Teaching at Mennonite Theological College of East Africa

This teaching saga will definitely be a memorable experience for me. Hopefully it will also be useful for the students (sometimes I wonder about that, since this was set up to improve our Swahili, yet I wonder if the students will get as good teaching out of it because of our bad attempts to explain). All 8 of the students I taught yesterday seemed very nice, if slightly varied in enthusiasm. One poor guy was obviously drifting off to sleep, but then it was the last session before lunch, he had just had an hour previous to my lecture, and it was hot in the classroom. Still it is a little discouraging!

I have to get used to the African way of classroom interaction. It seems as though I was proposing something quite radical when I told them I needed them to discuss stuff, and that I wouldn't write much on the board for them to copy down. I hope this is a good change for them, but even as I encourage them to discuss with each other, I inwardly groan as that increases the likelihood that they speak fast and I won't understand them! Ah well, it is a learning process for me too.

So, my dread of Wednesday and Friday is growing, but hopefully so is my Swahili ability! I look forward to one point though, when I get to tell my students that in my culture it is not acceptable to have "mzungu" (white person) yelled at you, so that is why we don't like it when it is done here. I think that might be an interesting revelation for them!