The Hayride

But first, a Christmas story. Christmas was far less of an extravaganza than was thanksgiving with reference to the number of persons gathered around a table, but it did, despite that, attempt to be something greater. As you know preparation for the season begins at the beginning of the month. After Col Pro's concert, other groups around town hold concerts and there are various forms of entertainment to be had, from shopping for new clothes to buying dolls (disturbingly, in this valley of the dolls as well, they are all white) to stumbling upon a small selection of toy helicopters next to the onions in the market. But most of all are the children's pageants. In America, we love the animals. Ahhh, look at the cute cow, listen to the darling sheep (baaaah, where's the baaaaaby) and comment wryly upon whatever other animals might have showed up. But here in Cameroon, it is a different story. Here king Herod rules and does so despotically. He yells at the wise men, to be expected, but then he yells at the shepherds, more of a surprise, and then he just sort of hangs out until, whilst having his fingernails files by nubile slaves and his face fanned by the same and his feet rubbed as well, he offhandedly declares the slaughter of the innocents. In a twelve minute pageant, he'll probably be on stage for between five and seven of those minutes. Also, the shepherds are always dressed as Muslims and made the comic relief of the story. I probably saw four different versions of this and they varied to a similar extent as if you were to see four different churches do th well known story. Of course there is a major difference in the songs sung, including the absolute shocker "we love being present at Mary's birthing pains" despite the title it is really a hip rolling tune.

Christmas eve was the best part, I went with Alfred to cross and crown, the English speaking church, and we were two of fifteen total. I went because I wanted to holler out some Christmas songs in English and I was not disappointed because somehow someone had sent the church a set of ELCA bulletins for the candlelight service. Excellent. Lots of good songs and so there was good singing. Then, since it is a huge holiday for friends and less for families, indeed presents are given a few days earlier, I went with Alfred for a beer and then we went to drink some shah with Oliver and Meno, a teacher of Mathematics whom we encountered on the way. Asa result of the special occasion, I bought two bottles of guinness and mixed them into the shah, normally I don't like to drink it adulterated, but figured it was a small way to give a gift to the others. When I got back, Val and jack had prepared a small selection of appetizers and some drinks so with Mia we all had a nice time. I discovered that I really like deviled eggs when they have a dill pickle sticking out of them. Otherwise I don't really like them. Also, there was some cheese

Christmas began with the news that Jack wasn't feeling so hot, but we went on out to church, which except for some Christmas tunes was normal and crazy long because of a baptism. But there was a really fine Zulu men's a cappella group that ws hoppity. Unfortunately, like most times when there is a synthesizer and a man behind it, I was forced to hear banged out notes that cut brutally through the music. Adding to the length was a very strange presentation by the Sunday school wherein individually they would stand in the front, bow or curtsy and say "I would like to present a memory verse" which basically means a recitation, only they had only begun to learn them that morning so even the best was rather woeful.

Alright but the big event is that I finally left Ngaoundere. Boarding Jack's truck at eight twenty-ish we buckled in and drove down the highway and drove some more. It is fun to drive past dozens of different small villages because they each do their roofs differently and it is nice to think of differentiating oneself architecturally. When we came to a large cotton field, we turned off onto a tortured gravel road And drove and drove and drove. Then we stopped and had tasty egg salad and avocado sandwiches and took a bathroom break in the bush. And as we continued on Jack said to start looking for animals. A half hour later I was about to say something but it took so long to register in my mind that it wasn't until a half hour and ten secnds that I began screaming to stop. Since jack is rather deaf, it took lots of work. Everyone kept asking why, why why, but it was so simple to me that I just kept saying to the right.I completely elided the fact that I had spotted an enormous giraffe perfectly framed betwixt two trees. We stared and clicked our cameras for a while and marveled at its serenity before it slowly turned and with the slight twitch of a tail disappeared into the bush. A regal wise councilor of an animal, I think. It was not much longer when we took a left and passed und a wrought iron fence: Boubanjida African Safari. Yep, for my Christmas vacation I trucked around a safari. But you can too, and I don't mean by following a blog, or looking at pictured (really it's too bad I don't have my computer to upload some of them now). Nope, instead you can drive a few miles outside Mission Hill in late crisp November and pull in at Garrity's, because an African Safari I'd just like a hayride.

The sit where we were is a small compound of six boukarous (the peaked huts) a long table for communal meals, and a nice lounge space for drinking and chatting in the evening. The whole thing overlooks a dry riverbed, though in the rainy season this river rages, or so I've been told. Well, to go on a safari, one needs: a car, a guide who will tell you what you are seeing and point things out, and several pairs of eyes. But basically we drive around on paths looking for animals. It is like sitting on a wagon scratching itchilly and plucking various apples down. Only instead of a crisp Macintosh, I admire the ruddy bottoms of the baboon. Instead of the mouth tightening granny smith, I hearken to the mocking laughter of the Ibis (and following this sighting I launch into an explanation of the genre of vituperative poetry we have from Callimachus and Ovid in their poems of the same name, and contrary to other mentions of classical authors, i was asked some questions about Ovid's Metamorphoses given the apropos nature of our environment). Adding to the hayride effect is the fact that the landscape is the burnt autumnals of a late SD November, complete with crackling leaves, bare trees. The differences are in touch and smell, for everywhere reeks of smoke since they are burning the bush right now, and it is near thirty three Celsius in the afternoon. Though the morn is a brisk fourteen. That first day's excursion I also saw warthogs, my preferred spotting, and dozens of various types of antelopes. As we were returning, we stopped behind a truck who quickly motioned us to look and after fruitlessly searching I was able to spot a tawny movement in the back and a flick of a black tip. It was a far distant lion. By then it was dark so we returned to the camp and found Phil and June had come in for the day as well. We all sat around until supper, an elaborate three course meal opening with an onion soup, a main dish of cous cous with mouton in acream sauce and a dessert of a roll stuffed with chocolate mousse or a couple slices of papaya and lime. As we received our desserts first, a French woman leaped up with her eyes blazing and the baby on her hip burbling and demnded the children be fed right away. She proceeded to accost the head waiter for several minutes and grabbed the dishes from his hand to give to her children. It was rather unpleasant, but spiced the dessert in the end. And then it was into bed and up at five thirty the next day to break our fast on coffee, or tea or coco and bread and butter and jams. I soon gained a reputation for my prodigious ability to consume butter and was to be seen eating the little packets plain to the delighted consternation of my fellow voyagers. That morning I went out with Phil and June and we saw many antelopes, some warthogs (yeah) and good tall elephant grass. When we had been driving through the grass and not seeing anything for a while, I got up on the roof of the car and bounced merrily along for an hour. Lunch was a small salad followed by frog legs in a cream sauce over potatoes and a fruit cup. Really all this European fare with the heavy sauces was clogging me up, I who have body by corn fou fou djamba djamba, so I was craving some greens. Though it would be long till I received them, not until I returned actually. Vegetables were not highly prized here. In the afternoon, after a short but very heavy siesta overlooking the baboons frolicking in the riverbed, I headed out with Jack and Val and had a great few hours as their translator. We had gotten a hundred yards out from the camp when we spotted a large herd of antelope species and s hundred yards later an enormous bull elephant. Our guide screamed at us to back up declaring it to be terribly dangerous since it was alone and flapping its ears. The rest of our hayride proceeded calmly with lots of good spotting. Val is funny to drive with because she really likes birds and is constantly bemoaning the fact that she missed a picture of one or another is Ill placed. That night's supper was squash soup, noodles and antelope in a brown sauce followed by rum baked bananas. So still nerry a sign of a vegetable. The next day I came back with Val and Jack, Mia stuck around to return with Phil and June, and we arrived home dusty and tired and at once I headed out for some greens, only to find my lady not at home. So after a cup of shah I returned home and cooked up a heaping plate of petit pois.

