Les Clubs

The clubs have launched! Last year I was overwhelmed with the number of hours I was teaching (not to mention the stress of adjusting to life in village, trying to learn Mandara, fighting off malaria, etc. etc.) and did a few night classes later in the year, but never really started any extracurricular activities. This year, however, after doing some projects with other volunteers' girls' clubs, and with all the women on staff, I decided to try starting a girls' club. Then, pretty much as soon as school started, I got demands from my amazing terminales for English Club. Somehow it took until November to get all this started, but as of this week both Girls' Club and English Club are under way!

English Club actually met for the first time a couple weeks ago, and I was totally surprised by the number of kids who showed up – I had over 30 (from a school of less than 700...I was pretty impressed), all from the oldest couple of classes, most of whom I knew already. It can be hard to manage everybody's schedules, and so we only had a short meeting between classes, but the level of enthusiasm was high and we heard some great speeches and managed to elect a president and vice-president, who ended up being two of my favorite students. Our vice president is the student that asked to borrow my text book during every school break last year so he could practice (he would then bring me back pages of activities to correct); this kid LOVES English and works his pants off. I actually ended up agreeing to pay his school fees this year (on the condition that he got good grades, and paid for his own national exam registration), and so it was extra gratifying to see his fellow students choose him for their vice president – not to mention the HUGE smile on his face when he found out he had won.

This week for our second meeting, I had thought we could brainstorm a list of activities to do this year, as well as finish electing our officers (we still needed a secretary and a treasurer...not that we have any money, but I guess we still need someone responsible for our hypothetical funds). However, due to some snafu with the French teacher (somehow one teacher canceling their classes on Wednesday resulted in 90% of students leaving class three hours early? The specifics were not made clear to me), I walked into English Club to find five of my older students from the previous meeting (all the others had apparently gone home), and about sixty ten year olds from the sixieme class who didn't know a single word of English. The other English teacher never arrived this year, and so they had just not been having class, but it turns out REALLY wanted to learn. Super sweet, but kind of blew my plans for English Club out of the water. I'd been hoping we could do things like read short stories, have debates, play games, etc...but brainstorming we did (in French) involved kids raising their hands and answering the question “What do you want to do in English Club?” with “Learn to speak English!”, followed by “Learn to read English!”, followed by, “Learn to write things in English!” It was great to see these kids so excited, and so sweet to see my older students patiently explaining things to them, but it was not quite the upper-level English only discussion I had been anticipating. Way to throw me another curve ball, Africa.

The next day I decided that, since so many kids were interested, maybe I could just go teach an hour of sixieme every week and this would satisfy their need for English while still allowing me some serious English time with my upperclassmen. I simply don't have enough time or energy to take on another class (6emes are supposed to get five hours a week of English, and I'm already teaching four other levels of English), plus if I started teaching one section of 6eme, then I'm sure I would feel guilty for not teaching the other one, not to mention my old amazing 6eme class who are now 5emes now, and still have no teacher. Anyways, I figured a compromise would be to stay a little later at school once a week to fill in for their absent teacher. No homework, no exams, just an hour of English time for those kids who wanted it. Apparently the only English words these kids had learned in primary school were “Good morning!” and “Yes!”, but they used them profusely in the few minutes I talked with them. It's pretty difficult not to get excited when you have 90 ten year olds beaming at you, and all shouting “Yes yes yes!” when you ask if they want to learn English. It's even more difficult not to get excited when they burst into applause after you finish speaking. There have been a couple of times that I've gotten a serious round of applause from a class – once last year, when I finally gave an explanation in French in my 1ere class after refusing to speak anything but English all year, and then this week when I offered to teach the 6emes English. I guess there will maybe not be a lot of other times in my life when 60 people will applaud me for doing my job...but I'm really enjoying it while it lasts. It's a pretty great feeling.

So, with English Club figured out, I headed over to talk to the girls. Again, I was astounded by the number that showed up – I must have had at least 50 (which must be literally like 80% of girls in the entire school). It was amazing, but overwhelming, especially when I realized that I would have to do everything in French, and maybe didn't know as well what I was doing as I did with English Club. Also, I realized that I do not really know how to talk to girls. This is another one of those things that I guess I thought would just magically be different once I received the title “Peace Corps Volunteer”, but I've never been good with large groups of girls. I've never been good at girl stuff, and always found it easier to hang out with guys, and it was a little overwhelming to have this huge room of teenage girls chattering away or waiting for me to do something interesting. Still, we managed to get through introductions and talk about our ideas for the year.

When I proposed the idea of girls' club in premiere and tried to explain what it was, one of my male students interrupted me and said, “No, you're not doing a good job, I'll explain for you. Madame wants to talk to the girls about majorettes,” – aka a dance club. I wanted to punch this kid in the head. Anyways, I came prepared this week and explained it as an opportunity for us as girls to discuss our problems at school and how we can solve them, as well as to learn about ways to improve our lives. I pointed out that it was also an opportunity for us to have fun and do activities together. Everyone seemed pretty interested. Then I asked for speeches from our presidential candidates. The girl who won (who I was hoping would; she had taken the lead on organizing the meeting and is just super smart and dynamic) ended up running on the platform that she wanted to help girls in our school...and she also wanted us to do majorettes. All the girls started shouting and clapping. It looks like we are doing majorettes. Le sigh. Anyways, we finished electing our officers and it was a pretty powerful experience for me to see all these young women who usually do not have much of a voice stand up and speak for themselves about what they wanted, and then get elected into these positions of power (high school club power, but still – girls in any kind of leadership position, standing up and taking charge of what they want to do – that is not something you see every day in village). I'm honestly not sure of what to do with so many girls this week, and I feel like the pressure is on, but I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the potential of girls' club (even if there ends up being some dancing involved).

I guess I had been in kind of a funk lately, but I realized in the last couple weeks that the perfect cure for the frustration I'd been feeling working with all these apathetic adults, was to spend more time with the amazing young people at my school. It was an exhausting week, but a very exciting one. I could not make it through a day at school without several kids running up to me, asking me where our meeting was, or how to translate the club announcement into English. I had been so down, sick of dealing with the same problems and the same people that didn't care...seeing these students so enthusiastically taking on leadership roles, planning activities, and seeking out knowledge was very refreshing.

Five Great Things About My Life

Usually, when things are not going well here, it's pretty obvious to me. And there have definitely been some rough patches in the last sixteen months, but I kind of thought things were going okay now. It's hot, but not too hot, and most of my students are coming to school and some of them even seem to be learning. I can speak French and get by in Mandara and Fulfulde, I have friends and work and I don't have malaria. But as some of you have probably noticed, lately when I talk to people at home, all that comes out is a whole lot of negativity. I set out trying to tell a story about how wonderful my seniors are, and end up instead complaining about how annoyed I am with the discipline master at my school. And then I shout at a bunch of small children. I've been trying to figure out where all this negativity is coming from, and I have three possible ideas: 1) Everything kind of sucks, but I have only realized this subconsciously; 2) Everything is fine, but I am just really cranky and perceiving it all negatively; and 3) I have just become an awful storyteller. Regardless of which scenario is correct, I thought maybe I would try to write a blog entry focusing on five awesome things that are going on in my life right now.

1) My seniors are amazing.
Seriously – these kids are the coolest (and the smartest). About 80% of them passed their English exams this sequence, and about half of them wrote smart, insightful, eloquent (and, okay, often depressing) essays on the topic of unemployment. Because we finished exam review early last week, we had a spelling bee (something they had never heard of before, but got really excited about), which turned into a really cool opportunity for them to practice pronunciation, go over vocabulary, and shout “CORRUPTION!” at each other when they refused to leave the stage after making a mistake. These students call me out if I am late or unprepared and are always asking to have discussions or do another exercise to practice for the Bac (while most of my other students complain if I ask them to do anything other than copy off the board). Teaching them is a delight and the best part of my week.

2) We didn't get evacuated.
The election is over, results have been announced, all is quiet, and we get to finish our last few months of service. We also are not on standfast anymore, which means we can leave post. Pretty sweet.

3) My house is successfully catproofed.
Things had been going pretty well with Nagano...until she figured out how to break into my house. I'd been putting her outside at night (I have a high wall around my yard so she can't get out, and she doesn't like being shut in when she could be out hunting), which was going okay (except that she would sit outside and cry at 5 a.m. every day – not because she was hungry or thirsty, she just wanted to hang out...) until one night, around midnight, I was startled to wake up to see her sitting at the end of my bed, meowing excitedly. I figured she had maybe snuck in as I was closing the door, and put her back outside...only to be woken up an hour later by her clawing at my mosquito net and meowing triumphantly (yes, it was more than a little startling). It took a couple nights of this for me to figure out how she was getting in – my house is cement with only two windows, which are barred and have screens over them. Finally I guessed that she was jumping off my water bidons and forcing her way underneath the screen, then crawling in through my bedroom window. I moved the bidons and shut the window and still woke up with her in my bed in the middle of the night, crying to go back outside. I spent the better part of this week setting cat booby traps, to block her entrance or make the window an unpleasant place to enter through (I'm not going to lie, she had more than one cup of water dumped on her head). Finally, creating a window blockade out of my PC medical kit (just kidding?), tupperware, and old clothing, and through the strategic placement of duct tape, it is now impossible for the cat to break into my house.

4) It's almost cold season.
A glass-half-empty person might say instead that in reality, it's the beginning of “petit hot season” (November is going to be WARM), but a month from now I may even be sleeping with a blanket and putting a sweatshirt on in the morning (okay, it's likely I'll take it off like an hour later when the sun comes up, but still. A sweatshirt!). This also means that the rain is finished, which is a bummer, but that means that the power will stay on pretty much all the time until maybe May (barring any ridiculous telephone wire/power company bill drama like last year...). It ALSO means that there will soon be a lot of delicious food at the market. We've already got delicious heirloom tomatoes, and in December we may even have cabbage and carrots – in village! (To put this in perspective, the market normally has tomatoes and onions...which are delicious, but get old...)

