Teaching & Learning // Kusoma & Kufundisha *SPECIAL JAHAZI SESSION W/ SOUTH AFRICAN POET KEORAPETSE KGOSITSILE

*all photographs by Peter Bennett, 2012

THE LEARNING//Thomas Green

Our road points in many directions

With so many points it seems there is no point at all

It twists us and turns us in every direction

And intersect wherever however they fall.

This is all part of life’s learning experience

Showing us to make some sense of it all

Taking those many points going in all directions

and making us take on the sense of it all.

My teachers of my youth gave me the basics

A handle on language, math and many a thing

they taught me the history that lies beneath the surface

giving a sense of place to start , a sense of where I am and should be.

Like the big bang we started from near nothing at all

Compacted energy into infinitely tiny space too small to hold

So it explodes in all directions taking on form space and mass

A celestial cosmos of infinite variation and throes

Yet of basic construct yet too complicated to completely understand

The things that affect the outcome to be as we go

From those that have taught me the basics I did need and do grow

Come experience to teach me lessons long lasting  that stand

Circumstances sometimes seeming random and unplanned

that happen to me on this path that is life so grand

And on each step of the way of the path I do grow.

I learn that there is a beginning and also an end

To this life that we lead as a part of the planet infinite yet no

We are but a tiny spec in the universe

Unversed, reversed, gone first and arrived at last

We do end, but the way is a constant learning experience

until we must breath our last existential breath.

EDUCATE//Karlie Jo Query

Teach me

Oh teacher

Teach me

Student

The world is open

My student

Teach me

Your ways of growing

Teach me

I will give

You’ll receive

A seed

No teacher

Do not give

A seed, I do not need

Why student

I can teach

Teach you

I want you to teach

Teach me how

Teach me the way

Because true generosity

Lies in a seed

A seed not given

But a seed grown

I will show you how

To grow the seed

To prosper and flourish

Than you teacher

For your generosity

For your teachings

Thank you student

For today, you are the teacher

For you are the true teacher

VOICE OF A PATRIOT//Said Suleiman

That’s the teaching of the wise
and the learning of the brave
for between wisdom and bravery there is patriotism
and patriots we are
as we’ve been taught by our man
“Love your country
more than you love your own being”
but just as we’ve been consuming this teaching
the man was assassinated!
assassinated by his associate
whose lion skin covered by beautiful white skin of a she-goat!
but time tells no lies
the lion skin will be uncovered
and the assassin will be naked, publicly displayed

You say you are free?
you are about as free
as one of those cows out there
you can move around
long as you stay inside your master’s fences!
It’s hard to make a cow see reasons
but that’s cow
she’s never meant to see reasons
one shouldn’t bother to make her smile
for she doesn’t even know
the meaning of smiling
she’s got a mind but not a thought

Very dangerous this candy-business
how can leaders of a country let themselves popped candies?
like popping candies into kids’ mouths to keep them quiet!
The world is big place
and it will call out to you
but you can’t get away from your roots
no matter how far you go.
We are crushed
don’t pretend you can’t see the crack
in a wall you thought was solid,
‘cause I reckon pretending is a habit of a fool

You can own people not minds
but in this case you can own nobody
let alone people’s minds.
Not too late
anybody can climb high
long as they’ve got something to step on
and we’ve got ourselves
and UAMSHO behind us
to take us out of TZ-manacles.
                                                                                                        

EDUCATION//Mohammed Saleh Ali (ATD, ACI-DSM, Secretary General of Zanzibar Writers Initiative)

Teaching and learning educates the young as well as the elderly

A process of acquiring information in phases produces a skill, get techniques.  

A profession, an expertise a well-cherished noble income gets tactic.

Teaching and learning broods friends and enemies alike.

This simple tale enfolds the educating of me in my infancy, in my prime

As I teach, I still learn lessons; experiences enfold teaching others the good and the bad. 

The unimaginable and the hard to understand all simplified in their own complexities

Simpleton basics in time become complex arts or sciences and perhaps high technology.

This is how I was taught through generations of learning exposing realities hard to decipher as teachings and learning making me compare myself to others for it is what the world has made education to many as we are judged and excel by the listings compiled by examination authorities that action the truth of winners and losers in the battle of academic pursuits measured by those said to be better than ones being examined -- 

Who does really knows the truth?

As anytime the list can be barred and make brains devastate in the (narrow) streets demise.

Showtime to many when prospective graduates pilfering down the drains instead of the pipelines.

Graduating with certificates, diplomas or and degrees. Now that am older I still learn in post-grad certs

to pocket, and show for a promo at job get or simply show on the wall.

Often education been a hard road, at times easy like dizzy, as we mimed in school,

yet several times a challenge to overcome and bring out solutions from formulations

I dare say I loathe this world of education where academicals intelligence of scholarly stuff wits in battles of me around books I read, yet a must if one ought have the best education, quote with notes noting, for searches into researches, where minus and plus can mean a loss unless plus doubles and multiplies for a gain that can be migrated for whatever one think is right.

Not the scientist. He has laws and principles, theories and hypothesis to place in a mundane dance of symbols on a mathematical plane.

Maybe the artists’ imagination will give us a ride, a trip often into oblivions of acclamations

I love the notes that make me laugh out laud and clear.

I love those that coin abstractions into sense full worth sensations

All make this world a better environ to bear oddities only mis-education claims outcomes like fault in defaults I dare say work or not unless you’ve some expertise.

Least I praise the teachers who once snarled me for mistakes I deciphered not any wrong

Most I praise my parents who assured my schooling was easy despite the wars and shortages as

Whatever I asked of I got from them, was delivered as I wanted.

Now I see literacy falling just as I realized many newspapers and expensive books everywhere, How?

News ideals have changed much to the worse of worldly ways less to the better of friendly days

Yesterday scholar reads the daily not of newsmen worth or celebrity but corned up folks drag and dropped on colorful pages.

I end wishing all learners and teachers happier days in Education and overcoming challenges of experiences interpolated for all to know unless educated they’d grim again and regret things to say or said, think and write.