Guess Who Made It Back To Kombo?!?
Holy crap I made it through three month challenge!!! I’m such a bad-ass. Actually, our training group only had one person ET and one person who is on medivac. 19 out of 21, that's 90%, pretty dang good! My Mandinka still sucks, but part of the reason is because I was really pissy for a long time about having to switch languages and being out in the middle of the twilight zone so I didn’t put forth the effort to really try learning. I also blame it on speaking English all day at school and on some small social anxiety. The night before we left to go to our sites, I was walking with Isatou to the PC hostel when we got mugged. Okay, it was definitely more her than me because the guy grabbed her purse and said “Give me this or I will kill you” and punched her a few times before she let go of her purse. I called for help from a nearby car, but that happened to be the guy’s getaway car so things didn’t work out. I was pretty shaken but Rebecca was amazing and didn’t seemed too phased—that could have been shock though.
Things are going much better now and I’m slowly getting into the groove. I try not to plan too far in advance—difficult for me, part of me is already planning my COS trip—and just focus on the day-to-day things.
Projects
1) Teaching—My main project is teaching ‘maths’ and science to 7th graders. I’ve been trying to implement new strategies like science experiments and lab reports (the lab reports were a bust, but kids enjoy the experiments).
Number of students between my two classes: 72
Number of students who actually understand me when I speak: maybe 10
I’ve also been helping with workshops for the teacher-trainees who needed to re-sit some of their exams. There’s this three year program to help unqualified teachers earn their certification so during school holidays the teacher trainees go learn about teaching methods and basic subject knowledge.
I have experienced two staff meetings thus far. The first was an “emergency meeting” which pulled me out of class in the middle of teaching and ended up being about the school buying bowls and spoons for the cafeteria, and water buckets for the classrooms. The meeting lasted three hours and was a small argument over how best to keep the students from stealing the spoons, bowls, and buckets. After this meeting ended, the principal gave out the Koriteh bonus—yellow beans from the World Food Program which are supposed to go to the students and palm oil. The teachers proceeded to take the water buckets in order to carry home the beans! Irony, anyone?!?!? The other staff meeting focused on alternative forms of punishment besides beating or sending students out of the classroom. I mentioned that if students are talking too much I separate the talkers or if the entire class is being disruptive I hold them for five or ten minutes during their break or after school lets outside because they took away from my teaching time. My principal stared at me as if he had never heard anything like that before, and was in awe of the idea.
Number of teachers at my school: 27
Number of teachers with a college diploma: 8
Length of the average staff meeting: 3 hours
Most frequent form of school punishment: slapping the hand, head, or calf with a thin stick four or five time
Most cruel form of school punishment: forcing students to kneel in the sun on rocks while holding their arms out. Students must maintain this position for half an hour or longer, depending on the mood of the teacher
2) Being school librarian—I spent weeks cleaning the school library and organizing the books, only to have the students mess it up the first day. They pull books from the shelves at random and put them back in the wrong places, usually backwards and upside down.
Number of books broken since the library opened: 10
Number of books stolen since it opened: 7 (3 by teachers)
Amount of time it takes one 8th grade class to completely destroy the Dewey Decimal System: under 10 minutes
3) World AIDS Day—I worked behind the scenes talking with administration and such to organize an assembly for WAD. Students from the Red Cross Club—directed by other teachers—put on three educational skits about HIV/AIDS (one in English and two in Mandinka). The actors were awesome; everyone remembered their lines and spoke clearly, and the students somehow managed to organize costumes for themselves. During the assembly I stood in the audience and took pictures of my school. I felt very proud that they did it all themselves.
4) Scouts—I’m a Scoutmistress, so during meetings I try to teach the kids things like first aid and knot-tying. They really enjoy the fact that I don’t just write information about Scouts for them to copy and then berate them for not paying their dues. They do want notes to copy, but they enjoy doing things with their hands, too. Last weekend the Scouts helped clear dry brush, so I participated in my very first bush fire.
