After breakfast, we started off our day by going to the Haile Selassie school where both of our discussions would take place. Our first discussion was about physical education classes and sports where we learned that the Haile Selassie school has different sports available such as basketball, volleyball, cricket, and tennis. We were told that sometimes they have difficulty running P.E. classes and sports games due to the quality of equipment (e.g. their basketball court is worn). We then got a chance to ask the students from the Haile Selassie school some questions and they got to ask some questions back, mostly about sports and what fitness classes are like for both of us. After this meeting, we went into another room in the school for a second meeting. This meeting addressed different topics: the history of the English Club, the history of Zanzibar, a drama skit, and a discussion. The speaker gave us an overview of the English Club and how it grew over time. He also talked about the advantages of the English Club as it gives students the opportunity to travel more around the world. However, he acknowledged the English Club has its struggles due to a lack of teacher support. Next, a different speaker spoke for the history of Zanzibar and brought up many different subjects such as agriculture, political issues, infrastructure decreasing, culture, and education improving. The drama skit focused on gender inequality. It was about a father who clearly favored his son and wanted him to succeed while he treated his daughters poorly. In the end of the skit, the son failed a test while the daughters passed and the father was extremely disappointed with his son. The father then asked his daughters to forgive him for the way he treated them and that from now on he will treat every child equally. The last part of this meeting was a discussion where BHS students talked a lot about how going to Africa is a big eye opener because we aren’t really educated about what life is like in Africa, let alone Tanzania. We also had a Q&A where students from the Haile Selassie school asked BHS students five questions and BHS students asked Haile Selassie students five questions. That was the end of discussions and our day concluded with a dinner at the SOS school with faculty. We had many conversations with SOS teachers during our final dinner in Zanzibar.
- Annie