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.