5) My brother is coming to visit.
Cold season also means it will be December, which is when my brother is taking vacation from his work in Madagascar to come spend Christmas and New Year's in Cameroon. There will be some crazy frogging expeditions in the south, then some awesome (awkward?) hangouts with my friends in village. Pretty exciting, particularly since it will be the first time since June 2010 that I will see someone who knew me before June 2010.

So, no matter what ridiculous stories I tell you, things are in fact pretty great here. Thanks as always for all your love and support. Special shout out to Kyle for his awesome package filled with coffee, fake cheese products, and Del Scorcho sauce (yummm). You're the best!

Assemblee Generale

Every year, we begin the annee scolaire with an assemblee generale, or general meeting. This is basically the first staff meeting of the year, an opportunity for all the teachers to introduce themselves, and to go over some basic policies and the schedule for the year. These meetings can run anywhere from one hour to six hours, depending on how much your principal likes to talk and whether your school runs on real time or Cameroonian time (which is usually at least an hour or two behind). At last year's assemblee generale, I found myself in a dusty room with fifteen strangers (and several lizards). I was the only woman, the only white person, the only one who couldn't speak French, and pretty clearly the youngest person in the room. I have never felt more overwhelmed or out of place in my life. I sat through three hours of introductions and statistics and policies (of which I maybe understood 10%) and spent the entire time trying to keep myself alternately from falling asleep or bursting into tears. I bolted at the first opportunity, claiming I had a Peace Corps meeting in Maroua (which was kind of true...except that the “meeting” was at a bar).

This year, I showed up ten minutes late (still well before the meeting started) and greeted several friends before sitting down. We now had tables in our teacher's lounge (as opposed to the beginning of last year, when there was just a sad handful of plastic lawn chairs) and we pulled them into a circle and sat behind them, with my principal at the head table, the new vice principal and discipline master on either side. The principal wore a beautiful, spotless white boubou (traditional menswear consisting of a long flowing dress-like garment with matching pants underneath; or, as an American friend of mine calls it, “wizard's robes”). The vice principal next to him wore a jean suit (yup, jacket and pants. Cameroonians love their Texas Tuxedos), while the discipline master opted for the middle ground of Western-style dress pants and a button down shirt. When we started – only about 45 minutes later than the time written on the board – there were about twenty of us in the room, including six (!) other women (last year at a Peace Corps training with my principal, I complained about the difficulty of being the only woman on staff; the principal was shocked and immediately set about hiring as many women as possible for this school year).

We opened with introductions, giving only the essentials: our names, the subjects we taught, and our marital status (I said I was engaged; other responses included “Single...but looking” and “Single”, followed by another teacher shouting “Yeah but how many kids do you have?” and everybody laughing). Then the principal began the meeting in earnest. To keep myself entertained, I took notes (in English...or, well, in Franglais). Here are some of the highlights from the principal's speech:

-Neither the principal or Americans like wasting time, so our school will run efficiently
-Computer technology will be mandatory this year...so we should probably get some computers...or at least get the school's electricity turned on...
-We have well-behaved students. They do not attack their teachers.
-It's good to have a mixed staff. Especially if the women are single (this part was added by our gym teacher...).
-The principal is not a sorceror. He will not know your problems unless you tell him.
-It's a good idea to plan your classes before you go to teach them. Also, it's not a good idea to teach your entire class with your back to your students.
-Our quatriemes (8th graders) suck, but everyone else is pretty okay.
-Be nice to your students, but not too nice.
-Please fill out the class logbooks (which say what you did in class that day). Please do not steal them.
-Don't wear your gym clothes to school unless you are a gym teacher.
-Please don't be an alcoholic. You can drink as much wine as you want, just as long as the students can't tell. Also, please don't share your bil-bil (traditional millet beer) with the students. And don't accept alcohol in return for doing favors for your students.
-Don't put your butts on the table. It's not hygienic. (this is a direct quote, by the way...)
-Our school doesn't have any money. Oh, but we will find a way to pay you...

Aside from the things that made me laugh, the principal also said a lot of things that reminded me how lucky I am to have such a smart, progressive, non-corrupt counterpart, and to work at a school with such wonderful students. 75% of our 6th graders continued on to 7th grade (which is VERY high – for more on these great kids, see my “Ode to 6eme” blog entry from last year), and almost 50% of our 3emes (9th graders) and 1eres (Juniors) passed their incredibly difficult national exams. The year before it was more like 20%. And it's true – our students are incredibly well-behaved. Not only have I never been attacked (I did not actually realize this was a possibility...) but I have very few kids who even talk out of turn or fight amongst themselves during class, and only a handful of cheaters (all in the lower grades).

The principal also pointed out that because we are a smaller school and we have much smaller classes than most places (25 in Terminale, 60-some in Premiere...a friend of mine 10 kilometers away has 180 in her premiere class), we can have more interesting classes. We can do experiments and play games rather than just lecturing. This is an incredibly progressive idea here, as most teachers were taught by copying notes off the board with little explanation or practice, and expect their students to do the same. With all the women on staff this year, the principal is also making Girl's Club mandatory (for female staff members and students), which is an awesome opportunity for girls from the village to get some role models (the number of educated, independent women in their lives is extremely limited).

I was surprised at how often the principal brought me into the conversation (every third sentence seemed to end with “Eh, Rose?” or “N'est-ce pas, Rose?” -- another incentive to pay attention). At first I thought he was teasing me. Then I thought he was just showing off his foreigner to the new staff members. Then I realized that I was actually one of the senior staff members in the room, and one of the only people who was there last year who saw the things he was talking about, and he might actually be calling on me as a professional because he wanted others to hear my opinions and experiences. How strange! (In reality, it was probably some combination of the three...)

Anyways, it was a good start to the school year, and another nice reminder of how much has changed since last year. Not that everything is perfect – last Thursday, for example, immediately after I finished exam review in all my classes (for exams that were supposed to start the coming Monday), I was informed that we would have normal classes instead next week, as the new vice principal had been put in charge of organizing and typing up all the exams, and it turns out he doesn't know how to use a computer...Oh Cameroon.

It's been a funny couple of weeks here...the election was last weekend, so we were told by Peace Corps not to leave our villages, and to pack an emergency bag with ID and a change of clothes and to keep a low profile (which is super easy here when you're white...), etc. Basically I was expecting at any minute to have a motorcycle pull up at my door with a note from Peace Corps telling me to grab what I could carry and get whisked away to Morocco. In reality, I had a quiet Sunday at home with my cat. It's been quite interesting to observe the politics here, and while I'm not sure how much I can really say on the subject right now while I'm still in country, I will say that I am definitely appreciative of being a citizen of a country where you're allowed to say what you think about the political situation and vote in elections that are free and fair. There were a couple of riots down south before the elections, but since then, everything has been quiet here, and is likely to be until the results come in (probably later this month). You never know what will happen, and with all that has gone on in other African countries in the past couple years people are on edge, but the general attitude I get here is that people are dissatisfied but apathetic. A striking example of this came to me a few days ago, when I was sitting with a friend in village who was going on about a certain politician visiting a nearby city “to tell his lies”...meanwhile this same friend was wearing a t-shirt supporting said politician's political party. Anyways, for now, it's business as usual and I'm keeping busy in village teaching and grading and trying to come up with an explanation for my students as to why Americans say “I don't have a pen” rather than “I haven't a pen”, but would say “I haven't been to New York.”

