Last week I received an invitation from Oliver and Alfred to attend them at a meeting of their brotherhood, I had no idea what this might mean, but I agreed and the week passed. Sunday afternoon, I met Alfred in the early afternoon and we walked the mile to one of his farms. As near as I can tell he has one large farm and several small plots. We arrived as the trees became shaded in crepuscular greens and browns and shifting blacks, he walked across a burned hill, burned because it is now the dry season and the tall tall grasses provide opportunities for those who prefer to earn their livings by lurking in ambush and leaping out at the unsuspecting passerby. Then we slipped our way down a steep and jagged goat path before traipsing across a board that one might call a bridge if one were inclined to extend definitions of known words to their very extremes. First we admired the pigs that he keeps. They were large and very hairy, long white hairs that look simultaneously sharp and soft. I especially appreciated this moment because one of my last actions before leaving America was to attend the Turner County State fair with my grandparents and father and we admired the hogs that were there. We also admired my grandmother's prize winning photograph but alas did not admire, gustatorily, her prize winning pie. Mmmmm. Pie. Maybe there will be pie on Thanksgiving. We also looked at the plantain and banana trees. Now I have never looked closely at either but the way that they put out fruit is amazing. They shoot skyward these swollen purple rockets that then bend lazily outward and downward tugging the the stalk. After. Few days it splits open to reveal the beginnings of the fruit forming. It is spectacular. And even more alien is the fact that the purple rocket continues to stretch earthward under the arm of the formed fruit. It is hard to describe, but it sure does change the way that I think about bananas. I learned, too, that one plants plantain and banana trees in holes because they grow up and do not have an extensive root system, thus many of them are propped up on account of the displaced weight of the purple rocket.
We returned to his brother's house, who is also the chief of his village in some capacity. It can be confusing because everyone throws around the word chief with wild abandon but sartorially it concerns a hat. That much I've figured out. The meeting began with round after round of Shah, the corn beer that I am increasingly developing the palate for, and members paid their dues. It turned out, after a long time during which it seemed like no one did anything, they gave the money to a needy member of the brotherhood. The fact that I just wrote "seemed like no one did anything" reveals how deeply American I am. For this group of men, just being in each others' presences was doing something. I find this a difficult concept realistically, I can understand the lifestyle on a philosophic level but could never live it. Well just as a was drifting in my thoughts Alfred rose with a sforzando shout and began to dance. He danced his way out the door and some other men followed. What followed was fellowship. We ate some chicken, drank some bottled beer, drank some shah. This whole time I had yet to see anything meeting like in an American sense. I guess in some way I still expect a schedule to be handed out! The brotherhood is called the M'baya. At first I thought this was the name of the village, but it turns out that it is a very specific dance and that there are dozens of such collectives that identify themselves through their dance. Unfortunately it was not danced that night because they had to go and sit with a bereaved family. This is another extraordinary example of community. When a member of the extended village family dies, people congregate at the house and stay awake until five in the morning remembering the dead and comforting the family.
So after last week's debacle of maintaing order I worried a little about what would happen, but I came out strong in all three classes with a whirlwind of grammar-changing adjectives to pronouns- and kept them distracted through Monday. And then on Tuesday, a great change occurred, I announced that we would have a test (or rather I announced the examen) on Black Friday (which I just called next Friday). And suddenly the focus was back. So this is what I think. It is not that the students have short attention spans, it is that they need something to work towards, a temporary telos against which to pit themselves. For too long they had been learning English in a nebulous vacuum, not knowing where we were heading. The date of an exam places them epistemologically and calendrically, their entire universe suddenly makes sense in a way not experienced collectively since the Julien calendar. This was a good lesson for me to learn, and one I could perhaps have reached, after all students crave syllabi at the college level, why should it be any different in middle school. Though I cannot remember having a syllabus. So much of middle school is lost in terms of the quotidian, I would very much like to sit in on a day of Christian's life in seventh grade. I seem to recall weekly schedules, though, written on the board. Yes, I think this is the way it was handled. Anyway the students immediately launched themselves into their work. Another improvement I made is an official start to class. From the beginning, when I walked in some students would stand up and some would not. I thought this a bizarre practice and would always tersely gesture them to sit down. But this week I would enter and stand at the front of the class and tell them all to rise. After they had done so I waited for them to be quite. I would then speak a few sentences in English emphasizing the grammar and vocabulary of the day before and share a very brief anecdote in French. The I told them to it down and take out their notebooks. In this way I gave more structure. I also stopped class in a more official way. I hope that this will help. They also seem to be self-policing more this week. But I will see if that continues. The culmination of this was an excellent series of dictations on Friday, but the surprise of it was that on Thursday, while I was working in the teacher's lounge, five of my best students entered about three minutes before class. They picked up my books and distributed them amongst themselves. They then gestured me to follow and began to throw imaginary flower and announce "vous etes le prince." this was strange.
Meanwhile, my mother is winning the race of sending me the most mail. I received my third letter from her today, I neglected to mention the second, but it was well received and the comics funny and the postcard of Augustus wonderfully apropos. Today's letter, like the last, arrived with four stamps bearing an image and label of South Carolina and celebrating the bicentennial with the date May 23, 1788. I can only imagine the the delight these four stamps (each worth 25 cents) offer to postal workers around the world and I like to think that they borrow the letters to take home and show their families and murmur wondrously at the eccentric south Dakotan lady who sends such bizarre mail.
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