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.