Two Bereavements and a Dance

First of all a very merry Christmas to all of you. Enjoy staring at your Sapin du Noel and fetching presents from the underneath of them. Enjoy the carols, the candles, the wreathes and the jingling of bells when santa's sleigh coruscated upon you icy roofs.

Second of all, mail call! We enjoyed heaps of laughter over the comics that mom sent me, several of which were, as always, unexpectedly apropos to late events. A second letter came, absolutely unknown from St. John American Lutheran Church in Sioux falls, it contained a very nice chain letter full of well wishings. And I got a card from my grandma and grandpa on the farm! Though they are actually in Texas. And on this Christmas card was...S N O W. Ahh, how I stared at it last night over my plate of french fries and my beer. It was a really swell card with all sorts of nice things written in it. So, are you others feeling jealous yet for not sending me mail and having your deed immortalized in the digital form?

Last week, M'baya held a bereavement for Genesis, the wonderful owner of Mandela bar where we gather for our monthly meetings and where more often I go to drink shah. I was rather flattered to be asked to attend, but he wanted me there since in the last few months I have become something of a part of his life. I have now attended two meetings and visited him often, toured his shah production and his farm and shared peanuts with his family. Now the bereavement is a bit strange. It begins a bit like the meetings. There is an enormous hundred litre container of shah, the chairs are set in a circle and everyone just palavers at ease. This setting was further offset by the fact that it was the day of the Cameroon Football Cup and so the TV, small with wretched staticy reception, was merrily giving blurry entertainment and the conversation would be periodically interrupted on account of someone suddenly commencing to cheer for a team,  following by a fervid assertion that "I have no preference for who wins, I just like to see goals". I've never been in such a crowd of those who refuse to take sides and worried a bit about the consequences if the afterlife is dantesque (review your commedia all ye who don't recall the Inferno). several half-hours into the evening of solidarity, Eugene, a retired army parachuteer, who has far and away the hardest handshake I've shaken here-and I've shaken _a lot_ of hands-, stood and gave a short very tender eulogy for the brother of Genesis. The conversations then resumed. Not having the bereavement stamina of the Africans, who can go all night and several days, I wanted to leave to continue with my reading schedule for the night. But before I left I delivered my own eulogy of sorts, but since I did not know the brother, it instead turned into a praise of the way life is celebrated here in Africa, because it was not just us in Ngaoundere who mourned the brother, but anywhere where two or more villagers were a bereavement was held. My eulogy, involving as it did the key words of myth, family, futurity, and culture, culminated in me giving the peculiar triplicated hug to Genedis and then there was a smattering of applause. And Alfred and I left, though after he dropped me at home he returned.

The second bereavement came very recently, two days ago, when Oliver learned that his grandmother had died. The grandmother of the village, his own having passed away in the seventies. There again we gathered for a bereavement and again the seating occurred in a circular manner and the television flashed away from a distracting corner, although this time at least it was blissfully silent. The shah passed around, and everyone laughed when I offered my opinion on a particular new brand that came neither from Mandela nor Mama Shah, at whose restaurant I most frequently drink it and whose corn fou fou I most frequently drink and whose tiny daughter frequently grasps my wrist to pull herself on the bench beside my left side, punch the buttons on my watch and then force my gaze down with an imperious "regardez" to see that she has the power of making the watch light luminescent.  It was wonderful to meet Oliver's family and see his home and I mentioned the same in my speech in this house as well. For even as bereavements mourn the loss of someone they inevitably widen the circle of acquaintances that can turn into new family (such was the theme of this speech, liberally mixed with metaphors of corn, growing, harvest, and shah and fellowship).

