Teaching Continues

--My body has readily adjusted to being crumpled and distorted into unnatural positions aboard tros and taxis, packed to busting with passengers. I usually have three bags on my lap, and 4 passengers packed in around me in the backseat of a taxi, with maybe a crying baby to top it off.

--One of my students came to use the pencil sharpener (because I seem to have the only one in the school), and she saw that I had hung her nametag above the blackboard, and she literally jumped for joy, thanked me, and skipped out of the room.

-- Old issues of Cosmopolitan magazine, left at the sub-office, are the only magazines available for my students to use for collage. Since the word ‘sex’ is on every single page, and most photos are of people in their underwear, I can’t give my students the whole magazine; I was only able to cut out a few G-rated images for use in my classroom. I’m no prude, but I can’t risk some kid cutting out the word ‘sex’ and pasting it on his artwork. And you know it would happen, whether he understood the word or not.

-My taxi driver to Tamale asked me where my white man friend was, and I told him he was teaching in Diare. And then he asked me if I would “use him (taxi driver) in my spare time.” The ladies in the car backed me up and said I only need one man.

-The older students all want to help me with my washing, and are quite insistent. I have told them that I can do it myself, and that I want them to focus on their studies, but they keep asking. Evidently, past volunteers have had ‘small girl’ helpers, and I’ve even heard that it is unacceptable to allow a white woman to do her own laundry. But I’m not just any white woman; I’m terribly stubborn, and I will not have a young girl sweeping my floor.

-My students go through the trashcan in my classroom and pull out anything that they find; old pens, plastic packaging, and art projects from years ago. Today, I moved the trashcan into the storeroom so that they’ll stop rooting through it all day. Every time I turn around, there are two students with their heads in the can—it just seemed like something I should put a stop to.

--The women in the market LOVE that I’m learning Dagbani. They all howl when I say anything at all in Dagbani, and when I give the proper greetings and goodbyes, they practically start rolling on the ground. I’ve learned some very useful phrases lately, including, “Is that the correct price?” and “I do not part lies” and “Please reduce the price.” You can see that my concerns involve highly inflated prices for a white lady. I’ve also learned the old currency names (“pa laan pi hinu”=1 cedi), which are hopelessly difficult to remember, but very useful since some of the market women still don’t use the new currency figures.

--My students (at least the younger ones) have never seen a tape dispenser, and have no idea how to use it. In fact, I’m pretty sure most of them have never used tape before because they like to put it in their mouth and swish it around before sticking it to the paper. I had to go around to each table and show them how the tape dispenser cuts the tape for them. I demonstrated this over and over and over, but still some of them were cutting the tape with scissors. Despite this, my students are amazing (yes, even the unruly younger ones)---all I need to give them are some scraps of colored paper (literally, scraps), some tape and scissors, and they are completely and totally thrilled. They become very quiet and focused, and within the hour, they create some mini-masterpieces. The ambient sound of 23 students urgently cutting and taping and strategizing their own artwork is a wonderful thing to behold.

--One of my fourth grade students ran after me while I was walking with headphones. He asked if later he could try the headphones. I gave him a strange look, and then put a headphone in his ear. He couldn’t hear anything. I’m not sure what he expected.

--There was drama on my campus this week. Someone broke into the headmistress’s office and stole some money and hearing aids and other things. They climbed through the ceiling shaft and busted through the ceiling in her office, and then escaped out a window. The teachers tried to blame it on the students (it still might be them), and they had them all search their dormitories looking for the missing stuff, but nothing was found.

--On Friday morning, as I was conducting my fourth grade class, my mentally disabled student, Bashiru, was dragged into the room, screaming, followed by my headmistress with her caning stick. She was furious because evidently he had been roaming around getting into trouble when he should have been in my class. She warned the rest of the class not to do the same. There were some students missing, so Bashiru had a table all to himself where he cried for the next 15 minutes. It was actually a relief from his normal routine, which is to wander the classroom looking for things to break or steal. After he settled down, I gave him crayons and paper, and he actually focused on drawing for a few minutes. I can’t give him the same assignment as the other kids because he isn’t capable of it, but he seems pretty happy with crayons and paper. There’s another mentally disabled student in the class who had injured his finger, I think, and it had green goo on it. I’m not sure what the goo was, or whether it was supposed to be there, but he just sat there, sort of smearing it on his paper all hour. I received his paper back blank except for the green goo.

--Sheep/goat herding seems like a really great career path, and a fabulous quality of life.

Some kids in Tamale who were keeping me company outside of a store

Gushie, a town near me where my Dagbani tutor lives.

Gushie

cracking groundnuts in Gushie

groundnuts

the fastest groundnut cracker (see video)

I love this because the 4th finger seems to have been added as an afterthought. Like an extension.

A fourth grade masterpiece

my fourth grade class--I'm finally getting a handle on them

4th graders

4th graders, Bash and Rafia (Rafia is a vocational student, studying sewing)

4th grade masterpieces

JHS Prep---maybe my best class

In Diare near Mark's site, some of the local kids. Abdulai, in yellow, is a great resource. He speaks excellent English.

A yam plant. Who knew? I guess each of these bushes only has 1-2 yams.

Diare pigs

My own concoction, sort of an all-purpose dish that can go over rice or be served on crackers. Garden eggs (small eggplant), tomatoes, onions, garlic, and spices. I'm mashing it.

apple pancakes!

fufu (sakoro) and groundnut soup (better than it looks)

cuteness, but not mine

scale shot

my masterplan

okra plant

my bush path

the road to Ying, a no-electricity-mud-hut village near me

some of the teacher's sons, both hearing. Rasheed and Junior.

made out of black plastic bags and thread

my local livestock, hanging out in front of my house