I have become quite familiar with a set of new sounds this week, sounds which rasp, scrape, and whisk into the aural with a force greater than that of gravity’s 9.8 m/s/s.
Snick
Ksssshtk
Hwunk
They are the sounds of classroom distraction. At USC in my classes, the worst I had to worry about was the occasional buzz from an iPhone or Droid announcing its own importance to the owner and thereby acknowledging said owner’s importance for he or she was receiving a text message. Less often, there was the actual ringing of the phone at which point all immediately judge the recipient of the action based on the ring tone chosen. It turns out that Cameroon has its own form of the Apple Invasion, but I think that in a battle betwixt the two, Cameroon would win, for you see (or rather hear) my classroom is interrupted by the sounds of small boys playing with machetes.
Now these machetes seem normal enough, but they are basically military grade farm implements. With the slightest movement of a blade of grass brushed by the wind against the blade, the grass falls decapitated and lying headless like verdant Pompeys littering the Ngaoundere-ian red dirt. These young boys, lacking any normal sign of hirsute maturity, nonetheless carry with them the great shavers of nature. No razors for them, for their face is nature herself and they will insure that she is no bearded lady at which the masses may hoot and holler and pay their 50 CFA. At first I did not notice the presence of the machetes, the students would put them quietly on the table. But then, as I walked around the room, I noticed a dull reflection of the sun against the mottled metal of the blade. I ignored it at first, but then I discovered that when my back was turned there I presented an opportunity for the student to carve into the tabletop the latest in proprietary graffiti. Truly, the effect is primal, I almost expect pants to be lowered and urine to be sprayed. For goodness sakes, this is a classroom, not a lavatory wherein one brags of one’s non-existent conquests.
I can now, as a result though, differentiate between the sounds of a machete on cement, on wood, and on metal. I only hope that I never learn the sound of machete on flesh and bone, but as any reader of Dickens knows (see esp. Nicholas Nickleby) violence can spring up in the class. At least I know that I am no Wackford Squeers. Also, the machetes seem to have a magnetic attraction to the floor. Throughout class the tinkle and clang of metal against cement rings out as the blade bounces and the wooden handle clumps.
But no not think that Cell Phones are absent. Though I have yet to hear one of the students’ ring out, they nonetheless bow their heads in pious genuflections to their technological gods as I give my lessons. I will turn around after drawing a brilliant diagram of the possessive adjective system and see a head lowered over the paper. Ahh, I murmur, such dedication, a real student of the school of osmosis-learning. But no, such is not the case, for the student merely thinks that I cannot see that he (as it has thus far inevitably been) is looking at the screen of the phone. The strange thing is, no one is texting and they are not reading texts. I think—but surely I must err, here—that they merely look at the technology to purposefully destroy their eyes, as though such would earn great credit in certain social circuits. I can imagine the conversation “Oh yeah, man, I went blind at 13 from looking at my cell phone so much. What? You didn’t go blind ‘till 90 and then it was from syphilis and various funguses of the eyes…loser!”
By the way, the reason that the students have machetes, which it took me all week to learn, is that some do chores as part of their payment for the school. The first part of the week, though, I just assumed that it was like having a yo-yo or something as was hip when I was in middle school. And yes, my yo-yo was the best and I was awesome; just as if I were a student in this school my machete would be the best and I would be able to lay low more grass per second than anyone else.
What else, you may wonder, comes to mind as a difference between the educational system at USC and here in Ngaoundere. Well, for one part, teachers are encouraged to use technology at USC becomes this keeps students engaged (they are obviously not listening to my luddite warnings about school making kids blind—that’s right, folks, masturbation is no longer the leading culprit) while here I maintain attention through song and dance. That is right, I am now a three-class famous singer of Musical Theater ballads. Whenever the students start to drift too much, I simply launch into some passionate anthem or another from my vast repertoire of 20 measures from a lot of different songs. The only downside to such an action, though, is that the students actually take music class and apparently one of the instruments they learn is percussion, so my songs are accompanied by the drumming of machetes. “Do You Hear the People Sing…” has not really sounded like this before. It all began one day when I came in with my exuberant “Gooooood Morning” I let loose the good for the whole length of the class as I walk to the front and toss a rakish finger in the air in a heretofore unprecedented arabesque of pedagogy before dropping the finger and telling the students to take a seat. For whenever a teacher enters the room, the students rise. It is rather flattering and would be more so were the students to not use it as an opportunity to talk.
