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.”