By: Jarreau Freeman
Read all posts by Jarreau
I will never forget my first morning in Tanzania. I walked outside of the hostel, the team was living in, and before me was this great mountain. I stood in complete awe at the magnificent sight before me. If there was ever any evidence that there is a God, that mountain, the trees, the beautiful flowers, the vast, bright blue sky, and the monkeys playing in the trees all proved it. I was completely overwhelmed and the only word that I could utter was…WOW.
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Class began two days after our arrival. I was nervous, but the students received us so warmly and were open to what we had to teach them; that calmed some of my anxiety. The team was divided into two groups and we worked with two different classes. Some of the team worked with Form V and the other half worked with Form VI. These were the oldest students at Bigwa; I had the privilege of working with Form VI.
One the first day of class we gave the students an English pre-test so we could see the strengths and weaknesses of the students, and see how we could best help them. I was anticipating the worse in what they knew about written English; however, these students exceeded my expectations and they knew much more than I thought (That shows me to never underestimate people). After the pre-test we handed the students out work books we brought with us from the states, and gave them notebooks that we collected as well.
We focused most of our attention on English grammar like run on sentences, fragments, commas, and past and present tenses. Also, at the end of each class the students wrote an essay, so that we could go over proper essay structure with them. We also read some African literature and had discussions about the images, symbols, and the overall theme of the works.
I had the privilege of directly working with four students named Helen, Gift, Nancy, and Flivanna. They were so sweet and eager to learn. At the end of the first class we all became best friends and exchanged e-mail addresses.
