Letters from Africa

January, 2008

Very special blessings for each day of the New Year of 2008!

Greetings from Tanzania, where we basically have only one season all year long. It seemed strange to hear of all the ice and snow in Chicago in these past weeks when I was getting my greatest sun tan as we waited for three hours in a traffic jam as workers tried to repair a bridge on the only road that goes from Musoma to Mwanza, the second largest city in Tanzania.

Christmas was beautiful if somewhat different. There are no real Advent devotions like an Advent wreath. The churches do have Manger scenes, but there obviously are no outdoor light decorations since most of the homes do not have any electricity in the first place. Because we live just about 3 miles from the Resurrectionist parish in Butiama and go there each day for Mass, we were invited to join the priests and brother for the traditional Polish Wigilia supper. It was nice to know that many of our Congregational customs, like reading the Gospel of St. Luke before breaking the “oplatek” are also a part of what our CR brothers do.

The “Midnight” Mass was scheduled to begin at 9 p.m., but as everything here in Africa started at least 35 minutes late. It was preceded by a re-enactment by the teenagers and some children of the Christmas story from the Annunciation through the flight into Egypt. All the parts are sung and boys from the ages of about 10-19 take most of the parts. The only girls involved were the ones who played Mary and did the dancing. Baby Jesus was a live little girl! I guess I always keep comparing this to the USA where one hardly gets young people to come to Mass much less take such an active role in the Liturgical celebrations. The Mass featured much dancing, singing and clapping of hands. The small girls who did the dancing led the processions in at three different times during the Liturgy.

Finally, the start of our school is just a few weeks away. It will be good to have the energy and enthusiasm of young women all around us! We tested 586 girls at 5 different sites on November 24. Because we do not have any dormitories and need to use 4 classrooms for sleeping, we can only take 100 girls – or two classes of 50 in a class. The past few weeks, we have seen many tears among the 486 that we cannot accommodate. We have had many pleading parents and disappointed girls. How I wish we could take all of them. Even long established Secondary Schools can only take 100 - 150 first year students at most. I have had all kinds of pressure from priests, Sisters, politicians, and lay leaders in the parishes to take certain girls. Then, too, I have had parents complain that some of the top 100 actually paid someone else to take the test for them. I checked with some of the missionaries and they say that that really happens. I wonder if we will ever know!

There were application forms that were to be returned a week before the test. I was supposed to make lists of what students were testing where. I made the lists in typical American form and alphabetized them by last name. Well, there really are no last names here in Tanzania – especially for females. As a child, the girl will add her father’s first name to her name. Then when she has her first son, she becomes known as Mama followed by her son’s name. Because my father’s was Stephen, my name would be Stephanie Stephen and my brother’s name would be Joseph Stephen. We must have had dozens with a last name of Joseph or Robert or John. We buy most of our food from Mama Frankie – so named because her first born son is called Frankie.

The girls took 4 separate tests: math, English, Kiswahili and one in General Knowledge which included questions of geography, history, civics and science. It was amazing to see the girls put their names on each of the four tests and use different names on some compared to others! For example, one girl wrote Veronica Gasper on some tests and Veronika Gaspar on others! I kept telling the Sisters that we need to give an odd number of tests next year because a good 25 girls had their name one way on two tests and another way on the next two and I did not know which version to choose. Some times they would just have their first name followed by their father’s name and other times that same girl would add yet another name to hers! It was and is very confusing. Even first names would differ from test to test: Irini and Airini or Francisita and Franciska. We had one girl test late. Her father filled out the application form with her name as: Sijali Koko Mathias, yet the girl wrote her name on two of the tests as: Merinda April. The father’s name is April. I am still trying to figure that one out! Some unusual names were Happiness or Happyness (about a dozen with that name!) or Nice, Niceness, Gladness or Queen.