These evenings are juxtaposed with the following when Alfred informed me that his wife had invited the two of us to a celebration of the husbands of her own meeting. Everyone has meetings here, which is a rich tradition lost to America. Of which you can read more in the rather shocking Bowling Alone by R. Putnam. Anyway, we arrived at a bit after seven, which was an hour after the start time and a good forty eight minutes early. We took a moto through the back ways of Ngaoundere into a wealthy quarter of the city and entered through a large portal set in a thick wall. Then up a set of ceramic steps and into an enormous living and dining room space dominated by a huge white draped table. The drapes hid strange mysterious castle-like shapes and I swiftly imagined an entire medieval countryside complete with ravaging dragon. In this case the dragon would be me eating whatever may be beneath the cloth. Set along the entire perimeter were the huge couched and easy chairs upholstered in gaudy patterns favored here. So Alfred and I took a seat, leaned our heads against the wall and closed our eyes murmuring conversation. When we opened them from our pseudo siesta dome forrty minutes later, the chairs had filled with men and women and I watched as several women dressed in working clothes disappeared behind a curtained aperture to emerge moments later artificially coiffed, jeweled and be-dangled, garbed in flowing garments, and healed in a high and vicious manner. Then the program began. First the women thanked their husbands for attending, then the president was called forward (alfred's wife!) and she introduced the governing committee of the meeting group and we all clapped. Then there was a report of what the women had done that year, bought notebooks for the children, taught each other new recipes, taught a new healing potion with a particular leaf, etc. And then the husband of the woman whose home we stayed in offered an official thanks to us for coming to his home and offered a gift. Out came some crated of beer and the women all leaped up and ululated and crowded around him to express gratitude. And then they said that a special guest would speak and I looked around for the speaker and saw instead everyone looking at me. Luckily the off the cuff speech is my favorite genre and I rose to begin with a desideratum that I was woefully unprepared for such a moment not least because of the rather recent knowledge that I would give the speech, but more on account of the fact that I was the only unmarried person in the house with the exception of the children of the home. With the laughs falling behind me, I shifted gears to discuss being invited into the homes of various persons and seeing this particular moment as but a natural extension of the Cameroonian family whereby family ties are hardly the strongest based on blood but on fellowship. After sharing my reflections, I commented that I had to apologize for having nothing to give them to drink, but since their sense of taste would soon be sated I might seek to sate their sense of hearing and so launched into a heavily bass rendition of Silent Night that was soon arching tenor over the audience and led to them all joining in in various forms of dialect, French, English and a dozen times as many different tunes and rhythms. It was quite cacophonic. Afterward the mistress of ceremonies thanked me for reminding all of them that we were in the season of the fete and that she wished she hadn't forgotten the carol sing in the program. And then the cloth was undraped revealing the feat. Four different salads, thee different types of fish dishes, two of chicken, a chancy tomato sauce, some piment, fried plantains, beer, rice, batons of manioc. Excellent. I ate. I drank. And I thought that was all. But then the table was moved away. At first I was confused, but then the patriarch of the home was called forward, handed a bottle of Irish whisky, and a tray of kolo nuts (traditional to share over drinks, I think I've mentioned them in relation to shah. They are horribly bitter). And he knelt in the middle of the hall and began chanting and then began telling jokes about various ancestors all the while pouring periodic libations. Then when the ancestry had all been invited inside, he went around to all the luminal spaces in the home and poured a line of whisky to hold them all their till the evening ended. And now, it was a bit after eight thirty and hidden speakers began to thump forth music of the south west region and the mistress of ceremonies called for the opening dance! this is a mixed number between the husbands and wives of the committee. And it is ladies' choice as long ad wife does not choose husband. Alfred stood ruefully up and the dance began, that slow rhythmic dance of Africa that could go all day. One just switching the weight from one foot to the other in a languid shuffle while moving the fists clenched to the side. And then it was over, lastly hardly thirty seconds. Ha, I though, I can match that. And so I asked the mistress of ceremonies herself for the next dance. Now she is probably one of the most revved personage in Ngaoundere, having run a school and being wealthy besides, but she agreed to a dance, and so with my hips jockeying and my fingers snapping and my feet jostling I whipped out to the dance floor with the ghost of Swayze staring gap mouthed over me. After all, I could keep this up for the thirty seconds of dancing demanded. Ha, I realized that the ancestors matched me laugh for laugh. This particular song and dance lasted for a solid seven minutes. After forty five seconds people started grinning as they saw my panicked look. But then with a robust chortle I broke into some quick spins and leaps and was ready. Fully energized I moved rapidement. And by the end the white dancer (also called Michael Jackson at various points in the night) won great applause. From there on out Alfred and I alternated danced, though I will freely admit that he was far and away the most popular and many and more women asked him to dance while I asked as many old women as I could, as is my want. Throughout the night two dancers stood out. The first was astonishing with her flat red shoes and middle length sleeve jacket and black slacks. Whenever she was on the floor she moved with a stately grace that belied the stately and left only grace. The other was a heavily muscled women with a flouncy blue dress and leggings who looked more out of a nightclub off forty second street than a dancer at a women's meeting. The latter I had the honor of dancing with at what I thought was the last dance. The music came on fast and thick and she moved alone to the floor. All else sat back, but I soon figured the dance he danced and rose with a step two three movement and tested and slid behind her to bounce up and down and bow. With her backing up and me following, we had the floor alone. And then the music shifted to a more intense speed and she grinned and flowed away, but I was there to catch her and sliding my suit jacket of my shoulders and tossing it behind me we whirled the dance floor as other joined in. And then the dance was over, but it was only over because there was a set of speeches to happen while more beer was handed out. This particular set of speeches was about gifts. The proprietor first gave out some money and spoke some kind words and gave some cash. Alfred did the same, and as movement was getting ready for something I stood to give my second speech of the night. Overflowing with emotion of the night, after all it had only been one year before when I spent all night dancing in the dance halls of Lima with my father and step-mother (there too with great energy and begin all the matriarchs for the honor) and then I said I would like to dedicate my gift to her in the red shoes who graced the floor in such a stately manner and arabesqued a wad of cash toward her which was intercepted by cheers of the attendants and then the second wave of dancing began. And I was thick and center, sweating and laughing. At a bit before two the next morning, though, I admitted defeat to the falling asleep Alfred and we walked the several kilometers home through the silent night that I had sung about five and a half hours ago.

Giving gifts getting cheers

So I went to elementary school, middle school, and high school. I then attended college and graduate school. In all that time I can remember no christmas when there was not a bit of a party or a treat handed out to commemorate the occasion, it was expected and we always said thanks. Well, life is certainly different here in Ngaoundere. Imagine, if you would like to put yourself in the dusty and smoke filled mountain region where I currently dwell, Thankgsiving passes, December encroaches with it's economic and commercial consumptive pressures how best to combat and lethargy descends. Defeat, ohh the teachers complain, the students are distracted, they are tired they are excited only for the Christmas program. It is not the students who are so, but the teachers. And admittedly they deserve to be so. The promises of the administration go unfulfilled concerning holiday bonuses, the donators of punishments stop caring if students enter class on time or return to their rooms in a timely manner, and the dust and smoke are so thick that everyone has sniffles. In addiction, at least three students faint every morning thus further delaying start time. They faint from dehydration perhaps, or poor diet, or in imitation, the bane and play of teachers and students at the middle school level. I decided that those teachers with twenty or more years of experience had to be wrong. I forged ahead. Early December was difficult, for the students were focused on the concert, but I found with a well placed Christmas song that I captured their attention for two class periods and a short review about pronunciation of end consonants in English as well as the present continuous tense. Then this week chaos ensued for there was no class on Monday, instead we had the general meeting of classes. Here in rapid fire manner, each set of teachers for a class (5b, 5c, 4a, which are mine) gather and read the top three students and the bottom three, assign sanctions (which means compliment and placement on the tableau d'honneur) and talk about whose comportment is good and whose bad. I was very pleased that my students who do well in English do well in their other classes, similarly those who misbehave in my class misbehave in their others as well. It was nice to not feel so isolated in my experience, and then followed the strangest experience. The teachers spoke frankly about who they like and don't, who is smart and isn't, and mocked some and complimented others. Welcome, I told myself sarcastically, to the teacher's clownge. (portmanteau of lounge and clown). I limited my remarks to saying that we should find a way to have the eyesight of the students checked. Such a comment checked the laughter and it turns out that this will probably not happen. However, I do want to say that it is great to finally see who the other teachers are of these same students, I wish we could've met earlier at mid trimester as well.

