November 8, 2013 – Mama Jane learns to clean the Tanzanian way!

Our students clean the classroom each Friday….there is a lot of dust when you have unpaved roads and when children are walking long distances to school – more on that later.  We have been sweeping each week and cleaning up around the church and the school building but…..some of our girls were quite appalled that we [meaning me really] had not washed the floor.  Modesta put her hands on her hips and announced on Thursday “Mama Jane, this floor is dirty.  You need water to wash it.”

At this point, they don't even pretend to let me help....it is too time consuming.

Reluctantly I agreed – I do try to avoid this kind of task whenever possible but I had to agree it was getting pretty bad so on Friday I brought the bucket and some rags for the job.  Let me tell you, Modesta took one look at the rags I brought, rolled her eyes, and walked away disgusted having discovered I was completely useless.  She went over to the trash bucket and retrieved a discarded man’s polo shirt we had picked up in the church yard and put it to immediate use on the floor.   She looked over her should as if to say “this, Mama Jane, is a rag”.  She then went to work bent over at the waist, sloshing water on the floor and wiping in big circles, organizing the other girls to refresh the water and so on.   I put one of my small puny rags on the end of our broom and began cleaning along with them to at least try to save some face…..they thought it was hilarious that I was pushing a rag around with a broom….clearly they had never seen anything so stupid and ineffective….although they were too kind to say so and thanks to me, their English is limited.

So....part of the process of course is to move the muddy water to the door....as you see it is a 2 girl job.

They did agree to let me finish the last step on the entrance to the classroom, but I could see they had little confidence that I would do much of a job with my rag and broom.  I fully expect them to inspect on Monday and call me to task….oh well, there are worse things to be bad at I suppose.

 

Grace clearly sees we could all do better!