Number of close-calls: 1. I was sweeping a room with no windows and only one outside doorway facing the field. I didn’t hear the Scouts light the fire because of the sweeping and realized after a bit that I felt pretty warm. I heard crackling and saw the fire start to really take off (they burn very, very quickly), and though I felt a little singed I managed to escape before I was trapped.
Height the flames reached when we almost lost control of the fire: however high the top of a warehouse is
In February we are tentatively planning to have a campfire in the school and invite Scouts from other schools to come. Mr. Jawo, the National Scouting Director or something like that, has moved to DKK and he wants this campfire to be big, and he wants me to plan it all. Stress, anyone?
Number of students Mr. Jawo wants to have attend the DKK campfire: 500+
Number of people he wants to plan this project: thus far, just me
5) Well-digging—my sitemate Lizzie asked me to help her with her latest project to help a nearby village find funding to dig a new covered well. The village covered well collapsed more than a year ago and since that time villagers have had to walk a kilometer away to the nearest village with a covered well, or draw their water from a shallow open well 700m away—which is what most people have been doing. Everyone in the village has been or is currently sick with cholera, dysentery, giiardia, malaria, etc., especially dysentery among the children. I went to talk with the villagers and they were so grateful that someone had come to talk to them, as if my just being there means they’ll get their well. Lizzie might have already found a donor, but regardless there are many months of work ahead, and Lizzie leaves in April, so once that happens it’ll be just me and the district councilor (an overworked, underpaid Gambian man, not woman).
Other than school and projects, I read, write letters or journal, work on my garden—fungi are destroying my squash plants! Noooooo!—, go running/walking/biking, and sometimes I can work up the nerve to go into village. Not often, though, because I have to greet everyone who goes by and they get upset if I don’t remember their name. But half of them still call me Isatou!
Most frequent mode of travel now: foot
Number of times almost been stung by a scorpion: 1
Number of run-ins with scorpions: 3
Frequency of eating meat: once or twice a week
Frequency of eating vegetables: one or twice in a fortnight
Number of love letters to date: 4
Size of the ceiling panel that fell down: 3 ft x 6 ft
Number of rats living in my ceiling who could possibly fall down the giant gap in my ceiling: I don’t want to know
Time they usually wake me up during the night because they’re chasing each other around: between 2 and 3 am, sometimes again around 4:30 or 5
Record for ‘days without seeing another tubab’: 21
Record for most boxes on a single mail run: 6 (I had Christmas last week when I opened those)
Okay, I’m going to end this now because I have actual work to do, like typing up well information. Hello to my friends in America who check this blog every now and again to make sure I’m alive! I am!
Things are going much better now and I’m slowly getting into the groove. I try not to plan too far in advance—difficult for me, part of me is already planning my COS trip—and just focus on the day-to-day things.
Projects
1) Teaching—My main project is teaching ‘maths’ and science to 7th graders. I’ve been trying to implement new strategies like science experiments and lab reports (the lab reports were a bust, but kids enjoy the experiments).
Number of students between my two classes: 72
Number of students who actually understand me when I speak: maybe 10
I’ve also been helping with workshops for the teacher-trainees who needed to re-sit some of their exams. There’s this three year program to help unqualified teachers earn their certification so during school holidays the teacher trainees go learn about teaching methods and basic subject knowledge.
I have experienced two staff meetings thus far. The first was an “emergency meeting” which pulled me out of class in the middle of teaching and ended up being about the school buying bowls and spoons for the cafeteria, and water buckets for the classrooms. The meeting lasted three hours and was a small argument over how best to keep the students from stealing the spoons, bowls, and buckets. After this meeting ended, the principal gave out the Koriteh bonus—yellow beans from the World Food Program which are supposed to go to the students and palm oil. The teachers proceeded to take the water buckets in order to carry home the beans! Irony, anyone?!?!? The other staff meeting focused on alternative forms of punishment besides beating or sending students out of the classroom. I mentioned that if students are talking too much I separate the talkers or if the entire class is being disruptive I hold them for five or ten minutes during their break or after school lets outside because they took away from my teaching time. My principal stared at me as if he had never heard anything like that before, and was in awe of the idea.