Special note. Afterward the music teacher asked me to ask America if they would like to buy instruments for the college music department. I said that I would ask America and so I am now doing sol if you would be interested in such a project please email me and I will provide more information.

Then on Tuesday I got to have class. Yeah. And despite the fact that several of the other teachers happened to be gone that day, I still had many in class and I taught and taught and taught their eyeballs out. We did exercised on the board, we practiced asking questions in increasingly rapid and normalized style. It was playful and practical. And most of all it was successful. I kept their attention for the period, everyone participated, and the hour was not lost. Wednesday came the grand conseil. At this all the teachers gathering the morning to listen to the heads of the department read the results of their classes and make a complaint. First one would say, ahh their comportment is very bad,another would say, they do not behave well, a third would say, they are unruly. It basically condenses ot the same result. Everyone thinks that their are too many problems and a lack of behavior. Well, there are two solutions, one is to make the punishments more rigid, a horrid plan. The other is to have either fewer students or more teachers, which will never happen for reasons economic. Of course if I could discover the pill to make students proud of their comportment that might help as well. But truly for me I think the problem is one of too much leisure. The middle schoolers have two long breaks, one at 10:10-10:45 but because of the nature of the school we don't actually commence until a bit before eleven. And even though I start class on time the students don't drift in until they want. The second break is from 12:30-1:05, but this too extends very far. Further, class ends on wednesdays and Fridays at noon thirty. Also, the classes don't follow a patterned schedule. This means that students have greater frequency to forget assignments, lose papers and homework, and generally lose themselves in the sound and fury of frustrated professors strutting and fretting their hours (really fifty minutes) upon the stage. But such is life. Their is also a serious lack of pride in one's own work, though plenty of interest in others' grades.

And now the gifts. I assumed naturally enough to my mind, that all sorts of professors would be bringing small things in. But I was the only one, and I became papa Noel with my handouts of flavored biscuits, coco, coconut, and butter. When I went to give the teachers their biscuits they scolded me for not making them song Jingle Bells first. Oh, they have been so funny these past weeks, whenever they see me the teachers mutter s bit of "jungle bells jingle bells hmm hmm hmm hmm HEY." I also mixed up class. I tore in with shouts of jingle bells whilst whirling my opaque bag here and there. The students joined in and as we danced our way into the final chorus, brought forth the small gifts to great cheers and gasps and stamping of feet and banging of tables. Tossing them forth like a presidential opening pitch at the baseball game they leaped for the Kirby Puckett catch. And then, wonder of wonders miracle of miracles, they sat down and waited for class. Then followed enormously successful dictation. So successful that I had an extra ten minutes at the end and so I talked about Christmas and Santa and the Xmas tree and wishing a happy new year. It was marvelous and a fabulous end of the year. I might get in a bit of trouble because one absolutely ingenuous splinter of a child asked if papa Noel was real and I arched my voice and spoke my imagination to the north pole and tales of santa's helpers. Yes, Ngo Zaah, there is a Papa Noel!

Jingle bells

First I owe an apology for misrepresenting the situation a the instalation of the general secretary last weekend. The acerbic speech was not directed at the ELCA but at the group here in Cameroon that has broken from the EELC to found a second force and the man was articulating the ways that he saw him as cult like.

Have you thought about how difficult it is to get the rhythm of the second time of this marvelously common Christmas tune? "oh what fun it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh" thunk about that as you read.

It is fascinating to me how my weeks operate in cycles, it is enough to drive one into Vico's New Science as a true believer in the cyclicities of time. Because it has been fabulous. It began Sunday morning with Alfred who had invited me to attend his church, Cross and Crown. This is the only fully English Lutheran church in Ngaoundere, there are other English churches but they are not Lutheran, and it was a great shivering surprise to walk in and see the Green book in all the pews. I was ready to know everything that was going to happen. The service began interestingly with a procession of the women's council dancing their way in and then into a familiar liturgy we launched with an opening hymn. Woooomph, my readiness screeched to a halt faster than a moto behind a stopped banana truck. The speed of the hymns was half time at least and that leaking the rhythm I am so accustomed to what with the occasional screech from an electric keyboard. At least they don't sing the psalm responsively. That is something that bothers me and it would have been even worse here. They have an interesting hymnal here as well that is African American, but the songs they chose we ones that no one knew so there was quite a bit of stuttering and stopping uncertainly,the great sung treat was Alfred's son who gave a beautiful solo, I forgot to note what it was and have since forgotten, but it was a consummate performance and he also performed admirably on the drums. The sermon left a lot to be desired, what with starting a new reading cycle, gospel of Mark, I though the least the pastor could have done was mark this, but he gave a rather phoned in sermon about the importance of waiting. I missed the three part structure of the Fulfulde service here the pastor opens with a local anecdote, connects it to the gospel, and then draws out a larger philosophical or textual reading, but then church was over and energy built. It was the last Sunday of Thanksgiving and people came to the front with their offerings of yams, oranges, pots of this, jars of that and jugs of the other thing. I was used to this from the Sunday out in the country, but what I was not ready for was the switching on of a microphone, his strutting into the crowd with one bared and muscled arm holding aloft a jug of peanut oil and howling "bidding begins at one thousand". I was in the midst of an auction. There is nothing, by the way (a lie, there are lots of things) that get my blood howling more than the inside of an auction house or the open field of a farm auction, but not hunched over an eBay auction. That does nothing for my sanguinary speedometer. I began rolling in the rhythms of the bidding, here we moved by thousands of francs,here by but fifty, but upwards each product leaped well past their worth. I found myself bidding urgently for a closed pot. I had no idea what was in it but when the bidding had reached two thousand after moving up by increments of two and three thousand I sent a clarion call of three thousand through the sanctuary and was met with ululations of approval. And what had I won, a pot of ecrivisse seche. Dried crayfish. Alfred and I hunched down and began munching contentedly and watching the rest of the bidding. It was quite fun. One of the most powerful memories that flooded my senses at that moment was of a christmas many many years past whilst we still dwelt in the gemutlich confines of Roseni. It was a cold evening and we were in the church basement. There was loud bidding, but my ears had little power over my eyes which csreefully lusted sfter a lsrge quilt with snow leopards printed on itl spread here and there were bits of red yarn holding the various squares in place. I was sure I would win, but over every bid of mine came a dear voice, Candy wond. I was defeated. Deveststed I wept myself to sleep for a week. Christmas eve came and I hunkered down beneath the tree to await the coming of Santa Claus, but wouldn't you know it I fell asleep. When I awoke, I was warmer, warmer by far than I should have been being as I was across the room from the radiator and the tree had not started on fire. But then I did not recognize my sleeping bag either, for it had gained a distinct pattern of snow leopards and here and there was dotted with knots of red yarn holding the squars in place. Christmas had come.