Easy like drinking water

I just got back last week from another trip to Yaounde, where I worked on the training design for Peace Corps Cameroon's new Youth Development program (the first trainees arrive next week!). After spending the last few months almost completely unscheduled, and the year before that working 7:30-12:30 Monday-Thursday, a full week of working from 8am to 5pm (okay, fine, we had an hour and a half for lunch and were offered “Coffee Break” from 10-10:30, where we guzzled free hot beverages and baked goods in a way that only PCVs can) was definitely a change, and gave me some doubts about my ability to hold down a normal job in America next year. Still, it was nice to be working, particularly on the very beginnings of such a cool program. The health and agroforestry programs were also doing their training design during the same week, but while they had years of information and sessions and plans, the dozen of us working on Youth Development were starting from scratch. We began in July with the goals of the program (“What should a youth development volunteer do?”), and then this month took that and transformed it into “What does a youth development volunteer need to know to be able to do their job well?” ...and then we had to go out and create those resources, along with all of the official Peace Corps documents (which meant spending hours writing “technical competencies” and “session objectives”, arguing over using terms like “cultural custodian” or “community leader”, “family planning” or “contraceptive methods”, among other more technical PC jargon). It was a lot of work, but at the end of it, I think the program is shaping up even better than most people expected.
I left Yaounde with two other English teachers from the Extreme North, all of us having missed the first week of school, none of us knowing our schedules for the coming year, and trying to prepare ourselves to show up on Monday and teach (even though what classes we would be teaching was still a mystery). There had been some kittens hanging around the backyard at the Yaounde volunteer house, and as I've never owned a cat before, naturally I decided to put one in a box, smuggle it on board a train, and take it back up north with me. She was not a fan of the box, or the taxi ride, or the 16 hour train ride, or the eight hour bus ride the next day...or the bush taxi ride after that, or the motorcycle ride that finally got us home, and when I was finally able to let her out of the box, she proceeded to disappear (which is pretty impressive, as my house is not large, and hiding spaces are limited) for such a long time that I was afraid she was gone for good. But a couple hours later she emerged from I still don't know where, and has seemed to recover well from her traumatization since then. We've had a couple arguments since then, mostly over the litter box (she preferred to use the spare mattress), but have generally worked things out. It turns out we have a lot of the same interests, like napping on the couch and sitting in the yard watching the lizards. She takes this second one a bit farther than I do, though, and is actually an excellent hunter. A game shes likes to play involves catching a lizard, bringing it into my bedroom, batting it around for awhile until I think its dead, but not actually killing it, so when I go to remove it, it springs back to life and runs around the house, allowing the kitten to trap it again. Hilarious.
The two of us arrived in village Saturday to find that the power was out. It took until Sunday for me to figure out that the power was not cut all over the village, but once again only in my house. A proper amount of harassing of the bursar (who I share the power line with, and whose teenage son calls himself a technician, but I think it's maybe only because he's really tall and so can reach the wires on the ceiling), and finally a call to an actual technician friend of mine, and power was restored 24 hours later...although this led to a tres villageois argument between the bursar and my technician friend over whether or not my cables needed to be replaced. The bursar came to my house that night, angrily claiming that the technician was lying and just wanted to make money off me (which is believable, except that he didn't charge me anything even though he spent the whole afternoon fixing cables and taking apart and putting back together all of my various appliances that had stopped working). I told him I didn't really see what the problem was, as long as the power was working (which it was). This whole situation was also another opportunity for the deficiency of my french to be revealed. The technician spent the afternoon screwing and unscrewing things, and asking questions like “Do you have a b;ldfsakd?”, to which I would respond, “A what?” He would repeat, I would continue to not understand, and he would sigh and go fetch it himself, or give up. Then I would ask questions like “What was wrong with my fan?” and he would respond, “The sdlfa'dkjfljhu was broken,” to which I would respond, “The what?” and so on and so on.
Monday morning, I showed up at school, received my schedule from our new vice-principal (who was sent to the village this year along with our new discipline master, meaning that, as my principal said “we are like a real school now”), and jumped right into teaching. I have the four oldest classes this year, and two of those classes are the same students as I had last year – it was incredibly wonderful to walk into the room and recognize so many faces. I spent the first day doing introductions and talking about why we are all here. My new classes were shocked when I made everyone stand up and say their name and what they had done this summer (“What? We have to talk in English class?”), and my older kids laughed when I explained to them that it wasn't sorcery that helped them pass their exams, but actually doing the work, studying, asking questions, etc.
My terminales – the seniors – are a combination of my small terminale class last year (who I knew really well, because there were only 13 of them) and about half of last year's premieres, who passed their exams (this is a super high pass rate, especially for the village), and who were my absolute favorites last year. So basically I have this all-star class of about 25 super smart, motivated, funny students who actually speak pretty good English (I was explaining something to them in French this week and someone called out sarcastically – in French – “We get it Madame”; when I asked them if a verb tense review exercise was difficult, one of them said “It's easy like drinking water!”), ask tons of questions, call me out on my mistakes, and are a ton of fun. They love to discuss things (rare for students here, who are taught to sit quietly and copy off the board) and ask lots of questions about America, which I always love to talk about (I think it's because they are actually interested, but then I remember those teachers I had who could be easily distracted into not teaching you anything if you brought up their favorite topic, and I wonder if I haven't become one of them...).
My premieres – the juniors – are the same students from my seconde class last year, who were a workout. They love to talk through the whole lesson and not pay attention, then get mad at the end when they don't understand anything. I'm hoping the prospect of taking a national exam at the end of the year will make them a bit more serious as time passes. I was nervous about my two new classes, especially as last year's secondes had been such a challenge...but they are so far pretty terrific. The new secondes are fresh off their success on the B.E.P.C. (a national exam they had to pass at the beginning of the summer to get into seconde), serious and smart. The troisiemes (freshman) are nombreux (about 130 on the roll right now, maybe 80 in the class so far), but eager to learn, and I've found that as long as I go slow and use French when needed we get along pretty well. There are a lot of SUPER smart kids in that class, too, and it's always great to have the chance to work with new motivated students. It's fun, too, with the new classes to see the nasara shock and awe factor again – my old ones have gotten used to me and my teaching style (which tends to be pretty different from their other teachers), but for the new ones, I am full of surprises, and I can tell they are still paying attention just because they have no idea what ridiculous thing the white lady is going to do next.
So, we are only a week in, but I am thrilled to be back teaching again, and really looking forward to this year. I guess it doesn't seem this way to you all in America, but for me and my stagemates, it is starting to set in that this will all be over sooner rather than later. We've begun nostalgically saying things like “Aww, our last first day of school!” which I'm sure will deteriorate later this year into “Aww, the last time I get pickpocketed!”, or “Aww, it's my last case of amoebas!” Maybe my happiness with this last first week of school has something to do with my ability to look back on last year's first first week of school and be able to see how far I (and my students) have come. I'm sure I will probably feel differently at times later this year when students cheat or lose interest or it's so hot in my house that my candles literally melt or the power gets cut yet again, but for now I am feeling happy and optimistic, and wonder how I lucked into having such an awesome job.

Hanging with the chief

My village is relatively small, and is not an official “arrondissement” (township?) of the government. Instead of our own police station, we have a traditional chief, who is responsible for solving problems and maintaining order in the village (although for bigger problems, he does refer to the government-appointed prefet (similar to a mayor) and gendarmes in the nearby town). Anything of significance that happens in the village requires the chief's approval, which makes him a pretty important ally if you want to get anything done (or even simply live in) the village. The chief lives in a large compound on the edge of the market with his four wives (each of whom has her own house) and a large quantity of children, varying from babies and toddlers all the way up to teenagers (I'm not actually sure how many are his; it seems likely that at least some are nieces, nephews, or other relations – in Cameroon, it's normal for people to send their children to stay with wealthier family members). I arrived at the chief's compound for the first time last August on the back of the bursar's motorcycle, armed with a letter from Peace Corps explaining who I was and what I would be doing in his village for the next two years. I was replacing a volunteer, so obviously the chief knew about Peace Corps and approved of having a volunteer in his village, but I couldn't help but feel incredibly nervous as I climbed off the moto and followed the bursar inside. Every day in Cameroon, there are tons of opportunities for a nasara (white person) such as myself to commit faux-pas, but here in the compound of this very important traditional figure the possibilities for embarrassing myself seemed limitless, and it seemed certain that I would be unable to make it through this visit without doing something incredibly inappropriate and/or offensive. I decided to try to do exactly what the bursar did, and as he slipped off his shoes before entering the compound I attempted to do the same.

“No, no, don't do that,” he said, stopping me. I looked at the pile of shoes at my feet, then back at the bursar dubiously. I was pretty sure everybody else in the compound was not wearing any shoes. “No, really, leave your shoes on,” he insisted, and so I did. Apparently not only are there a million rules I didn't understand, but these rules would then change when you were a nasara.

I followed the bursar into the compound, where about fifteen or twenty men (all of whom were barefoot, I noticed) sat on a mat on the dirt floor of a large straw hangar. The chief sat facing them from a reclining chair – a fancy version of something you might lounge in on your lawn in the summertime in America – his feet propped up, looking simultaneously powerful, intimidating, and totally relaxed. A plastic chair was immediately produced and placed next to him for me to sit in, while the bursar joined the barefoot men on the mat at his feet. The chief and I shook hands and I introduced myself, then attempted to muster up all of my shaky French to answer his questions. What was I doing here (teaching English?), had I chosen this village (well, no...Peace Corps sent me here), how long would I stay, etc. etc. I bungled my way through his questions, attempting correct answers, and ending most sentences with “I'm very happy to be here”, knowing the words for that in French and hoping that it could not possibly offend. We sat in awkward silence for a bit, and at some unseen signal, the bursar got up and we said goodbye to the chief and left.

I didn't return until this June, being busy with school, travel, and sickness, and also figuring that the chief had more important things to do than hang out with some awkward nasara. Then a volunteer who lived in Meme a few years ago came back to visit, and I accompanied her to visit the chief. Now that I was more experienced in the village and in French, this visit was less intimidating, and I realized that despite all his grandeur, the chief is actually a pretty laid-back and friendly guy. He asked me about school and why I never came to visit him (whoops) and insisted I return the next morning to make a “photo de famille” – family portrait. We did, and I promised to return to his compound after my trip to the south.

So I went down to Yaounde for a few weeks, and upon my return I went back to visit the chief as I had agreed, mentally preparing myself for the awkwardness of being the only person in the room who is a) a woman, b) sitting in a chair (besides the chief), and c) wearing shoes (except, I noticed, for the chief's guard, who lost a leg to diabetes and wears a prosthesis with a built-in shoe on it)...not to mention having white skin, speaking English (or French, really...all the conversation that happened in the compound except between me and the chief was in Mandara or maybe a little Fulfulde), etc. The chief was reclined as usual with men on a mat at his feet, but he sat up and smiled when he saw me and I shook his hand, bowed a little, and looked at the ground (a sign of respect). A plastic chair once again materialized at his side and I took a seat, smiling and attempting to remember everything I had ever learned about appearing polite and respectful in Cameroon. We shot the shit for awhile (“How was your trip?” “How have things been in village?”), and men filtered in and out of the compound, shaking hands and taking their shoes on and off. A car pulled up and two important-looking men came in. “Salaamaleikoums” went around the room and then they sat down and everybody raised their hands and began to pray. I was feeling pretty uncomfortable and even more out of place, when I realized that this was pretty much the same as every other religious situation I had ever awkwardly and accidentally found myself in, and I could employ the same coping mechanisms I used when people, for example, said grace before dinner – sit quietly with my hands in my lap and look at the floor. Perfect.

The chief proceeded to disappear inside with the newcomers, telling me he would return in a minute. We all sat around for awhile (me awkwardly in my chair, the men on their mat on the floor), some of the men chatting in Mandara, others nodding off. A few goats strolled out of the compound and off towards the market, followed by a nervous looking peacock and her baby (peacocks are status signals here, and all the important people have at least a couple). Then to my surprise a giant tortoise came ambling nonchalantly across the compound, and mentally I kicked myself for making fun of my Mandara tutor, who had attempted to teach me the word for 'turtle' a few days ago – I had laughed and immediately forgotten it, never having seen a turtle in the desert of the Extreme North. I guess you never know what vocabulary you will need when you are a Peace Corps volunteer in Cameroon. The chief's guard – an ancient, toothless man with diabetes, one leg, and apparently a few words of French – struck up a conversation with me. We began with the universal conversation-starter, the weather:

“It's been raining.”
“Yeah, that's good.”
“White people like the cold, don't they?”
“Yup.”

