi.  Well, okay, but then Mama is still paying the sixty bucks a month for an education that's not serving her child plus now she's gotta pay Vumi for private lessons on the side?  Not really ideal.

Finally, we hit upon the ultimate solution: take Grace out of the private English school at TPC where she's not able to take advantage of the education offered, enroll her at Msaranga Primary School where she'll fit right in with all the other village rugrats and be able to work with Vumi as part of The Toa Nafasi Project, and save Mama a bundle of shillings in the meantime!  Win-win-win!!

The photo above was taken on Grace's first day of school in Msaranga where she is now thriving.  She has made friends in the general Standard One classroom as well as in the Toa Nafasi tuition program.  She works with Vumi daily and has a keen understanding of the basic literacy and numeracy skills being taught.  She laughs, she plays, and no one tells her she's not good enough because of her impairment.

 

"It always seems impossible until it's done." -- Nelson Mandela

The Many Faces of Edwin Ludovick

I feel like the title of this week's blog entry could belong to a short story by James Thurber or E.B. White but, in actuality, it refers to the child pictured below, one Edwin Ludovick Lema, Standard One pupil at Msaranga Primary School.  Cute, right?
 

 
But then one looks into that face and wonders what plans little Ludovick (technically his father's name, but I prefer to call him such rather than his given moniker; it just feels *right*) has in store for us.  There's the faintest hint of a smile playing upon his lips and the crinkles by his eyes signify something mischievous afoot.  Plus, what's he gonna do with that big stick?!
 

 
A rapscallion of the highest order, Ludovick routinely wears his school bag cross-body with one strap over his head.  This look gives him the appearance of a miniature thug, a pint-size hoodlum, a grade school hooligan.  Check the one hip jutting, the arms carelessly hanging, the self-assured pout....  Quintessential Ludovick.

 

But before you write him off as the classroom bad boy, destined to break hearts, steal cars, and cause all kinds of mayhem on his way to adulthood, check out the softer side of Ludo.  He's not too macho to jump rope with the girls....

 
....Provided, of course, that he remain the center of attention at all times....

....Or unless he's taking a breather, cooling at the teachers' table until he regains his strength....and appetite for destruction....
 

 
Then there was this day a while back when we found him fairly naked thus, his shirt having gotten wet in an afternoon downpour.  Not sure if you can make out Yacinta's face in this shot, but her expression is priceless.
 
I had assumed early on that, due to his behavioral waywardness, he would not be a good student.  Maybe with a short attention span, a disdain for book learnin', an inability to leave the playground antics outside the classroom.  But I assumed wrong.  Ludovick is, in fact, one of the most capable students in this year's Standard One class!  When he's not handing out beatdowns or flirting with us teachers, he can read and write at the top of the class!!
 
Ahh, Ludovick!  You confounding child, you!!  A caper-puller, a hijink-purveyor, a practical jokester, and an all-around rabblerouser, you do have your secrets, don't you?!

Do a Little Dance

Sometimes, life is best expressed without words....so, let's....GET DOWN TONIGHT!

 

 
The Msaranga girls showing them how it's done at the Gabriella Center.
 

 
Vumi and a parent bust a move.
 

 

Gabriella's resident mbonge (chubster, meant in jest and affection) shakes his thang.

 

 

 
Twins are double the trouble!

Dyslexarabica?

Greetings all, here's hoping everyone is having a great week.  The rain continues to fall here in Kilimanjaro, but I'm told it will make the grasses grow, so I should quit my complainin'!

At any rate, the wet weather hasn't slowed things down much at school and we are still hard at work, tutoring both this year's students and those of 2013.  We are preparing the former for their various referral appointments at KCMC Hospital for vision testing and pediatric check-ups and the latter to be set free and fly solo towards the end of June.

Here, I should note that for those students from last year who continue to struggle with their studies, we will NOT just drop them because they have received a year of Toa Nafasi services.  NO.  Rather, we will continue to work with them and when Angi, Mary Gale, and the SPED lot from the States come in July, we can try to figure out a longer-term solution for those guys.

Case in point: Saidi Salehe, an adorable little guy who this year is repeating Standard One but is still having problems in the classroom.  We will not be able to discontinue his lessons come June because he is really having a hard time and, truth be told, has made very little progress despite Vumi's attentive efforts to get him up-to-speed.  Just the other day, I sat in on his reading/writing lesson with her and watched as he wrote his name from right to left and totally backward.
 

It was perfect in my compact, but alas, not so perfect on the page.

