Graduation!

As always I was put on the decorating committee for Form VI graduation. Every time we choose up committees I joke I should be a bouncer, DJ or MC and once I made it as far as being put with the cooks but for some reason I usually seem to end up mapamboni no matter what I do. This makes very little sense. The Tanzanian tradition of decorating everything in sight line with as many ribbons, draped clothes and bows as they can lay their hands on is something I find slightly repugnant to my American senses of both style and efficiency. 

My intrepid team of form four girls ask “Madam should we use green or pink bows here?... Madam where can we find more lace cloth?... Madam do these ribbons look right?” But the answer is always the same: I really couldn't care less. 

I do make an effort though. Friday night we stayed until eleven o'clock in the staffroom turning it into somewhere I might have been delighted to have my fifth birthday. I realize of course that American traditions are just as arbitrary and held just as dear. Why can't we have graduations without those ridiculous robes and hats? Why isn't Christmas Christmas without a tree? Why does Thanksgiving necessarily mean a turkey? Still, as a dispassionate observer it all seems utterly ridiculous.

The staff room when I was finished with it.

Graduation itself was long (starting two hours late) and mostly much more interesting than the average Tanzanian function, at least for me. My students sang, danced, made speeches and put on a thirty minute farce (komedi) which addresses the themes of sex, drugs, drinking, love. It included cross-dressing and some slapstick so realistic the first time I saw it I literally gasped and thrust my fingers to my mouth and ended with a joke about incest and mistaken identity. Obviously, it brought the house down.

The singing was moving. I've always been a sucker for all-men choirs, call and response songs and songs that include hand clapping, all of which were featured heavily. The song that contained a thanks specifically to me made me tear up and hate myself for not having my camera with me.

After the ceremony the graduates and the students who paid for the food piled into classes where rice, pilau, beans, beef stew, cabbage, bananas and sodas (what a feast!) are waiting for them. The invited guests had almost the same, except served from much nicer dishes and in the staffroom. As event coordinators, we teachers dashed about making sure that everything was as it should be. Only when the music was beginning out in the parade ground and all the official guests had left did we settle down for our own plates of food and beer/soda. 

Since very few people have cameras every party has a band of roving photographers who line up participants in the shrubbery to take essentially the same pictures over and over again with different people in them. As something of an oddity in my community I am a big star of these photos and almost the only one who ever smiles. The day after the photos will be printed in town and then sold back to the people who requested them. As an American living my life in the post printed photos paradigm I am sometimes scolded for taking pictures I never bring back.

The music is all gospel and Bongo Flavor (East Africa's idea of pop) and Tanzanians are pretty terrible dancers by American standards when they are trying to be polite. At the sketchy discos in the big cities people have seen enough rap videos to know how to really shake their booties. But in a village where there is no electricity and anyway everyone knows you, your mother and your wife, its mostly a lot of elbow work and shifting of weight from one foot to another to the principle beat. My friends are unduly impressed with my ability to mimic this behavior and I am always congratulated several times at any party on my dancing. As with a lot of things, when it comes to my dancing I secretly suspect that a lot of Tanzanian interest comes down to a sort of 'look-at-what-the-monkey-can-do' fascination. I'm never entirely sure what they're actually impressed with and what they're only impressed with because I'm American. Whatever. I'll take what I can get.

The teachers and staff dance the Tanzanian version of the twist to resounding approval from the school.

As I said, I like showing off my stuff. But as I walked back to the staffroom with the other adults I couldn't help but feel strangely envious of the kids. They let the music play until eleven (though they only had permission until nine) and then they piled back into the dorms, rowdy and elated. The other teachers all went back to their families and kids. I'm the only one who went back to an empty house (except for the lizards). Being a teacher is fun, being the center of attention is exhilarating, having people interested in me and being respected is great. But being an outsider is hard.