...then moved on to other topics:

“You have diabetes medicine in America, don't you?”
“Well...yeah?”
“Next time you go, you'll bring me some, right?”
“Of course.”

People are always asking you to bring them things from America, and this used to really annoy me and send me off on a typical Peace Corps tangent about how not all white people are rich, and about how I'm here to share skills and information, not just give presents, etc. but now that I'm a worn out second year volunteer, I tend to just agree to whatever they ask. I could see the guard was attempting really hard to think of things to say (“What the heck do you talk to a nasara about, anyway?”), and after the weather and diabetes, we moved on to airplanes and finally Ramadan before the chief reappeared. We hung out a bit more, and he explained to me that the two men who had arrived were important marabouts (spiritual healers?) from Mora. After about an hour of small talk and awkward silences, I figured it was about time for me to go. Unsure how to make my exit, I suddenly just blurted out:

“I'm going to the market now.”

This seemed about as good a way of doing things as any, and after discussing what I would buy at the market (“umm, food?”), the chief disappeared into his room again and came back with a can of Malta (basically a non-alcoholic beer-type product that Cameroonians love). It was Ramadan, so we couldn't eat or drink, but it's rude to send a guest away without eating or drinking, so this apparently was the compromise. I thanked him and promised to return again soon, feeling accomplished and relieved to once again have made it out of the chief's compound without doing anything terribly inappropriate.

As I hung out waiting for the chief to return from the marabouts and watching his menagerie stroll in and out of the compound, I had ample time to think about the real purpose of my visit. In linguistics, we talk about “phatic” expressions – things you say not to convey any information, but simply to open the line of communication and acknowledge that the other person exists (for example, “hello”). The purpose of my visit to the chief seemed to me purely phatic – I was going just to remind the chief that I knew he existed – and as an American who values efficiency, it was difficult for me to see why this visit should last more than five minutes. At first I became restless during awkward pauses and while the chief went off to do other business, knowing that it would be rude for me to leave but also feeling like I had accomplished the true “purpose” of my visit. But then, looking around at all the other men who were just waiting around for the chief too, I realized that just greeting the chief and acknowledging his existence wasn't enough. Sitting and waiting while the chief wasn't even there had its own purpose – to demonstrate my respect for him. Important people in Cameroon do this all the time – a prefet will announce that he will arrive to begin a ceremony at 10am, then not show up until noon, sometimes making hundreds of people wait hours in the sun, for the sole reason of seeing them demonstrate their respect for him. For Americans, with the monetary value we place on time, and also the importance we place on equality rather than hierarchy, being made to wait is one of the most difficult things to get used to...but it has the same function as addressing someone as “sir”. This again is one of the challenges and (often) joys of being a Peace Corps volunteer – learning how to redefine “purpose” and “success”.

Locked Out

The other day I was heading back to post after spending the weekend in Maroua. I had had a successful weekend, eating good food, spending time with friends, getting some work done. That morning I had bought phone credit, gone grocery shopping, and was feeling like a successful, prepared volunteer as I crammed myself into the bush taxi. We made great time and didn't make a single stop (it's normal for a car to stop several times on the way to village, for prayer or to show identification to gendarmes or because you break down) and I was enjoying myself thinking about how I would spend my time in village this week (visit the chief, swing by the Catholic mission, start planning lessons, try and practice some Mandara...). We arrived at the turn-off for my village in no time at all, and as I climbed out of the bush taxi I saw my favorite moto driver, Amada, waiting for me. He grabbed my bags and I put on my helmet and climbed onto the back of his motorcycle. Everything was going perfectly, until halfway down the three kilometer dirt road I realized I had left my house keys in Maroua. Shit.

We arrived at my house and I went about trying to locate a pair of spare keys. I always leave my house keys in my cubby in Maroua, not wanting to carry anything superfluous in case my purse gets snatched. Super paranoid about getting locked out, I had also planted spare sets of keys in strategic locations to avoid a situation like this. My postmate – who had just left for the south on vacation – had a copy at her house in a nearby village, there was a spare in my box at the Peace Corps house in Maroua (currently sitting next to the originals) which I had intended to give to another volunteer, and there was a spare securely locked inside of my house. As I sat down on my stoop next to a goat I realized that all my elaborate back-up plans had led me to do an excellent and thorough job of pranking myself. Plan C? I called my principal.

“I'm locked out of my house...do you know anyone in village with a spare key?”
“Of course not. You have all the keys. No one else should have copies of your house keys.”

This is true. That is incredibly unsafe...and in every other situation, it would be very reassuring...but I had kind of been counting on a key magically materializing. I proceeded to text my postmate, who was en route to Ngaoundere, to see if the guy watching her house could find my spare key and send it to me. As I waited for her response, I called him myself.

“Le numero que vous avez compose n'est pas disponible pour l'instant...” His phone is off.

Fortunately, everyone in Cameroon has two phone numbers (there are two main cell phone providers here, and one will have better reception than the other in certain places, so most people have both), so I tried the second one. Indisponible. I began running down the list of phone numbers I have for people in her village (which turned out to be quite a few). Indisponible. Indisponible. Indisponible. I was getting pretty desperate as I made it all the way to the bottom of the list, calling the second phone number of my Mandara tutor. It rang! And he picked up! I explained the ridiculous situation, and asked if he could get in touch with Claire's housesitter.

“Oh Bello? He's out working in the fields. He won't be back until tonight.” Shit. I hung up the phone to find a text from Claire, informing me that my key was securely locked in a trunk in her house. Awesome.

So I made one last phone call, to my moto driver Amada who had just picked me up from the Maroua car, asking if he was willing to pick me up again to take me back to Maroua. His French isn't that good, but I managed to get across that I wanted him to come pick me up, and he said he was getting on his moto immediately (in fact, he would spend the next half hour hanging out at his house and presumably taking a nap (it was hot that afternoon), before coming to get me). I passed the time at my neighbor's, sitting on a low stool in the mud-walled entranceway to their compound with four of the older women (ranging from probably late thirties to sixties). My neighbors speak approximately three words of French, but coupled with the approximately fifteen words of Mandara I have learned, we got by okay. And when I say “got by okay” I mean we both just said things to each other that the other didn't understand, and then everyone laughed a lot. They asked me what was happening, and I explained in Frandara (Mancais?) that I had left my keys in Maroua. There was a lot of discussion and each woman seemed to have a different interpretation of what I was trying to say. Then Tata – one of the mothers (rather than grandmothers) I know best, who is a typical big African mommy, missing a couple teeth and always with a giant grin on her face – asked me some more Frandara follow-up questions (“Cles? Baka? Haa Maroua?”). Her eyes widened and she shot off in rapid-fire Mandara to the other women. This was followed by everyone bursting into fits of laughter. I had made myself understood.

Forgetting one's keys is stupid in any location, but the idea of “locked out” is I think particularly ridiculous here, where there are usually at least five, and up to twenty or thirty people all living in the same compound, so there is ALWAYS someone at home. The idea that a house would be empty and everyone would be gone long enough that it would need to be locked up in the first place must have seemed pretty bizarre to my friends in village, making my predicament all the sillier. Oh, the goofy things that white people do.

After the laughter died down and normal conversation resumed, Tata pointed to her shirt and said two words in Mandara that I *did* understand: “Patele. Shagra!” 'Patele' means pagne/fabric/clothing/etc., and 'shagra' is a versatile term that means 'it's good'. The other women echoed her sentiment, and as I looked around the little room I realized that all the woman there were wearing my old t-shirts (which I had given them after cleaning out my house a few weeks ago), and were really excited about it. As we were all laughing about this (and I was attempting with my limited vocabulary to find a way to say “You're welcome! I'm glad you like them!”), Amada finally pulled up and I began my return to Maroua.

We stopped at the “gas station” (a wooden crate on the side of the road filled with old water bottles that now contain gasoline; you pay an eight year old and he funnels it into your motorcycle) before heading out, and I was starting to chill out a bit. Then, approximately five minutes later, the moto sputtered to a stop.

“Umm...what's going on?” I asked.
“Oh, it's no big deal. I had like NO gas in my moto when I came to get you, so it just hasn't gotten down there yet.” This did not make a lot of sense to me, but I got off the moto, Amada shook it back and forth a few times, it started back up, and we set off again sans probleme. About an hour later, we were starting to get close to the city and I was letting go of my frustration, when the moto sputtered to a stop again. In the middle of nowhere.

“Umm, Amada, what is the problem?” Amada inspected the moto, laughed, and said:
“Hmm. Maroua is far, huh? I guess I should have put more gas in!”

I climbed off the moto and looked to my left, then to my right. Fields and mountains and a few cows. No “gas stations” in sight.

“Well...what are we going to do?”
“Il n'y a pas de probleme,” Amada reassured me with a smile. It seemed to me like there definitely WAS a probleme, and like we were going to be walking to Maroua, when Amada climbed back on the moto and once again performed his magical moto shaking moves, and somehow the moto sputtered back into life and we were able to ride out the last few drops of gasoline to make it to the next gas station.

We made it into the city hot and tired (and sunburned...I spent a lot of the ride picturing my sunscreen, safely locked away in my house in village...) but uneventfully, and as Amada dropped me off at the Peace Corps house I decided to take this whole experience as a sign from the universe that I should spend another night eating ice cream, taking showers, using a toilet, and enjoying the internet. And so that is what I did.

