Tuesday, August 11, 2009

8/10/09

In an odd conversation, yesterday, I actually met Councilman Sun, who is the head of the cultural division at the woodcarvers' market. He happened to be looking at some carvings in the chairman's shop, and the chairman called me over to talk with him. I don't think he really cared much for my project (but he did know about, and was aware that two people from his department attended a presentation yesterday), and instead, he was really happy to find out that I was from America, because he'd be going there in a month or so to buy a new car to send back to China. I gave him my contact information, and it seemed like he would actually contact me when he gets to the US. Yeah, pretty weird, but maybe if I do him this favor, he'll be more likely to help out some woodcarvers in Tanzania. What a weird way to build a relationship.

Today I visited Ms. Wang at the embassy, mostly to say thanks and fairwell. It was particularly nice because I really had no goal in mind and we chatted about various topics from the woodcarvers' market, comparing US and China education systems, why I took Swahili, and many things that weren't directly related to the project at hand.. I felt that it was a very solid cultural exchange, and am thankful I got to talk to her in let's say a non-political setting. She did comment that she thought the students had learned quite a lot in a short amount of time, and in addition, that she was surprised that Ms. Wu had cancelled since Ms. Wang thought that it was a great opportunity for the Chinese people to connect with Tanzanians. The only thing that I ended up asking of her and the embassy to do was to continue printing my books for the students as I sent them to the embassy. As a gift to the embassy, I also gave her a Swahili-English dictionary. Just trying to end on a good note.

At today's class, I talked with the students about a method for them to continue learning their Chinese and not forget. Basically, my plan is as follows: I will continue recording sound bits in America of the dialogues that are in my textbook. I will then send them over the internet to one of the more well off students, who will then download it onto a USB drive. He has an MP3 player device that he can then connect to some speakers and play the sound bits. It is in this manner that students will be able to learn new material. Of course, they have covered a lot of stuff in class already that they have yet to mastered or have forgotten, and reviewing these will also be valuable. At the end, I emphasized that it was now up to them to learn the Chinese. They have a foundation, and there is no reason why they cannot continue to learn some new lessons and review everything which they have learned. Once they finish the book that I have created, I will write a second part, which I will ask the Chinese Embassy to print.

Another interesting idea came to me about a week earlier when one of my students told me that a Chinese customer tried to buy his Swahili-Chinese textbook. My student refused to sell out (which I was actually extremely proud of since it meant he valued his Chinese learning over a few thousand or ten thousand shillings). I figure if I can create a text that teaches Swahili to Chinese people, then I might be able to make some money of these books. Instead of myself making money, however, I can ship these texts to the woodcarvers, who can then sell them to Chinese people. I've decided that all the money from these sales would then go toward doing something for the Chinese class at the woodcarvers' market such as hiring a teacher, or fixing broken benches. I'm not sure how successful it will be, but it does not seem to be a bad idea. Something that's really appealing to me right now is that if I ever get the money, I'll try to build a better school for the woodcarvers, but that's a long-term goal.

I'll be leaving in two days, and I haven't really had much time to draw conclusions about the work I've done. When I get back to the states, I'll likely take a few days to let it sink in.

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