Awareness of the human rights in the work with children with different needs

Before I came to Tanzania, I read about the country and how you should act in the country. When people from different countries all over the world comes to Norway, we talk om about how important it is for them to behave like a Norwegian. I think it is very easy to say this if you have never been in another country for a long time. When I came to Tanzania, I experienced this as harder than I expected it to be, because the Tanzanian culture is so different from ours. Tanzania has a very hierarchically culture, which is not the case in Norway. One of the teachers at Patandi Teachers College (PTC) took us to the city to help us with sim-cards and to take us to a supermarket. She wanted to take us to one particularly supermarket, but she had to take us to another supermarket, because there was someone who was higher up in the hierarchy told her to drive us somewhere else.   

Another example of differences in culture is about who to ask about what. For example, if we had questions about our working plan at PTC, we had to ask the one who was responsible for the plan. This was OK, but sometimes it was hard to reach this person, so we asked somebody else. Everybody wanted to help us, but sometimes it was also difficult to them to reach this person. This resulted in a lot of waiting for us during the day. This was very different from what we were used to in Norway. When I saw some of the consequences that this practice had for us and how we experienced it, one can imagine that also children in schools will be subjected to much waiting time. Once, during our practice at Patandi primary school, the headmaster had convened a meeting for all teachers during school hours. This resulted in that the children were left to themselves. Interrupting the school day like this, also contribute to unpredictability for these children with special needs, who really would benefit from as much predictability as possible in their everyday. Even though some of the teachers did not like the idea of leaving the children alone, it could be difficult to object to the decision made by the manager, due to the hierarchical culture.