Often in Peace Corps, you will have days where everything you try to do – no matter how simple – will just fail completely. In fact, most mornings as I leave the house, even if I am just planning to visit a friend or go to the market, I try to remind myself that it's pretty likely that things will not work out at all as planned, and that that is okay. One of my favorite things about Africa is that no matter what you try to do (easy or complex, normal or new), absolutely anything can happen to you. Sometimes these things are incredibly frustrating (like getting locked out), but even the frustrating things usually lead to funny and wonderful situations (like hanging out with friends and eating ice cream). And at the end of each day – whether or not you can call it a success – you almost always end up at the very least with another ridiculous Africa story.

The 4th of July

I returned to village this week from a month of traveling and conferences in the South, where I, among other things:

-visited seven of Cameroon's ten regions;
-saw crocodiles and hippos in the wild, and lions and gorillas at the zoo;
-participated in a conference to design Peace Corps Cameroon's new Youth Development program (first volunteers arrive in September!);
-met Cameroonian soccer player Samuel Eto'o;

...and celebrated the 4th of July, four separate times. It turns out that Americans who are not living in America get VERY excited about our country's birthday. The first of these 4th of July parties took place on June 29th at the U.S. Embassy. I guess each year they throw a fancy soiree, and this year's theme was “50 Years of Peace Corps”, which led them to invite 50 Peace Corps volunteers to help them celebrate. We all got ready at the Peace Corps house beforehand like we were going to prom, fighting over mirror space, trying on multiple outfits, fretting over jewelery and shoes, trying to figure out how to class up our pagne. We arrived early as the ambassador's wife had decided that as a way of sharing American culture with Cameroonians, the embassy staff and the Peace Corps volunteers would do a flash mob after the ambassador gave his speech. A lot of us had been in country so long that we didn't know what a flash mob was, but we went along with it anyway, and when Bruce Springsteen's “Born in the USA” came on after the ambassador finished speaking, we streamed down the lawn of the embassy and burst into dance. I'm not sure that the Cameroonians really understood what was going on, but the Americans called it a success. The rest of the night involved a lot of meeting and greeting (non-Peace Corps Americans as well as Cameroonians), delicious food, and plenty of attempting to look classy and grown-up while rethinking my decision to wear heels to a lawn party (particularly as it had been over a year since I had worn anything besides flats and flip flops).

I'm not sure the embassy was entirely prepared for the damage fifty Peace Corps volunteers can do to an open bar, but we must not have made too poor of an impression, because we were invited back a couple days later for the embassy's annual 4th of July barbeque/pool party. Without the distractions of ridiculous shoes, dance performances, or free drinks, I became more aware of my surroundings. As I ate my hot dog (so good) and mingled with embassy workers and their families, I started experiencing some culture shock. Here I was, standing next to a pool, celebrating my country's independence day with maybe a hundred other people, also from America and now living in Cameroon, and I realized that everyone else around the pool seemed to have a better idea of who and where they were than I did. Standing on American soil, eating American food, wearing American clothes, speaking American English, celebrating an American holiday, I looked across the grounds to the African forest and above it the mountains surrounding Yaounde and felt confused and terribly out of place. I was not so sure what I had in common with these people, many of whom were much older or younger than I am (there were more families than I expected), the majority of whom lived in Cameroon, but had never ridden a moto taxi, eaten a baton de manioc, or spoken Fulfulde at the market. Were we living in the same country?
A beer later and I found myself contemplating what we were celebrating. America's independence...but what is America? People, place, language, food? I watched a hundred or so white people in Africa drinking beer by the pool and acting like the land we were standing on was America and I wondered what made it so. Eating hot dogs while speaking English, wearing khaki shorts, talking about sports and listening to Bruce Springsteen?

On the last 4th of July, as an overwhelmed Peace Corps trainee on site visit to the Grand North for the first time, I had a boisterous and rather intoxicated volunteer at the end of her service inform me that if nothing else changed for me, at the end of my Peace Corps service she guaranteed that I would leave loving America. I've always been kind of mystified about the meaning of the word “patriotism” and how one loves a country. I'm still not sure how to define this place that I come from, but already after a year I feel that I can truly say that whatever it is, I feel a love for my country that I did not know before I left it.

A couple weeks later, I found myself on the very last leg of my journey, sitting at the dusty bus station in Maroua where I waited for a tired bush taxi that would take me banging down the series of potholes that is the road to my village. I had survived the sixteen hour train ride from Yaounde, immediately followed by a ten hour bus ride from Ngaoundere, and was looking forward to getting home, greeting my neighbors, unpacking my suitcase, and taking a bucket bath. As I sat waiting on a wooden bench in my worn out pagne dress, a Cameroonian woman in designer jeans and a nice t-shirt followed by her young daughter came and sat next to me. She struck up a conversation, asking me in beautiful French (so beautiful it was almost difficult to understand) what I was doing here, where I was from, etc.: the standard questions you ask a nasara sitting at a bus station in Cameroon. When I told her I was from America, she asked what part, and I said “Wisconsin,” giving my standard explanation of, “it's near Chicago.” She laughed and said she knew, and that she had been to the States several times. It turns out her husband is an international journalist, and they have actually been living in France for ten years (explains why I was having trouble understanding her French) and traveling the world, and she's just come back to Cameroon for a visit.

She turned to talk to some friends and I returned to my book, but a short while later I overheard her ask her friends if it was the Mundang tribe that lived in Mora (the town we were headed towards). Her friend said she didn't know, so I jumped in and said that no, it was the Mandara that live in Mora, and the Mundang live out by Kaele. At this, we both burst out laughing, and she slapped my leg and said “Of course it would take an American to teach me about Cameroon.” At this point she introduced me to her daughter:
“This is Hope.”
“What?”
“Hope. You know, espoir,” she translated into French. Of course I would need a French translation to understand the words of my native language. We both laughed again. We chatted some more, and I found myself asking her all the same questions Cameroonians usually ask me. Where do you live in France? People always ask me this question about America, despite the fact that unless I said “New York” or “Los Angeles”, they wouldn't really understand the answer (often they've heard of Chicago, which is how I explain where I live...sometimes I just say “near Canada”). After asking her where she lived in France, I realized I'd just done the same thing: unless she said Paris, I was not really going to understand. She explained to me anyway, laughing, and when I said I had never been to France, she immediately invited me to come stay with her. She asked me when I was going back to America, then said she would be there sometime next year, and could she have my e-mail address so maybe we could meet up. Officially the second time a Cameroonian has asked me for my e-mail, rather than just for my phone number or a description of the location of my house. She then handed me some type of shiny smart phone to type the address into. I took it nervously, looked at it for a minute, then blurted out “I don't know how to use this.” She laughed and demonstrated how to press different parts of the screen to make letters appear.

Soon after we climbed into our bush taxi, and an hour later, as we stopped at my village and I climbed out, she promised to e-mail. Will I go stay with her in France? Will she meet up with me in America next year? I guess probably not, but you never know. Whatever happens, I think we both learned something about how different we have both become since leaving our home countries.

Greatest Hits -- Year One

So I have somehow managed to make it through my first year of teaching. Classes are finished, exams are almost graded, and once I fill out a few hundred report cards I will officially be on summer break...except there's no “summer” here so I guess I will just officially be on holiday. To commemorate my first year of teaching, I have decided to share with you some of my favorite answers to essays and exam questions from this year. Grading is a long and tedious process, but every once in awhile I come across answers that make me stop and laugh and then wonder how Peace Corps let someone as immature as me become a teacher (like when kids write “Fart North” instead of “Far North”. Hilarious). A quick disclaimer: maybe it is not the most professional thing in the world to laugh at my students, but they (and pretty much everyone else in Cameroon) in turn get a lot of enjoyment out of my mistakes in English, French, Fulfulde, and Mandara (actually, most people don't even laugh at my mistakes in particular – they just laugh every time I open my mouth, no matter if what I'm saying is grammatically correct or not), so I feel like it's a pretty equal exchange. Also, we talked a lot this year about how it's okay to make mistakes in my class, and about how what's important is to TRY and to say SOMETHING. We try not to take our mistakes too seriously in Miss Rose's English class, so in that spirit, here are some of my favorite answers from this year:

Response to a question about the achievements of Hillary Clinton:
“Three things are Hillary Clinton has achieved are: elected to the U.S., to pass legislation, and terrorist attacks.”

Introduction to an essay about someone you admire:
“He is popular, he sing very well and he name AKON.”

Essay: Write a letter to a friend you have not seen in a long time, asking what has happened in his/her life. Use the present perfect three times.
“My friend OBAMA, I have not seen you for a long time. What have you happened in your life in U.S.A.? Me I have was very well and you? Please has called me this is my number: xx.xx.xx.xx. Goodbye! Your friend ABDOU.”

Introduction to an essay on “The Importance of Music”:
“Music is a factory of dance.”

On a matching section:
g) to have self ______ vii) sex
(I think the correct answer was “self-confidence”, but this works too)

An essay on the advantages and disadvantages of using cell phones:
“Some people can be gaven the atomic bomb. The cellphones have been killing the many persons.”

An essay on an important woman you know:
“Titan is man who I knowed since old ago. His head is like a town. His eyes sind like a ball put down under the table. He eats a lot of food like a cow. He cannot run very fast. He stink like a butterfly.”

And finally, one my personal favorites...The essay prompt was “Girls make better leaders than boys. Discuss.” But this student copied it wrong, and wrote “letter” instead of “better”. He was obviously pretty confused, but tried really hard anyway and wrote about the differences in the letters girls and boys write. This is an excerpt from the two-page essay he wrote (which was actually one of the better ones I received, despite not being on topic...):
“Women's, particularly the girls, interested every time the letters. They use them when they want to speak their grooms....because they haven't courageous, they feel ashamed, they used the letters to resolve their problems. It is true when we say 'the girls make letter leaders than boy'? The boys cannot make the most?”