At USC, if one is outside walking, reading, talking, various Koreans will approach and ask if you believe in god or if he has saved you or various other personal questions delivered so rotely as to become impersonal. Here in Ngaoundere, ladies come up with huge loads upon their heads and flies buzzing around and ask if you want to buy chunks of smoked antelope that the men had brought out of the wild. It is really rather incredible. And the teachers love it. They handle all the meat, putting it on the ground, tucking it under armpits, laying it across notebooks. So much antelope, all tied with long braided weeds. And the flies buzz and the wind blows, and profits are made. When I told Phil about this he immediately frowned and told me that the flies are a good clue that these animals had been poisoned (usually by people stealing insecticide meant for Cotton) and that the meat is often heavily contaminated. There are also banana sellers and orange and fig sellers. It is quite an event to be outside during the Pause.
A few words on teaching this week. Among my 7th graders (cinquième) I taught adjectives. And to my 8th graders (quatrième) I taught the simple past and possessive adjectives as well as introducing principle parts of verbs. With adjectives, it is interesting to note that students cannot say “healthy” or “wealthy.” It comes out as “heafty” and “wefty” But that is small beans compared to their attempts to say “pretty” which comes out as “British.” I have no idea how that happens. “Thin” Comes out as “Tin.” So we do a lot of pronunciation exercises and keep reviewing “eyes, ears, and purple.” The reason I make note of pronunciation is that many who learn French complain about the difficulty of pronouncing that language, but it turns out that English has many difficulties as well.
Yesterday there was a faculty meeting. I understood the first part of almost every sentence, but then the speakers drifted into slang, complex subordination, and mumbling and I lost most of the meaning. What I did not miss, though, was the fact that among the teachers there are no machetes. Instead, there are cell phones. And these phones ring and ring and ring (some people have two and both will ring). But no one silences them. No, he (and again it was only men) answers and talks right through the person who has the floor. It is rather shocking especially when someone addresses a colleague directly and the colleague proceeds to take a call. I most certainly am pleased not to have a phone.
Today some English teachers met up to start planning a Leadership conference, of which I am sure to be reporting more. It will involve about 25 students and bring in outside speakers. I encouraged us to take a global perspective (someone who is a leader in the international community) and a local business (getting a female businesswoman) and community (a local organizer) so that the students can see various professions to aspire to. I have the feeling that they don’t encounter a lot of really positive role models. My part will be to write role-playing skits about conflict resolution.
Some items of my personal life. I eat a great many bananas and mangos and avocados. I have rice every day that I mix with either beans (which I am very bad at cooking so that they are soft) or lentils (which I am awesome at cooking—CF the British tv show “The Young Ones” for my inspiration) and usually a can of tomatoes mixed in to make a bit of soupy flavor. Everything I cook I load with curry powder to give it a bit of flavor. Some days I will also have some cookies. I also eat a lot of peanuts (or groundnuts as they are sometimes called—L’arachide they call them, though the French word I first learned was cacahuète). I buy them roasted and shelled from a group of six ladies who sit on the outskirts of town on small stools with whisky bottles laid out before them, whisky bottles filled with peanuts. For 1,000 CFA I get a full bottle of peanuts and what fun they are to eat, tipping the bottle up and feeling the rush of awesome peanutiness down the throat. I also drink several glasses of green tea and if I could figure out how to use my coffee maker I would drink that as well, but I am rather incompetent. Once in a while I will go out to eat at the Coffee Shop where I’ll order a local fried fish and roasted vegetables and French fries. Also, for a great drink, there is Top Pamplemousse (Top being the brand and pamplemousse being Grapefruit pop). I read pretty much all day long, a mixture of French, English (alternating between British nineteenth century and American post-modern), and Greek and Latin.
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