Afterward Alfred and I walked through the countryside to his house and set some wonderful corn fou fou that his wife had prepared that morning for us. After a quick cup of shah down the road I was back home and reading. A marvelous difference from the seven days before.

Brief note: I write about drinking shah a lot, and there has been some concern about this, so I want to give a report on it. After the kernels of corn are separated from the ear, they are left in a cool place with a drop of moisture until they begin to germinate. At this point they are ground very finely, boiled, and left in large vats to settle. After a week's settling, they are reboiled and become shah. Slightly sweet, the only product is corn. Thus it is basically a high fiber meal-drink that tastes great. True, it is fermented, but the alcohol content is very very low and even after drinking of it copiously it only brings a certain lethargy, definitely not drunkeness, so have no fear of my becoming the great dipsomaniac of Cameroon.

The week swept by with half days the whole time as the students are preparing for the Christmas concert Saturday night, the reason for the lateness of this post, but there was a surprise on Thursday as I rolled in for my eight twenty class. Who was standing outside my classroom but my favorite, said ironically, mistress of English studies in the great Ngaoundere area. I was under a surprise inspection! I whipped through my mind what to do. I had not played the english game lately, I had planned a fun day of drawing on the board and writing narratives using our new vocabulary of adventure and exploration that I gave (we've been taking lots of hikes along the beach and through the mountains, and climbing many a tree, let me tell you!) as I walked in I sniffed the class out for a hint of what to do, I glanced at Banote and got the secret spy nod. Meteke gave me the hand gesture of complicity, Haoua and Moussa rolled their shoulders to signify their readiness and even Rosalie and Kana winked conspiratorially, I glanced over to Soknan and Woachie to make sure their were on my side and received similar gestures to go ahead from Elisabet, Ali Aouda, and Yepele. Comfortable, I went up to the front and introduced my class to our guest and what followed was...

The Utopia of Mendacity.

...for fifty minutes I pretended that my students are not ill-behaved and they pretended that I am a hugely successful teacher. This was a mission that we had chosen to accept and the message self distrusted after sixty seconds, but by that time we were so comfortably ensconced in our easy chairs of wool-pulling that I was actually a good teacher and they actually knew their material.I began with a dazzlingly review of the difference between "since when" with it's answer of "since" plus the present perfect tense and moment of commencement and "how long" with it's answer of "for" plus a a specific length of time. After that eith the students leaping over one another to answer my questions in complete sentences and to hear my corrections, we moved to a review prepositions with locations and they eagerly tossed them out as easily as tiger woods once putted the little white ball into small holes or Michael Jordan once tossed bigger orange balls into bigger orange netted hoops. And I in the front with my wand of chalk conducted this display. To conclude we showed the inspectress a review of long forgotten conditionals while I introduced the second conditional of "should...would" they soon caught on that this was a hypthetical flavor, a most "peut-êtrement" like quality. I figure I'd play a bit with the French language and adverb creation for our guest. And then the bell rang and my students thanked me before filing out. We were all exhausted from running our utopia and thankful that it had not degenerated into either a dystopia of teacher over student or student over teacher force. And then the inspectress summoned me. No compliments from that circle. First, what had I titled my lesson. I replied that I had no title but simply wrote the schedule of the day along the side of the board before every class. Uff da, that earned me a light scolding. Second, had my goals been met? What! I had no clearly articulated goals for each fifty minute session, another scolding. Why had I not told my students that "should" comes from shall and "would" comes from will. I answered that I want my students to speak and be able to use English not to be linguists and that further would does note carry a definite tense marker as will does and that I teach what is necessary for my students to read. Thus they know what a direct object I'd because it helps them with their pronouns, but I am not going to ever use the word shall with them since they'll never see it in the next three years.well, I was slowly worming my way into the black hole of English teachers of Ngaoundere. I figured I had nothing more to lose, but then she asked I fi used the books. I responded that I tried but I was contemptuous of it. She asked how I could know that and I curtly responded that I had read it. She didn't think much of that answer and I proceeded to enumerate my complaints. It had no index, it lacked even a rudimentary glossary, it was preaching in it's value system, it used phrases and verbal forms that the students were at least a year from encountering and by not having a glossary there was no way they could even begin to figure it out from context. The paucity of grammar exercise much less clearly articulated sensible grammar lessons made for an impossible course to be followed, as I opened my mouth to continue she suggested we move on to the office business she asked my name, date of birth and then cell phone number. When I answered that I had no cell phone she thought to have found firm footing and launched a diatribe about the necessity of having a phone, what if she wanted to get in touch with me? She asked, I responded that I could see no reason for her needing to but if she really wanted me she could contact me through the head of the department and thus follow the correct division of powers. Secondly, she could send me a letter through the college or if she thought it was a necessary part of the job she should suggest the college supply phoned, after all they give me chalk, pens and notebooks to do my job. I am afraid that I was not at my best at this moment and could probably have handled the situation better, but the way she was going about this cell phone business as though it were a failure on my part while I think of it as my year of moral superiority sat poorly in by black bile.

After this I went out for some afternoon shah and fou fou with Alfred and Jeremy so that helped settle me a bit. And then some quick reading and I was back at school. Why? Well for the Christmas practice, of course. I had been told to arrive at five o'clock, when I asked. I would not have even known I had to be there (look at that sentence, what good does it do you to know that would comes from will, huh?) and when I arrived I was the only one there. No one else drifted in until six. I was pretty upset, because I am a volunteer, after all, and I had not even known I was volunteering for this. But then I decided that I needed a better attitude, and began to think what this was like. It struck me that the nearest parallels Could be found in high school teachers that have to volunteer to be activities guards. They always wear their school shirts and take tickets or patrol or carry rulers to dances to ensure the students not become too lascivious! And at once my attitude changed. I was indeed an incorporated teacher. At the same moment I thought this, a group of my students approached with cried greetings of Mr. Christian (a hailing to which I am greatly attached). And I settled into a merry bombardment of questions and answers and general palaver outside of class. Though I did take a moment to emphasize that at this time of day we say good evening or even good night. The rehearsal went well, I was surprised by how well, and I patrolled my area. In a y that I hope my teachers at YHS would be proud of, while simultaneously wishing I had a shirt with rampant buck and gazelle, or whatever the equivalent here would be, probably a bubu of some sort. And the evening was over and there was a retirement to drink shah with my usual crowd of Oliver, Alfred and a snagged up Jeremy, who by the way is the German teacher so we occasionally rock the trilingual conversation.