Joking aside, I would like to say that my students really are an amazing group of people. They are smart and funny (often on purpose!) and motivated. They travel long distances (often as much as five or ten kilometers) every day to get to school. They live in a place where education is not normal or valued – most people in the village haven't been to school, most students' parents don't read or write; many don't speak French. These kids don't have running water; a lot of them don't even have electricity, and all of them have plenty of responsibilities outside of school (cooking, cleaning, caring for their younger siblings, fetching water, working in the fields, selling at the market, etc...), but they have recognized the way education can improve their lives, and so they find the time, money, and energy to show up and learn. There are so, so many obstacles to learning in Cameroon (even once you find a way to attend school): lack of teachers; lack of desks (many students sit four to a desk); lack of money to buy pens, notebooks, textbooks, etc.; illness; language barriers (many kids are less than fluent in French, even at the higher levels); different ages and levels of students (I have 16 year olds and 23 year olds in Seconde; 10 year olds and 17 year olds in 6eme); a standardized curriculum that encourages memorization rather than actual learning and has unrealistically high expectations...etc. etc.

I often feel like students are set up to fail, and grading these last exams has been pretty discouraging. The majority of students fail, and it's easy to get discouraged when yet another student gets 6/20 on their final exam. But I've been trying instead to focus on the success stories – the group of girls in 6eme who have gone from getting 7's and 8's/20 to 11's and 12's (these are passing grades) and who now raise their hands to answer questions and come to write on the board. The twenty premiere students who showed up to my night classes and spent three extra hours each week taking practice exams and asking questions about the English language to prepare for their national exams. The seconde student who asked me every break if he could borrow my textbook, and then brought me back pages and pages of exercises he had done independently and wanted me to correct. I realized early on that there is no way I can help every student; there is no way I can tackle all the huge problems they face. I can't make kids study or learn or pass their exams. But I can create opportunities for learning to take place, and from that perspective I think I can call my first year more or less a success. It's a start anyway. When I applied to the Peace Corps, two years seemed like a ridiculously long time...but now that I've finished my first year, all I can think is “Thank God I have another year. I can do this better.” So that is how I will spend my summer, and then next year: looking for more and better opportunities to help learning take place.

A Sense of Direction

Many of you back home are familiar with my absurdly terrible sense of direction. In Madison, you've asked me to pick you up on the way to some familiar destination, watched me make a couple indecisive turns before finally admitting I don't know how to get where we're going. You've gone on a road trip with me and wondered how someone managed to make it all the way through college without learning how to read a map. Maybe you've been on a trail ride with me at camp, and witnessed a conversation like this:

Me: Hmm...okay kids, looks like we're going to do some trailblazing!
Camper: Umm...do you know where we are?
Me: Toooooootally. We're on an adventure!

It's common knowledge in America that I have a terrible sense of direction. Even if we were in Madison, Ann Arbor, or Devries Woods, it's likely that I didn't know where I was, much less how to get where we were going, or even back to where we came from. Then last June, I got dropped off in the middle of Africa and told to find my way around. How have I fared? Well, with the exception of my second day in training (where I lived in the only house that was not near any of the other volunteers' houses, and my host sister forgot to come walk me home and I got stranded in the middle of Bafia until my language teacher saw that I was almost in tears and showed me the way)...surprisingly well. Which isn't to say that I never get lost – there was a memorable occasion where I had no idea where I was and just stood on the side of the road eating beignets until my principal came to find me on his motorcycle and drove me where I needed to go...and also the time I was taking a cab by myself in Yaounde and only knew to tell the driver to go to the stadium, but when we got there I didn't recognize anything and made him drive in circles around it until he eventually refused and made me get out of the car – but that I do tend to be more aware of my surroundings, and have more strategies for getting myself unlost. For example, in pretty much any decent-sized town/city, if you get lost, all you need to do is flag down a moto taxi and tell them the name of the place you are trying to go. This gives you the opportunity to pretend that you were never lost in the first place. The moto drivers are not always convinced.

Me: “I'm going to Domayo.”
Driver: “DOmayo?”
Me: “Yes.”
Driver: “But that's in exactly the opposite direction you were walking...”
Me: “Umm. Duh. I know.”

In general, though, my knowledge of where I am and how to get where I am going is vastly improved, and when traveling in a group, I often find myself leading the way. My nascent sense of direction was put to the test a couple weeks ago when I decided to bike from my village to a friend's about 15 kilometers away. I had been there several times on a motorcycle but never when I had to know the way myself. I had actually only gone on one other bike trip, which was not altogether successful. Most of you will remember that in America, my biking skills are right up there with my navigating skills (i.e. pretty much nonexistent; I literally refused to ride a bike from the time I was 12 until I was 21, claiming I had forgotten how). Before leaving on this first trip, I managed to put air in my tires in such a way that caused all the air to go out of them while I was riding. Naturally, I did not notice that I was riding on two flat tires and just thought I was really out of shape. It was not until the next morning on my return trip when everyone started shouting and waving their arms and pointing to my tires that I realized there was a problem. So, I was a little nervous setting off on my own on this next trip, and decided it would be better to just not attempt to put any air in my tires before leaving. In America I am an almost OCD-planner, and usually have to think through several worst case scenarios and back up plans before feeling prepared to do something. I still do this here in Cameroon, except now my back-up plans are things like “Well, if I get a flat tire, I will sit on the side of the road until someone feels bad for me and helps me fix it.” Or: “If I get lost, I will ask someone for directions. If they don't make any sense, and I look confused enough, probably someone will just decide to accompany me.” This was my strategy for getting to the village a couple weeks ago.

So I threw my bike pump in a bag, strapped it to my bike (thanks for sending me some straps, Dad!), and set off for Tokombere. Sure enough, about half an hour into my ride (which I estimated could take anywhere from an hour to three hours), a girl around my age rode up beside me and started talking to me in Fulfulde, the lingua franca of the Grand North of Cameroon. Lots of volunteers learn Fulfulde, but it's not spoken in my village, so my Fulfulde is pretty much limited to asking “How much does that cost?” (Literally, that's about it...I don't even know the numbers very well, so when a vender tells me the price I don't actually know how much they've said, and usually just end up handing them an arbitrary amount of money and hope they give me change back) I did finally recognize the word “baskur”, because it's the same in Mandara. Aha! She is saying something about my bicycle. She thinks it is a nice bicycle? She likes my helmet? She wants to ride with me to Tokombere? I remembered the words for 'yes' and 'that's good' in Fulfulde, and so I smiled and nodded and said them. “Ooho! Boddum!” She frowned and pulled her bike over, then pantomimed pumping. Oh. My tires are flat. Of course. At this point she was clearly convinced of my incompetence, and probably slightly worried about the chances of me making it to my destination alive, so she stopped and helped me fill my tires, then we biked the next leg of the trip together before she arrived at her village and I continued on. Useko jur! I never feel so much like the stereotypical stupid rich white person as when I ride my big fancy Peace Corps-issued mountain bike that I clearly have no idea how to use.

I continued on my way alone, trying to quiet the increasingly anxious voice in my head that always thinks I am lost, even when I am clearly not. I did this by recalling the series of landmarks I had tried to notice on my moto rides: here is the village where some of my students live, and after that is that patch of desert that my moto driver insisted on stopping in that one time so he could chat with his friend, then that big dead tree, then that dip in the road that is shin-deep in water during rainy season and which my principal thought was hilarious to drive through at top speed that time I had malaria and he took me to the hospital. Here's a giant pothole, and coming up the dirt road, and now that bridge that looks like it is going to collapse underneath me, and now the pile of gas bottles that indicates the left turn into the village and...voila! I have arrived, with only one minor incident where I was out in the bush for longer than I thought I should have been, and couldn't stop thinking about the scandal that went around a few weeks ago when two men were smuggling cotton into Nigeria and stopped to take a nap en brousse and were eaten by hyenas. I saw lots of goats, cows, some neat birds, donkeys, and a couple dogs...but no hyenas. Whew!

Earlier this week I was in Maroua (the regional capital, about 60 kilometers from my village), recovering from another ridiculous illness when my program director arrived. In Peace Corps administration, there is a country director, responsible for overseeing everything, then four program directors, responsible for overseeing the different programs of PC Cameroon (education, health, agroforestry, and small enterprise development). My program director just started in January, and was coming to the Extreme North for the first time to visit our sites and see what we are doing. Basically, it was my first official one-on-one meeting with my new boss, and I was trying to impress...or at least not look like a total incompetent idiot. Because I was already in Maroua, he agreed to pick me up there and drive me back to the village. When he arrived at the house, I realized that although both he and his driver are Cameroonian, neither of them had ever been to the Extreme North before and expected me to guide them out of town and to my village. In his words: “We are like two blind men. How fortunate we have found someone who can see!” No pressure...So once again I pushed down that obnoxious voice in my head (“You're lost. You're lost. Oh my god you're definitely lost and are probably going to be eaten by hyenas...”) and tried to recall a series of landmarks. Here is the post office, we need to turn left at the giant topless lady...continue past the vegetable/haircutting market, make a right at customs...and yes! We are on the right road! At least I think it's the right road (“Oh my god we're lost we're lost we're lost...”) – yes, there is the spot where my bush taxi broke down five kilometers outside of town, and here's the field where my bush taxi broke down on Women's Day when we were trying to get to dinner with the ambassador, and here is the spot with the pothole that's so big that you not only have to drive on the wrong side of the road but you have to go all the way off the road to drive on the left shoulder...In my new-found confidence at giving directions, I found myself playing tour guide in French as well as giving directions, describing the villages we were going through (“that's so-and-so's village, he's a health volunteer...”) and the roads we passed by (“that's the road to Tokombere, but only if you are coming from Maroua, if you are coming from Mora you'll take this other road...”) until I realized I was perhaps being a little overzealous. We did, however, arrive at my house incident-free and had a really good, productive meeting, and I left feeling like I had managed to give the impression that I was not completely ridiculous. Excellent.