Number of teachers at my school: 27
Number of teachers with a college diploma: 8
Length of the average staff meeting: 3 hours
Most frequent form of school punishment: slapping the hand, head, or calf with a thin stick four or five time
Most cruel form of school punishment: forcing students to kneel in the sun on rocks while holding their arms out. Students must maintain this position for half an hour or longer, depending on the mood of the teacher
2) Being school librarian—I spent weeks cleaning the school library and organizing the books, only to have the students mess it up the first day. They pull books from the shelves at random and put them back in the wrong places, usually backwards and upside down.
Number of books broken since the library opened: 10
Number of books stolen since it opened: 7 (3 by teachers)
Amount of time it takes one 8th grade class to completely destroy the Dewey Decimal System: under 10 minutes
3) World AIDS Day—I worked behind the scenes talking with administration and such to organize an assembly for WAD. Students from the Red Cross Club—directed by other teachers—put on three educational skits about HIV/AIDS (one in English and two in Mandinka). The actors were awesome; everyone remembered their lines and spoke clearly, and the students somehow managed to organize costumes for themselves. During the assembly I stood in the audience and took pictures of my school. I felt very proud that they did it all themselves.
4) Scouts—I’m a Scoutmistress, so during meetings I try to teach the kids things like first aid and knot-tying. They really enjoy the fact that I don’t just write information about Scouts for them to copy and then berate them for not paying their dues. They do want notes to copy, but they enjoy doing things with their hands, too. Last weekend the Scouts helped clear dry brush, so I participated in my very first bush fire.
Number of close-calls: 1. I was sweeping a room with no windows and only one outside doorway facing the field. I didn’t hear the Scouts light the fire because of the sweeping and realized after a bit that I felt pretty warm. I heard crackling and saw the fire start to really take off (they burn very, very quickly), and though I felt a little singed I managed to escape before I was trapped.
Height the flames reached when we almost lost control of the fire: however high the top of a warehouse is
In February we are tentatively planning to have a campfire in the school and invite Scouts from other schools to come. Mr. Jawo, the National Scouting Director or something like that, has moved to DKK and he wants this campfire to be big, and he wants me to plan it all. Stress, anyone?
Number of students Mr. Jawo wants to have attend the DKK campfire: 500+
Number of people he wants to plan this project: thus far, just me
5) Well-digging—my sitemate Lizzie asked me to help her with her latest project to help a nearby village find funding to dig a new covered well. The village covered well collapsed more than a year ago and since that time villagers have had to walk a kilometer away to the nearest village with a covered well, or draw their water from a shallow open well 700m away—which is what most people have been doing. Everyone in the village has been or is currently sick with cholera, dysentery, giiardia, malaria, etc., especially dysentery among the children. I went to talk with the villagers and they were so grateful that someone had come to talk to them, as if my just being there means they’ll get their well. Lizzie might have already found a donor, but regardless there are many months of work ahead, and Lizzie leaves in April, so once that happens it’ll be just me and the district councilor (an overworked, underpaid Gambian man, not woman).
Other than school and projects, I read, write letters or journal, work on my garden—fungi are destroying my squash plants! Noooooo!—, go running/walking/biking, and sometimes I can work up the nerve to go into village. Not often, though, because I have to greet everyone who goes by and they get upset if I don’t remember their name. But half of them still call me Isatou!
Most frequent mode of travel now: foot
Number of times almost been stung by a scorpion: 1
Number of run-ins with scorpions: 3
Frequency of eating meat: once or twice a week
Frequency of eating vegetables: one or twice in a fortnight
Number of love letters to date: 4
Size of the ceiling panel that fell down: 3 ft x 6 ft
Number of rats living in my ceiling who could possibly fall down the giant gap in my ceiling: I don’t want to know
Time they usually wake me up during the night because they’re chasing each other around: between 2 and 3 am, sometimes again around 4:30 or 5
Record for ‘days without seeing another tubab’: 21
Record for most boxes on a single mail run: 6 (I had Christmas last week when I opened those)
Okay, I’m going to end this now because I have actual work to do, like typing up well information. Hello to my friends in America who check this blog every now and again to make sure I’m alive! I am!
posted by Hannah | 8:37 AM
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