 

After further investigation in his notebook, I saw that the day before and the day before that, he had written his name correctly (and presumably from left to right), so this is not a clear-cut case of dyslexia, but maybe something else at play.

 

 
Since Saidi is Muslim, Vumi suggested he had recently been to mosque and this was the reason for his "dyslexarabica," but I don't know....I've not heard of many Tanzanian Muslims reading and writing Arabic in these parts!  We must talk to mama and baba and find out what's the deali-o so that, inshallah, we can help little Saidi to fly straight....or at least, from left to right....

Straggle Rock

Straggle

/'strag(ə)l/ 

verb: to move along slowly so as to remain some distance behind the person or people in front 

noun: an untidy or irregularly arranged mass or group 

Fraggle
/'frag(ə)l/ 

noun: a small anthropomorphic creature, about 22 inches tall that comes in a wide variety of colors and has a tail bearing a tuft of fur on the end; lives a very carefree life, spending most of its time playing, exploring, and generally enjoying itself

####

It is with nothing but absolute affection and steadfast devotion that I title this week's blog entry "Straggle Rock," both as an homage to to the 2014 class of Standard One students at Msaranga Primary School as well as to the famed Jim Henson puppet production.  And I think it can be noted that the two groups kind of have a lot in common....tuft-bearing tails aside....

So, I've been back at school for nearly three weeks now, and Vumi and I have started working in earnest with this year's Straggle of Fraggles while Yacinta continues with last year's kids.  We are following the same M.O. that we did last year, but Vumi and Yacinta have worked out a new system of tutoring literacy and numeracy whereby they teach both lessons to the kids every day rather than one week letters and one week numbers.  The Friday play-day still stands and we have assembled a selection of fun games that test motor skills as well as other activities that help with cognition and critical thinking.

As one would think, starting with the new class has been a bit daunting, but while I whimper with fear and worry (Can we do this?  Is it too much?  Will we fail?  Will these kids end up any better off than they started?), Vumi approaches the work as a challenge (What am I afraid of?  Nothing!!  Shrug, shrug, shrug....she is so nonchalant!!), so the two of us plod on together, sitting with the newbies and evaluating their capabilities.

Out of 131 students, we have now identified 23 children whom we know for sure need an intervention of some sort, 25 who would benefit from tuition from the Standard One teacher but who do not require special one-on-one attention, and 18 who fall in the middle somewhere.  This data is all based on our own findings because we have yet to receive Angi's thoughts on the assessment results.  Once she sends us her information, we can cross-check the two and make the necessary adjustments.  In addition, we can then start to plan the referral appointments during which we will take children for vision testing, hearing testing, speech therapy, and pediatric care, and to Gabriella for those with more severe intellectual impairments or behavioral issues.

So far, there have been no big surprises.  Most of the kids seem like they are simply "slow learners," meaning that for whatever reason, they are not catching on in the regular classroom and we hope that by working in small groups with Vumi and Yacinta, we can get them up-to-speed.  I do not think any of these kids has a quantifiable LD though, of course, I am still just a layman in these parts.  When Angi and the rest of the SPED people come in July, we will know more.  Sure, some of the children do display signs of dyslexia or dyscalculia, others show hints of ADHD or hyperactivity, and still others present further issues (we have discovered another little girl who has been the victim of repeated sexual abuse at least partially due to her intellectual impairment), but for the most part, these children are just a Straggle of Straggling Fraggles (if you will!).

Now, a peek back at the Fraggle Stragglers of 2013.

Here's Vumi giving Godi a literacy lesson.  Godi was one of those kids who was initially totally written off by the regular classroom teachers.  Now, after a year of working with him, Vumi has him reading words with mwambatano syllables (those with more than one consonant sound like "sha," "mwa," and "tha") and even short sentences.  Here, he masters the mwambatano "nya" by sounding out various simple words: nyeupe (black), nyumba (house), and nyoka (snake).  At the end, he reads the sentence: Mama ameleta nyanya (Mama has brought tomatoes), but he mis-reads nyanya for nyasi (grass), eliciting a chuckle from Vumi and I.  Nevertheless, he self-corrects and the former "lost cause" is found!

 
This one is hard to hear because they are both soft-spoken, but Yacinta is teaching Irene her numbers using a Standard Two math book.  Irene is still "straggling," but her mama is very engaged with the program and has attended several Weeks of Therapy at Gabriella to understand more about Irene's learning difficulties and ways of coping as well as bonding with other mamas and forming their own little support group.