Approaching my one year mark in Cameroon (June 4th!), I feel like these are pretty good illustrations of what my life is like here. Often I wander around doing really ludicrous things (like riding my bike with two flat tires) until someone takes pity on me and helps me fix it, but sometimes I am also capable of accomplishing intelligent and difficult things that I could certainly not have done a year ago (like giving directions in French out of a major city to my village...this is definitely not something I could do in America, as anyone who has attempted to get from Milwaukee or Chicago back to Madison with me can testify...). I have almost survived both my first year of teaching (in the process of grading a few hundred exams, and then I'm done til September), and my first hot season (it's finally started to rain a bit in the last week...which right now means that it is often 120 degrees and humid instead of 130 degrees and dry, but overall it is getting cooler!) and I'm trying to figure out what I have accomplished this year and what I want to accomplish in the year to come. I'm still trying to figure out what exactly I'm doing here – if I am “making a difference”, or how I could be doing it better; what problems I can solve and which are outside of my ability. Sometimes a year still feels like forever, and sometimes it feels like it's going to be over way too soon. Sometimes I am amazed at how much I have learned, and other times I can't believe how totally clueless I still am. The halfway point is a funny place to be.

Thanks as always to everyone at home for all your love and support – for keeping the letters and packages coming (special shout out to Nana and Grandad, Dr. Isom, and Bobby, for my spectacular series of birthday packages). I've just updated my “Things I Would Like” and “Books I Have Read” pages, so if you are interested in sending me things (it's probably a good idea) or in knowing how I pass the time while I'm sick or the power's out, you should check those out.

Take care and much love!

Rose

On teaching "why"

Approaching the end of my first year of teaching, I find myself asking a lot of the same questions that I asked myself before leaving. Why teach English? What role (if any) will it play in the lives of my students? Is this a good use of time and resources? I began to answer some of these questions during training, when I learned that English is both one of the official languages of Cameroon and a mandatory subject at school. Students who don't learn English don't pass their national exams and don't graduate. I set off for post thinking that at the very least, I would be increasing the chances that some kids would finish school, and that probably made this whole thing worth it.

Bilingualism Day gave me another perspective – English might actually be pretty useful for a lot of my kids. They will use it when they go to Nigeria (we live really close to the border, and everything is cheaper at the Nigerian markets), they will use it when they listen to the radio and can then translate for others, they will need it if they go to university, travel (even within their own country), or work. Speaking English can open up a lot of possibilities for young people in Cameroon.

Lately, however, I've been thinking that my bigger contribution as a teacher might not be related to the subject matter, but rather from the way in which I teach. Cameroonian students are taught to copy and memorize, and they are indeed excellent copiers and memorizers. Indeed, especially at the lower levels, it can take awhile to realize that a student does not in fact know how to read or write, because they are so talented at copying the symbols on the board. They may have no idea what they mean, but they can give you a perfect representation of what you have written. In my upper-level classes, I was originally astounded to assign reading comprehension questions and receive papers that merely copied phrases from the reading with the same words as the question. We would spend entire classes talking about why “Mansa Musa was the emperor of Mali in 1337” does not answer the question “Do you think Mansa Musa was a good emperor? Why or why not?” I would get irate students raising their hands, saying “Madame, it is not fair, the answer is not in the text!” The idea that reading comprehension meant comprehending the reading – understanding and analyzing it, not just running your eyes over the words and copying portions of it – seemed entirely foreign to them.

A good example of the way many Cameroonians teach this copying mentality comes from an exam the other English teacher at my high school wrote for his 7th grade English class. He gave them a reading passage about a man named Ali who ran a race and won it. It described Ali running fast, then winning the race and receiving a prize and some money. One of his multiple choice questions asked “What did Ali win?” and the answer choices were: a) the race b) a prize c) money. I brought this question to the attention of my colleague, asking “Aren't all of these answers correct? Ali wins all of these things in the reading.” His response was that, “No, only one is correct. They have to look in the text. It says 'Ali won the race' so that is the correct answer.” I tried to explain to him how questions like this teach kids to copy, and discourage them from thinking about what they read (a kid who understands the passage will be confused, and could select any of the answers; a kid who doesn't even know the verb 'to win' or what 'a race' is can easily select the correct answer)...I was met with a blank stare.

Since then, I have realized that I need to be a teacher not just of English, but of thinking, and I try to practice this with my kids as often as possible. In correcting reading comprehension questions, I ask someone to read the sentence from the reading that answers the question, then I ask someone else to tell me a good answer to the question. Whenever we do grammar, I ask them not just how is this tense formed, but why do we use it? In vocabulary exercises, I ask them why am I teaching them how to change verbs into nouns? There is usually a lot of confused silence, which usually leads me to translate the question into French, which then usually leads to more confused silence, then a follow up question like, “Is it because I think it is very important for you to know that 'to encourage' becomes 'encouragement'?” Some of the bolder kids agree that no, that's not it...Finally, we agree that the point of the lesson is not for them to learn the vocabulary words, but the patterns that allow them to create nouns from verbs, which will allow them to greatly increase their vocabulary. These types of questions lead us to bigger ones, like, “Why do you study English in Cameroon?”, or “Why do I give you homework?” (this one blew their minds).

In seconde (sophomores) this past week, we read a short passage about a mythical giant who lived among the Bamouns (a tribe in the south). The passage described the parts of his body in detail – how his neck was too long, his face covered in hair, his feet so big that chickens could fly under the arches of them. We made a list of the parts of his body and what they looked like, and then I asked the kids to come forward and draw a part of the body on the board. At first, they chose the best artist in the class, and he came forward with the textbook and began copying the drawing provided in the book. I stopped him and explained again – I know what the picture in the book looks like, I want to know what you think he looks like. I had to coax the first couple students up to the board, but eventually hands were in the air, everyone was laughing and shouting things like “No, his head must be bigger!”, “More hair!” At the end of class, we had a ridiculous drawing of a giant, hairy man on the board, and I asked them, “Why did I ask you to draw this picture today?” I was met with blank stares, and finally explained that what they did today was read a passage, understand it, and imagine it in their heads. To draw a picture on the board, they had to not only understand the words on the page but think about what they meant, and that this is what I wanted them to be doing every time we read anything. I saw a lot of eyes widen, and I think some lightbulbs turned on in their heads.

“Why” is an incredibly powerful word – in any language. Before you can fix a problem, you have to understand why it exists. To understand why things are the way they are is to open the door to discovering a way to improve them. When I leave next year, I hope that I will have helped some students to pass their exams, and I hope that I will have helped others to learn enough English to go shopping, communicate with others, and maybe even get better jobs. But I hope most of all that even my students who retain almost no English a few years from now will remember the word “Why?” and think to use it in their lives.

La chaleur

It is officially hot season in the Extreme North, and it is officially hot. Like absurdly, ludicrously, hotter-than-ever-in-my-life hot. So hot that the candles in my house have melted and it feels like someone put all of my furniture into a giant microwave. So hot that I have to use potholders to pick up pots in my kitchen in the afternoon, even when I haven't used them for cooking, and life in the village stops between noon and four, because it's too hot to do anything but sleep. So hot that when I get home from school, I chug a liter and a half of water in a five minutes and am still thirsty. So hot that a Cameroonian friend of mine advised me recently to never leave the house without sunscreen, and then said, “even we feel like our skin is burning during hot season.” When Africans are worried about sunburns, you know it is really hot.

I don't have a thermometer, but judging from ones I've seen, the normal temperature in village in the afternoons is probably about 115-120. People say it could get up to as much as 130-140 next month, before the rains start in mid-April/May. You would think the rain would cool things off, but, as one of the nuns at the Catholic mission here described to me, actually “when the rain falls, it just brings up all the heat from the earth, and the ground steams and you think you are in Hell.” Something to look forward to.

When you greet people here, instead of just saying hello, now everyone also asks the question “Comment va la chaleur?” – “How's the heat?” There must be some correct response to this, but I have yet to figure out what it is, so I usually just say something like “Il fait vraiment chaud” – “It is truly hot”...which inevitably makes everyone laugh. In Mandara, the conversation goes like this:

Villager: Kar balaye? (How's it going/How was the night?)
Me: Balaye. (Fine)
Villager: Kakar avatiya? (How's the sun?)
Me: Avatiya umkwa. (There is sun.)
Villlager: Kakar dufire? (How's the heat?)
Me:Ankwa. (The French translation I got for this is “Ca me menace” – “It harasses me”. Pretty accurate).
Villager: Shagra. Use. (That's good. Thank you.)

Actually, a more accurate transcription of this dialogue would look like this:

Villager: Kar balaye?
Me: Balaye.
[copious amounts of Cameroonian laughter]
Villager: Kakar avatiya?
Me: Avatiya umkwa.
[more laughter, someone tells me once again that what I've said isn't correct and gives me yet another phrase to say]
Villlager: Kakar dufire?
Me:Ankwa.
[more laughter]
Villager (in French): Why don't you speak Mandara? You have to learn. Danielle [a volunteer who was here about four years ago] spoke fluent Mandara. Why don't you?

People here love to act like you are stupid if you don't speak whatever language they think you should speak, and always seem to have a story of some mythical volunteer who supposedly could speak fluently (these stories are usually less than accurate). Actually, on my optimistic days, I think that really they are just being nice, wanting us to speak their languages because they want us to be part of the community, which is really wonderful. But sometimes, when I get confronted with “Why don't you speak [Mandara, Fulfulde, Pidgin, Mafa, etc.]? [Name of former volunteer] was fluent!” it is on my way home from school in 115 degree heat, after a day of trying to convince my 90 sixth graders to conjugate a verb in the present continuous instead of shouting and throwing things at each other, and it is difficult not to be offended.