Friday I decided would be a fun day because the student are exhausted from the long semester and these night practices for the concerts, therefore I though we'd learn jingle bells. Remember how I told you to think about it. I began by writing song on the board. *cheers*. I sang it through, tting the first verde, they begn to stamp their desks in unison and urge me on, I circled round for the chorus and decided to really give them something to cheer. Slowing to a crawl on the last "o what fun it is to ride in a one (held long) horse (held long, rise in pitch) open (huge and breathy and operatic) sleigh(bellowed forth in marvelous three tenor style) benches scraped and table clattered and the students were on their feet roaring and cheering and holding their hands in taut verbrato in the sir slowing my voices resonances to shiver through their bodies. And the I wrote the words on the board and we settled down to learn the song phrase by phrase. I used it to emphase tense, present, and the importance to convey tone (how good a song would it be if the words were "oh what fun it was to ride...over the fields we went..." right, anyway the students were laughing either in agreement with my good sense or the look of mock horror I made to the fact that I made faces while doing so. I think my rather elastic expressions delight them. After class, headed out to the sounds of their reconstructing the sound.

I came back for my second class, and it began the same. Same opening, same slow phrasal progress. But as I went through the song slowly the second time with my back to the class I heard their eagerness, and reaching the end I turned around. The classroom was packed. Normally I have 32 in this class but now there were well over seventy students there ready to learn to sing the jingle bells and sing we did, thundering the entirety of college Protestant. And was repeated a third time as I came in for class with my fourth levels, though by this time they were icing for the jingle bells. And they got them.

And now the concert is over. The famous col pro fete Noel. it was loud, but I am afraid that I can say little that is absolutely positive about the experience since I am, right now, rather embittered by my place. I was posted as a guard in the very corner of a group of adolescent boys. There were supposed to be four of us there, but there were only two and the other professor was too busy grinning to make any attempt at control. And so our section was repeatedly the victim of scoldings from below. And mind this is during the concert. I, embarrassed, did my utmost, I commandeered cell-phones, I urged that the students pay attention and behave, but they echoed out with mocking at my french accent. Then the next moment I turned around and my co-damage controll officr had gone across the hallway of the balcony. I was now alone and fodder for the youth. And they recognized it and bared their teeth and yowled into the night. Well, I am a volunteer here, and it is about as far from my roll as can get to be in that situation, so I left, although in leaving I departed some choice words to various people. Now a confession, when I misbehaved in middle school, and believe me I most certainly did, come the day of a concert or a performance my behavior was perfect and I gave it my all. Because come what may I had pride in my school and in the outcome of the evening. These students, though, as long as they get to make noise, that's what they will do. S the concert was loud and ill managed and still people thought it the greatest thing ever, but I saw only what it could have been if the students were chosen for their desire to be their rather than enforced attendance, if they had actually had full rehearsals so that the students could see the skit that formed the main structure of the shoe, but they had not and so every time they leaped up to get a closer look, or huddled under costs to listen to their cell phone music. And then to cap the evening, the teachers cancelled class the latter half of next week, thus allowing the gut to end on a celebration of missed academics. Bah. Humbug.

Containing many mentions of things abject

You'll have to be brave for this post o my three readers who are left perusing these laconic narratives of mine, for what follows is perhaps best meant for those who are not about to begin eating. The week began with great potential but by Sunday was boring. Saturday Night I went out with Alfred and Oliver to Behind Mandela, one of the best dive bars where one drinks the shah, and I saw a small pile of tasty treats. I usually eat peanuts at these moments but decided it was time to experience something new. After all, the opportunity is short. Right now people have begun to burn the tall grasses since the dry season is well and truly arrived. Well, from burning fires flee many things: criminals, rats, bugs. In the later. Category we include grasshoppers. Not your ordinary green grasshopper, but great finger sized brown grasshoppers, which, well fried up and legs detached accompany shah perfectly. The person who had prepared these particular specimens had filled the inside with spicy powders, so the experience goes like this. Crunch. Whoosh. (the crunch is biting down onto e head with it's beady eyes frozen in terror and the whoosh is of opening the mouth and grabbing air to try and cool off).

A new secretary general of the ELCS was installed on Sunday and the idea of the best way to do this is to hold a five hour church service without a single mention of the fact that it was the first Sunday of Advent. The vestments were all red, as well, since we were celebrating so one could not even know through basic symbolism. One of the parts included a hate speech against the part of ELCA that broke off from the main branch after certain basic human rights were recognized a few years ago by ELCA in America. Another part included s half hour gift giving session where the new secretary general stood in front of the congregation and people lined up to give him brightly wrapped presents and to drape him in fancy bubus. Another part was various choirs that sang and sang and sang and only some of which were really good. The neatest thing about the choirs is that they came from different regions and so whenever they sang in a new dialect different groups would stand up and walk by the choirs to give them coins and small bills to show their village pride. That was neat.

After this we emerged into the steamy afternoon (!) and I had only a brief break before I joined Alfred to visit a family meeting of his, this time for his village, Ya-bi. Unfortunately this was steadily boring because it lasted three hours and was all conducted in dialect. Alfred saw I was bored and I came back to the compound only to find an hour later that as soon as I left they began to dance and sing--the reason I had accepted the invitation in the first place. So that was frustrating. Then that night we went to the special party for teachers by the secretary general and listened to some funny speeches and saw a very funny skit that I did not understand but seemed to follow well-know skit tropes for the Cameroonians. Then we ate generous portions of cold food and drank warm beer. Smetimes things are a bit upside down here in Cameroon.

The students lamented their grades on Monday, but I figured it was just disappointment and after we went over the exams they seemed to accept that I was right, although we had a lot of drama because I was not consistent in taking off half points. Sometimes I used a decimal and sometimes a fraction and boy they could not wrap their heads around that phenomenon, so I had is row of students come up to me and make me count to twenty with them. A bit frustrating.

