Girls Conference

Letter from a Student

I received a letter two days ago from one of my students that I would like to share with the world. This letter made all the huge frustrations that I've encountered since I came to Tanzania seem pretty small and and all the small successes that I've experienced seem pretty huge.

Before I share this letter with you, there are a few things that I tell you. First, to get ANYTHING done in Tanzania, you need to write an “official letter”. I mean anything. To get my ATM card, I needed to write an official letter to the bank, requesting that they give me my card (which had already been ordered). To get photocopies of tests made, I need to write an official letter to my headmistress asking for money. To go away, Tanzanians need to write an official letter to the education office to ask for time off. To choose girls to go to the Girls' Conference, I asked them to answer three questions. Instead of getting answers to questions, I got 20 official letters. Letters are huge here. If you want something done, chances are that you have to write a letter to get it.

Secondly, the girl that wrote me this letter is from a family which doesn't have a lot of money. She came and asked me to borrow (in Tanzania, most of the time “borrow” means “give”) 2000 Ts /= so that she could buy a notebook and pencil. 2000 /= is about equivalent to $1.54 USD. Not a huge sum of money. I gave it to her. And didn't really think much of it. I mean, what is $1.54, a 20 oz bottle of soda in the USA? Anyways, apparently she thought that was a pretty big deal. The next day she came hodi-ing at my house with a letter which said this (I'm writing it exactly how she wrote, with the exception of omitting her name):

TO
MY
ADORABLE ONE
MADAM CATHELINE
KAYUKI GIRLS

KAYUKI SEC SCHOOL
S.L.P 232
TUKUYU
30TH MAY 2010

Dear Madam Catheline,
I think you continous so very well with your daily activities come back to in my side I feel so good and I continous so good with my daily activities with my studies.
The main motive of this letter just to tell you something. The something is that I want to be your friend because I want to study something to you and me too. I want to tell you something which you can't & no understand in Swahili. And the two resons for me to write this letter to asking to be friend me and you because I LOVE YOU SO MUCH MORE THAN OTHER PEOPLE LOVE YOU. Believe it or not I love you so much Madam Catheline. Madam if I see you I be so happy because I love you Madam. Me am a student of form two B. My name is --------------------- and I come from at Tukuyu. I will be glad if my request it good.

SMS
I love you for the WARMTH of your heart, the NICE things you do for me, and for the SWEETNESS you fill my LIFE with. Loving you is a DELIGHT.
Its
me
-------------------------------------------------

That's for $1.50. And, as you can probably tell, Form II students aren't totally comfortable with English, so for you her to write the letter in English, means that she spent a good amount of time on the letter. I thought it was really sweet. Especially the last part, which I am thinking is either from a greeting card or a song. I'm not sure which.

So she stood there as I read the letter and I didn't know how to respond. I told her that “of course I'll be your friend! I love you too.”

So that made me feel pretty good about Tanzania.