The last time I went to Arusha, I stopped at a toy store which happened to have this bowling set and I thought it might be a good addition to the Toa Nafasi toy chest.  After all, bowling challenges hand-eye coordination and the kids have to play against each other which encourages a certain amount of healthy competition, not to mention the whole "sharing is caring" aspect of playing together.  But still, this lesson needs to be refined: one of my pet peeves in Tanzania (okay people, this is one of those hated generalizations but, fact is, it does hold true collectively for the culture) is that folks - young and old, rich and poor, men and women - do not take turns!!  The idea of waiting in line until it's your turn is just not a part of life here and it's something that I firmly believe in as a stepping stone to development.  Otherwise....chaos!  So, you'll pardon the little grunt of consternation I let out toward the end of the video when Geoffrey and Godlisten fail to successfully wait out each others' turns.  Drives me nuts....

 

Julius is one of those kids who probably does not have a serious learning disability, but who forgets quickly, so that each day, teaching him is like working with a patient with memory loss.  He must be reminded constantly.  Luckily, Toa Nafasi teachers are patient, kind, and up to the challenge, and the Toa Nafasi treasure trove includes games like this one which tests children's memory using pairs of cards which are flipped IN TURN by two or more players in order to find their matches.  This particular memory game is even more amazeballs because it features the faces of different children from around the world, so you've got your mzungu, your mmaasai, your mchina, etc. and the kids love to look at the different faces.  Here, Vumi challenges Juli to use his kumbukumbu (memory) in order to beat her at the game.  He didn't quite get there, but he did manage to draw!
 

 
I guess the moral of this week's story is that to be a Straggler isn't necessarily so bad.  You can catch up if you try hard and if you are lucky enough to be provided a boost up.  To be a Fraggle is also okay.  You are only 22 inches tall but you live a life "generally enjoying yourself."  To be a Straggle or part of a Straggle is not a travesty per se but, in my opinion, the least desirable of the three.  And that's only because I disdain the untidy; an irregular Straggle is still acceptable.

Off for now, until next week!

The Old Man Is Snoring

It's raining, it's pouring, it must be the rainy season in Kilimanjaro....!!

I'm halfway through my second week back at school after my "Turkish delight" of a vacation and that refreshed, rejuvenated feeling still lingers.  But, though I'm happy to be back and ensconced once again in work, I am not totally feeling this year's rainy season.  Similar to last year, the months of April, May, and June are expected to bring buckets of much-needed rain to the area, but the cold and damp has a way of seeping into these old bones that just never really goes away until the seasons change again.  Which really means we're looking at August in New York when I will next be warm since here in the Southern Hemisphere, our seasons are flipped with that of the North, and July and August are the coldest months of the year.

Even the kids are feeling the wintry brrrr these days.  And they can usually play their way through any weather!  Now that we're working with the new group of Standard One students (more on how that's going to come), we're just starting to get used to their ways and eccentricities.  Peep Laura Leopold here who, like me, clearly has ice water running through her veins!  Freezing my mzungu buns off at school today, I soooo wanted to jack her for this fur-lined coat, but that would not have been very teacherly of me, would it??  Nor very mzungu-y of me either, come to think of it!!

 

In addition to the rain and cold, we have to contend with the copious amounts of mud in Msaranga.  In the dry season, it's dust up our nostrils and in our eyes; in the rain, it's mud at our feet, either making us slip and slide or caking to our shoes so that we walk like Teacher Terminators.  The kids usually just shuck their shoes and go barefoot, but I read too many guidebooks when I first came to TZ mentioning mud-lovin' parasites to even think about doing that.

So, walking is a challenge, but worse than moving by foot is moving by car.  Last year, I got stuck in the mud in my rental car, a RAV-4, which was actually much sturdier than the car I ended up buying.  Thankfully, luckily, and knock-on-wood it stays this way, I have not gotten stuck in my Suzuki (nicknamed the "Roller Skate" by my friends), and I have mastered the use of the four-wheel drive, but there have been a few touch-and-go situations where I've literally held my breath.  Today, Vumi, Yacinta, and I each prayed to our respective Gods to grant us safe passage from the dirt road up to the tarmac.  Our prayers were answered....

Anyhoo, all of this is to say, I am looking forward to complaining of the heat again rather than these frigid temperatures, which, let's keep it real, probably aren't really all that cold, but when you live in equatorial Africa, you do have certain expectations and none of them involve wool legwarmers!!  All righty then, enough of this; I'm working on a piece for next week about teaching the 2014 Standard One kids and I hope I'll have it ready for you all soon.  Until then, wherever you may be in this world: stay warm and stay dry!!