Wednesday I went out with Phil to the CoffeShop for a farewell supper, he's on his way to Yaounde to pick up his wife who is finally arriving. Wow he is excited. When we got back, he asked me to share a piece of cake that Val had made and shared with him. Well I eagerly joined in and as it was still warm found myself taking great delight in it. Then I headed home. I saw a shadow on my door handle and began grin. Val had decided to send me a portion to, and since I was not home she put it on my door. I hurried my step up the hill and began to sense something was wrong. There was a smell in the air. I slowed and began to shake. There is no mistaking the fact that the smell coming from the bag was not squash and peanut pie, it was the rank smell of fresh, very fresh, caca. How I stumbled back in shock at this. Half my mind reeled thinking it was hugely offensive and a bitter attack against my person while a small portion wondered if it was just an innocent prank. I cut the bag from the door and threw it aside before sprinting down to Phil and we set out to see if anyone had seen anything, well none had. I then returned home and wallowed in self pity.

Today started with a great potential, Alfred and I headed out to the bush to drink some Rafia wine. This is tapped directly from the Rafia bush and can be quite good when it is fresh since it is sweet and not to strong. It strenghtens through e day. Unfortunately, by the time we arrived at this adorable camp in the bush, there were a dozen or so there already who were quite drunk and loud, thus I was uncomfortable from the start but all the more do because there were several there with a type of personality I dislike a great deal, namely those who say we have just met and we are friend and brother. I automatically reel away from these people, but it is hard to reel away from drunk men bigger than me. Luckily, after Alfred and I left, we took a wonderful ramble through the countryside and I calmed a bit and then ended the morning with some shah, peanut butter, and large helpings of corn fou fou djambe djambe (my favorite food). And now to conclude this rather wretched week, I will tell you that raffia wine leaves me with horrid flatuance.

From the sartorial to the gustatory

The excitement began to build with the arrival of Ann from Yaounde on Wednesday. Shortly thereafter others began to roll onto the compound. The regular cadre went to the Coffee Shop that night with Ann, an exception to our normal Friday excursion, and when Phil began muttering with the proprietress of the restaurant about cooking of ham and delivery of pie, I knew that the Thanksgiving would be something excellent. Then I got an email from my ma about the high quality of expat thanksgivings she'd experienced and I got a Package in the mail from Dad that contained an Advent Calendar. Yeserii, a calendar for Advent complete with a sticker from World Market and the hint of chocolate. It arrived in a bubble package and the cardboard corners of the calendar are beaten in while the entire top section is ripped in an intriguing way. And now the calendar sits upon the top of my bookshelf with the letters from my mother marching their way down to the sides. It is quite the familial monument. Also that night, I opened another of my mothers ever prescient letters and it contained four comics. Thus the four of us at the table were all able to laugh at the same time but at different things. It made for a comfortably discomfiting experience.

Thursday, the day of Thanksgiving. I announced to my classes that it was a great holiday in the states but they did not really care until I mentioned eating lots of food. That perked them right up and I suddenly had to speak over their shouts of promises to come that night to "chez vous" where they wanted me to feed them. But their shouts arose also from the fact that I have finally gotten around to buying myself a couple of traditional African BuBu-s, which are the pajama like outfits you might see people wearing. This particular one is made up of a pair of drawstring pants that taper toward the ankles and a loose flowing top that hangs down just above my knees. The other hangs to my ankles. I will include a picture once I get my computer back. The pattern, for all these outfits are hugely bepatterned, is the Teacher'suniform. Anyone who is a teacher is allow to purchase one. though I am sure you could buy one anyway since no one asked for any proof of my being an educator. This particular one is full of fun slogans about teachers are responsible! and other platitudes. It is also bilingual since the education system is really trying to be so itself. As some famous people have never said, change the clothes, change the minds. Actually I bet many have said this given sumptuary laws and sartorial uniformity in work and play sectors.

I bought everything with the help of Alfred, one of the English teachers with whom I drink Shah. First we bought the materials and then scrunched up aboard a moto and whisked to a tailor who had a poster on his wall of various designed. In between his shaking my hand, and ordering the boy in the hole in the wall tailorshop around, I managed to point out some designs that I liked. He quickly noted them and then took a few abrupt measures of my legs and shoulders and arms. But not my head or neck, the result of which my ears mutter to my shoulders that they we're never to be do intimately acquainted whenever I try to put on my bubu. 

Alfred also took me to buy a traditional village cap from his area which chiefs wear, so I was really all dolled up for class. When first I came onto campus many students who were not even mine began to point out that the American was not coming in pants and a shirt today, but when I went into class what roars of applause greeted me and shouts of handsome, gorgeous, great, and terrific rained down. They've really studied their adjectives, huh. I then took all their adjectives and had them change them to adverbs because I never pass up a teaching opportunity. They're pretty good sports about it. Afterward Alfred and I served the tea for Thursday faculty reception and I got a similar barrage of vocab, though far more subdued and I itched to do the same grammar exercise. But I did not instead I demurely poured the tea and served the beignets and made sure everyone got a handful of groundnuts. While I think the outfit is neat, I certainly would nerve apply gorgeous to it, although the second one I bought certainly could be described as such. The most enthused group was my second class. They're the same who last week ushered me in with great ceremony. Well when I came in they, and they must have plotted this since they had seen me in the morning, scrapped their benches back and shouted and formed a circle around me to fan me with their books and come up to touch my outfit and hat. It was very strange and I just stood their for a while in confusion and befuddlement.

But now we are nearing Thanksgiving. Ahhh how the lady had decorated our restaurant-for indeed we had thanksgiving at the coffee shop-she had bought a large bright orange tablecloth with matching napkins. Heavier than usual silverware was laid out and everyone had two choices of glass. And who was everyone? There were three Swiss who had come with the Browns, an American couple of whom the husband is a surgeon, the Fredericks, representing Canada, Mia, Phil, myself, and Bob and Nesmin from the bible translation society, Ann. The first course, hors d'oeuvres in the form of platter after platter of ham and pickles and olives, bread, and

CHEDDAR CHEESE 

both white and orange that Ann had brought up. What a gustatory surprise, what pure awesomeness. And then their was a prayer, first a spoken one, but then I made everyone sing the Johnny Appleseed prayer and everyone knew it except the Swiss, who along with everyone else was a bit nonplussed by the sudden outbreak. It was pretty spectacular, so thanks Lutheran Outdoors for making sure we all knew the words. 

The cheese was amazing and I wrapped olives in it, ham in it, pickles in it, cheese in cheese, cheese on bread. Oh glory oh glory. As you might be able to tell, I don't get much cheese out here.

