I'm a rural woman!

utoCher e famille,
Greetings from the land of rain and more rain. Not that I mind it, but I guess if I decide to move to Seatle it won’t be much of a transition. Except there are paved roads there so you can actually get from point A to point B with out getting your feet and the back of your dress totally dirty, not htat I’m complaining mind you, I still find all of this adventurous. Give me another couple of months and I’ll start complaining like a real native! So I have some updates for you. This is my 7th or 8th week in Ndelele and I feel as if I’m starting to get the hang of it. This week was exam week, which is sorta the best for a teacher because you just play fun revision games and the kids actually care about learning because they are able to imagine an actual grade they have to give their parents. I’m starting to actually like teaching again, which I find a relief seeing as how I was going to kill someone if things kept going the way they were. My 5eme class which I have now deciphered has 108 students in it is actually my favorite. I know who the trouble makers are and they are the kids who are older and haven’t made it past the class yet, I’ve decided to use shame with them or just to give them some more respect so that they’ll see I recognize they are older but I’m still not going to let them give me crap.
This week was also Rural Women’s week! Talk about awkward. I had this big moo moo (totally not how you spell that) dress made that was pink and had the different plants that the different regions cultivate on it (all fabric or pagne here is totally busy- those crazy Christians on channel 23 would love the flash). It also has pictures of women with babies on their back and working these grinding machines they have here. I felt like a poser because I do not carry babies on my back, I don’t really eat the local plans (because maniac has no nutritional value and is the consistency of snot), and I don’t work in the fields. POSER! Anyway, I still went with Rachel and we ended up having to be in the presentation. We mouthed the songs we were supposed to know and we danced and ended up parading down the street of Ndelele. This was funny because it was a very simple song and I caught on fairly quickly, even though the words were in Koko. Well after a refrain you turn 3 times and bend down and then continue walking. Well when I joined in people started laughing and pointing and getting all around crazy! I guess if you are a crazy white girl and you are actually doing some passable French dance moves its funnyi I guess it’s the same when we hear a non native speaker try to speak English and we think its adorable. Anyway, rural women’s day was a success and people were very exicted to see me in native dress and all day people yelled ‘Bon fete’. The only problem is that I have no women friends in the village because getting to know women is super hard, especially because there aren’t any at the Lycee. For example, today I brought some Papaya to my tailor and her friends (or her husbands other wives, I haven’t figured out how exactly the family is set up) and I passed out the fruit and they continued to talk in kako and it was really awkward until I took some pictures of them and then left. Aww well small steps I guess. I do have one woman friend and she’s Anglophone and the directrice of the Bilingual school.
I started working at the Bilingual school last week and its totally the best thing I do here. I just show up and sing songs. This week we sang about the face and drew a face together. We are working our way down to the torso next week. Who’s excited? The kids are! They are so cute, none of them speak English because this is only the second year of the school and there are only 2 classes. The youngest kids are 4 and the oldest are 7 so it’s a pretty awesome crowd. Some of them only have little chalk boards to write on and I find myself thinking about little house on the prairie when I show up. I hope to increase my time there and start some theater exercises. The teachers give me complete reign of the classroom and anything I want to do (which doesn’t seem very organized, but they are tired and they don’t get a reprieve all day) so I play games and try and throw in some interesting things for them to learn English.
Now for the most frustrating part of this week, we had a ‘debate’ at the school Thursday about discipline. The sous prefet (big guy) came and watched viewed some posters and left, but here’s how the day went. The students stopped their studies at 12 and stood in the hot sun for an hour and a half. They had not gone home to eat yet. Then the sous prefet arrived and they sang the national anthem and then stood in the sun some more while he looked at posters. Then they sat down in the conference class room (which is just a bigger classroom with a tin roof and goat poo everywhere. There were 4 teachers who were giving the points of the debate and everyone was supposed to listen. Well it started raining, crazy loud rain where you couldn’t hear yourself think. We ended up waiting another 30 minutes so it would let up and we could hear the speeches. Then the teachers gave these ridiculous 10 page long speeches where they rambled about discipline and the problems of the school and how the students suck. Well I though this was a very important assembly and it was handled so poorly. The students weren’t listening because they weren’t being talked to they were being talked at. There was no participation or interesting activities or simple activities like asking the students questions. The teachers just droned on and on and on. Wow don’t give some of these guys a stage or you’ll be there to the end of time. So finally the speeches were done after an hour and a half and we opened the floor for questions. At this point it was 30 minutes after the actual school day and the students still hadn’t eaten. The kids asked some questions most of them about how the teachers were disciplined if they didn’t come to school or weren’t prepared or had relationships with the students (these questions made me laugh). I’ll tell you what though, the whole thing was totally frustrating. As someone that helped set up performances for the better part of my life and who understands how to get people interested in a topic, it hurt to watch. Later as the teachers were congratulating themselves I asked me head of department if I could give some suggests for the next time or be involved in the planning. I was obviously passionate about this and he listened to me when I gave some ideas and explained what I think the problems were. Then he condescendingly told me he would take my thoughts nto consideration and that they didn’t have a lot of time to plan and this is just how they do things here.
This is not what you tell a riled up volunteer that is here to make change, so now I’m determined to help the students. I have talked to 3 teachers about my thoughts so far and most people agree with me so I’m hoping I can change the program for the next time, if not to spare the students at least to make it worth their wile. The language thing is starting to get annoying though, because when I become passionate I am the worst at speaking in another language and it’s a lot easier to condesend me, and how I hate condescension! Anyway, I’m happy to report that I understood almost everything said during the debate and I no longer just nod my head to agree with people because I actually know what they are saying. All I need now is to be able to respond in kind.
Love you all, thanks for reading this, I know they tend to be long and ranty! Miss you all and love you.
Weece.