Sometimes I do feel like I'm making progress in Mandara. I've progressed past just being able to say “Hello, how are you?” to saying “I'm going to the market,” or “I'm coming home from school”. I've even begun experimenting with the words I've learned, to produce such eloquent phrases as “Sun, a lot!” or “Water, is there?” I've recently come to the realization, however, that no matter how I respond to someone in the village – whether it's in French or Fulfulde or Mandara or even English, whether my grammar and pronunciation are perfect or atrocious – there is a 90% chance that they will laugh in my face. And on my optimistic days, I tell myself that this is okay. It's probable that I am communicating something, and that they appreciate the effort...and at the very least, I am a source of endless entertainment for small children (okay, maybe not the smallest of children...they continue to scream, burst into tears, and flee at the sight of me...) and adults alike.

Bilingualism Week

Monday, January 31st marked the beginning of Bilingualism Week here in Cameroon, which culminated in “La Fete Bilingue” on Friday. Cameroon has two official languages – English and French – and therefore calls itself a bilingual country. However, in reality, over 250 languages are spoken in Cameroon, and while almost all Cameroonians speak several languages, very few are actually “bilingual” in the sense of being fluent in English and French. English is spoken mainly in the Anglophone regions (the Southwest and Northwest, both in the southern half of the country) and French is spoken elsewhere, although (as I discovered upon arrival in village), in the Grand North (Adamawa, North, and Extreme North), many people speak neither French nor English. Cameroonians are very proud of this idea of being bilingual, and many Francophones I've talked to have expressed shame or guilt at their inability to teach English. While it is true that English is a mandatory subject and students must pass exams in English to complete high school, few students leave school feeling comfortable actually using the language. Anyways, the idea of Bilingualism Week is for Anglophones to use primarily French and Francophones to use primarily English, thus proving that Cameroon is truly a bilingual country.
In Francophone regions, then, Bilingualism Week is an opportunity to encourage English...or, rather, to make everyone feel guilty for not speaking English as well as they should. My principal made this clear Monday morning at our school assembly, where he made a speech in English (he speaks *beautiful* English, by the way) to the students and staff telling them that if they don't speak English, they are pretty much illiterate, and that this week anyone that spoke French to him in his office would be punished. After dismissing the students, he told all the teachers that he wanted to hear all of them speaking English this week, and that I was the only truly bilingual member of the staff, and I'm not even Cameroonian, and they should all be ashamed if they don't speak English.
The English levels of my colleagues are pretty mixed – they have all necessarily spent years studying the language, but few have actually used it. I speak primarily in English with the other English teacher, and there are a couple others (my closer friends on staff) who usually greet me in English. Greetings are a big part of Cameroonian culture, and even people who only speak French and a mother tongue will be able to say things like “Hello, how are you, how's the heat” etc. etc. in several languages. To greet someone in their mother tongue (especially if it's not your mother tongue) is a sign of friendship. Similarly, when people greet me in Mandara (although I am clearly not Mandara), I take it as a sign of their acceptance of me into the community. Even people who ONLY speak Mandara know how to say “Bonjour, ca va?” but their choice to instead ask me “Kar balaye?” is an invitation to speak their mother tongue – an invitation to be part of their community.
Anyways, greetings aside, the prospect of speaking English was clearly terrifying for many of my Francophone colleagues. As a native English-speaker, I was expected to speak French...which I do all the time anyway. I was kind of dreading Bilingualism Week (see my post on Teacher's Day for my feelings on celebrations...), but I think it did earn me some major respect from my co-workers...having to face their own discomfort with English – an official language of their country – while watching me speak comfortably (although often goofily) in French – a language not even spoken in my country – made them realize that while I don't always (or ever...) speak perfect French, I do always speak it, and am (almost) always understood, and that is a pretty big deal.
As an English teacher in a Francophone region, I was supposed to have a prominent role in the festivities, although no one seemed able to tell me what this role was supposed to be, or what would happen at the fete. I was told by the other English teacher that I would be making a speech in English, then that I wouldn't be making a speech, then an hour before the celebration began that I would be making a speech, but in French...but more on that later. Anyways, Sunday night, scrambling to think of bilingual activities we could do, I decided we would begin this week in my older classes (Sophomores, Juniors, Seniors) by discussing bilingualism in Cameroon, then writing essays on the importance of English to read on Friday. Discussions can go either way, and often when I think I have an amazingly creative and wonderful idea for a class, it ends up being a total flop. But students got *way* excited about bilingualism. We began by talking about what makes Cameroon a bilingual country, why English and French are the official languages, what other languages are spoken and in what situations. Soon we were having a truly bilingual discussion – with everyone speaking both English and French and thinking critically about what languages we speak, where, and why. It's a huge part of daily life here, but not something that most of my students seemed to have thought very much about before.
Their essays were wonderful, insightful, and often hilarious, with many students talking about the importance of English for travel, for science and technology, for shopping in Nigeria (really important here – the Nigerian border is only about 20 miles away, and its a lot cheaper to buy things there than here in Cameroon). I had a couple students talk about how they need English to get an American girlfriend, one student who told me that you need it to be successful at the market so you don't think your lack of success is due to someone putting voodoo on you, and one who said simply, “English will help you to fight the bandits.” Very important, indeed.
Friday rolled around and I still had very little idea of what would happen, except that I should get dressed up and go to the high school at 10:30 and hope that a couple of my students would be willing to read their essays. At 9:30 the other English teacher showed up at my house in a suit (usually he wears boubous – traditional Cameroonian clothing; clearly he was way dressed up) to give me a copy of the schedule for the day with the theme for this years' celebration in French (“Celebrer un bilinguisme de qualite: une ouverture sur le professionalisme”) and English (“Celebrating a quality of bilingualism: a window to the professionalism” Sigh.). He then announced that I would be making a speech in French, and also introducing all of the events. This led me to demonstrate a wonderful quality of Cameroonian culture that I have picked up with relish – the temper tantrum. You throw them when you don't get your way, whether you are right or wrong, whether it's a matter of life or death or petty details. I throw them when the man at the bus station demands $2 instead of $1 to put my refrigerator on top of his car, when the lady at the post office "loses" the key to the room with my package in it, when the DJ at the nightclub won't play Rihanna...and when people show up at my door, an hour before a party I don't want to go to, and tell me (even though we've discussed it several times before, and I had been explicitly told I wouldn't be speaking) that I have to make a speech in French. The key to the Cameroonian temper tantrum, however, is not actually getting upset. At the end, win or lose, you always smile, joke, and shake hands. I've gotten really good at the tantrum part...but am less skilled at the rest of it. We ended in a compromise – he would MC, and I would introduce (in French) my kids reading their essays.
An hour later, dressed up and somewhat less angry, I walked over to the lycee. Classes had gone on that morning, and to ensure that none of the kids left before the fete was over, my principal cleverly ordered them out of their classrooms at 10:15 and locked all of their belongings inside. Our high school is in the process of getting electricity, but as it is not yet working, someone had rented a generator so we could have the obligatory obnoxious sound equipment. Truly, a Cameroonian fete is not a real fete unless it involves the following:

1) A microphone that makes everything anyone says (in any language) completely unintelligible. There is great excitement over these microphones, despite the fact that most of what they produce is static, with the occasional prolonged high-pitched shriek. Half the time they don't work at all, leading to an exciting relay race of microphones and wires being passed around and plugged into different holes.

2) Filler music, to be cranked up to a ludicrous volume every time something goes wrong with the microphone. I think this must be a set mix-tape that comes with every sound system, because no matter what region, whether large city or small village, it is always the same: a mix of repetitive Nigerian dance music, hip-hop songs with inappropriate lyrics (“I want to make love right now now now...”), Celine Dion, and Tracy Chapman.

3) Something large blowing over in the wind. Flags are common, as are banners and chairs. At our fete, it was a large portable chalkboard with the themes written on it in French and (incorrectly) in English. At this point, inevitably, the microphone begins squealing, the filler music is cranked up, and while someone raps about doing shots of patron, wires are frantically plugged and unplugged, furniture is righted, and then the fete continues.

As is usually the case with fetes, once I was there and it had begun, it was a lot more fun than I expected. Students performed sketches, poems, and speeches in English, I made a speech in French in front of a couple hundred people (turns out it doesn't matter if your grammar is correct when the microphone is distorting everything you say anyway), there was a trivia contest, a lot of laughter and excitement about English. All in all, it was a pretty good party, and really did seem to get some students excited about learning English. I had several students seek me out (some who I knew, some who I didn't) throughout the week, saying they wanted to study more, asking for resources or help with English. This was very exciting, because I really feel like the best work I can do here is helping interested students. There is no way that I can teach all 250 of my students to learn English or even to pass their exams...that simply cannot be my primary goal as a volunteer with the small amount of time and resources available. But what I can do is create opportunities for learning to take place, and make myself available as a resource to students who really want to learn. Students don't seem to expect their teachers to go the extra mile for them personally, but during bilingualism week all of a sudden they seemed more comfortable approaching me, and I was able to do simple things like give out photocopies of readings and grammar sheets and emphasize that any time they have questions or want to talk about English, they are more than welcome to come talk to me. This is really exciting.
So I survived Bilingualism Week, but it is only the beginning of a series of fetes we will have in the next few weeks. After Bilingualism Week is “Fete de la Jeunesse” – “Youth Week” – which culminates in a parade in Mora. Classes are canceled all week so kids can practice marching. Seriously. The Friday after that is “Mother Language Day”, which I'm excited about, and a week and a half after that is Women's Day. As much as I complain about them now, I am beginning to think that in a year and a half, when I am back in America, I will miss the opportunity to skip work, wear matching outfits, drink Fanta, speak French, and listen to Tracy Chapman with several hundred new friends.

Thanks, as always, for all the love and support. I am thinking of you all in your winter coats as I lie on the floor in front of my fan in the afternoons wondering if it's 120 or only 110 degrees out...Much love!