The second course was the main course. Out came four rotisserie chickens, mashed potatoes, gravy-which Phil had made because they don't really have that here-, boiled rosemary potatoes, astonishingly tasty stuffing, and yet another surprise, Cranberry Sauce that the Browns had carted from the states. 

And then dessert. No pumpkins out here, you know, but there are dozens of varieties of other squash and Val had whipped into shape four or five of these majesties and they were better and better than I remember pumpkin being. Of course I haven't had pie in years and certainly not pumpkin when it was offered, so my tongue may have forgotten. But there was also whipped cream. So I had lots of that and borrowed a small bite of Mia's apple cobbler so that I could put cheese on yet another food item. I succeeded in having cheese with everything. Victory I say, victory. Then I had to have Phil take me home because I felt mightily ill, but I had outeaten everyone else. Greedy one that I am, I was probably a bit green by the end. As we left, the mistress of the restaurant handed us gift bags, T-shirts with the slogan of the restaurant. Also, I did not sleep very well since I could barely move once I had lain down and the amount of tryptophan that should have been coursing through me failed to help. but I was up the next morning and grinning at Phil as he came by on his six thirty walk. And in classic American style, we had leftovers the next night along with some corn Phil had found and then watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, which was rather entertaining and the second part on the voyage of the Mayflower was very educational. And now I go to grade the exam I gave yesterday that had all my students groaning in academic pain like I was groaning in physical pain.

A dance never danced

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.

Bared Palms

Wondering what you can do to me more like me? Well one way is to drink like me. The following is a recipe for successfully countering the drying effects of la saison seche that has just begun by caramelizing the lawns and causing the weeds to bolt in a last desperate push. The first thing you do is go down the street to any of the peanut vendors who hawk their wares. I like to buy my peanuts from the little fellow who has a stand just in front of the man who has a suite store-the store is a large tree with suits hanging from it. Make sure to buy the grilled kind. Raw peanuts are good to eat while on a walk, but for this to work in the best way possible, buy les arachids grillees. Now continue on the walk with me. Let us turn down the main boulevard past the taxi stand and bus station where if we were so inclined we could jump on the shuttle bus for Meganga or any number of other thrilling destinations or we can buy some oranges from the boys who shave them artfully with their knives and stare knives into the backs of their competitition. Ahh, the walk continues. Uh-oh, don't me shocked but it turns out that today a swarm of bees has decided to take over the area in front of one of the butcher shops. Perhaps they grew out of a bull's stomach? Quickly now, cut across the street and continue on the way. Here is a likely looking boulangerie, lets go inside. Ahh, le pain au chocolate. Yes, I do think I will have one of those. What else, why a coca-cola if you could be so kind. Now you will have to get a Coke Classique out in the States because the coke here only uses sugar for a sweetener, and I think this is crucial. Alright we continue down the streets ovverstepping the carcasses of two small dogs who must have been the rungs of a litter and deciding not to step in another fresh smelling mess that might be there on account of the horse I see in the distance. And then we reach the destination, after passing the row of book sellers who sit on the street and insist, I like to imagine, that their books are the best because they are covered in dirt filth and grime and are mightilly and permanently redolent of exhaust. Into the small magasin and past rows of canned food, tinned milk, and kilo-packaged rice to the alcohol. Now comes the most important part. Choose the highest end of the cheapest red wine. It will be labeled table wine and probably come in five-liter plastic bottles or one liter cardboard boxes. Anything is a bottle is too good for what follows. Being all worn out now, we'll take a moto back to the compound. Make siiiiiit siiiiiit noise and a moto will swing by for you, usually a wild eyed man with goggles, a huge winter coat, and a colored and numbered vest. The ones with toothpicks, I have found and judged arbitrarily, to be the best. Simply say your destination and zip zip zoom you will be quizzing through town. Now wait a little while until the sun is just brutal and then unscrew the cap to the five liters of table wine to let it air. Unscrew the cap of the coke and fill half the glass. Then fill the rest with the wine. Place this in the freezer for a good ten minutes. After you take it out, put in about seven peanuts. Sometimes the peanuts float. It is best when they do, though I don't know why some do and some don't. Take a refreshing drink, and be sure to catch a peanut in it. You now have palatable wine, for this stuff otherwise makes your enamel decide that it has lived with your teeth long enough and files for divorce, and a high protein snack. Good for your heart, good for your muscles.

Not just the heat drives a man to drink, though, there are other events in the course of the day. All week there were hints to me about discipline. Whether jokes about beatings, or advice about making a student buy a notebook and fill it with the repeated sentence of I'm sorry I will behave, and to hand the the entirely filled book in two days or receive a one week suspension. These usually came with the carried idea that my students have little respect for me. Well since I don't really care if they respect me, after all in a class of thirty as long as the eight who are really working continue to enjoy English as much as they do, and there are more joining them every week, I am content. But it turns out that my not controlling class meant that the other teachers saw it reflected poorly on them. And so we come to Thursday. I had an awesome lesson prepared using their book, usually an activity that gets pretty good attention. But suddenly one of my students was up and wandering around I asked him to sit down and he said that someone had stolen his pen. I pointed out that he had three in his pocket and that he could look for it during the break. He threw one, and I confiscated them all. Ten minutes later I returned them and asked him not to throw anything. As soon as my back was turned he threw one again. I took him outside and asked him to stay there the whole period. A few minutes later my class hushed and tension filled the sir. I turned around from the board and saw someone at the door. Such incidents are normal, I often have visitors who need have some task or other and I went to the back. The man, who is the discipline master, asked if I was having some problems, I replied that I was but I had settled it, he replied that he needed some students to 'ranger'' I failed to understand this entirely since the way I know the word is that it means to clean up. I assumed that he punish the students by making them clean something somewhere and so I name those who had been causing the problems, three girls and four boys. He then called them to the front, and lectured the class on respect. It turns out that the students were so loud that day that they disturbed other classrooms. And then he did not take the students outside to clean, he instead brought out a whip. None of the students were surprised, but I was dumbfounded. He proceed to explain to me that sometimes the children must be beaten. And one by one they bared their palms to him for four swats, one on each hand. The boys and girls alike took it silently for the most part, some cringed and soon stiffened, but none tried to run or even complain. The last boy, the main instigator whom I had put outside, received ten lashes, on his hands and calves. It was horrifying, hauntingly so. And the whole time the class watched me, not with judgement, they don't seem to blame me, but those students no longer greet me outside of class. The main instigator, on Friday, was sitting somewhere new and participating eagerly. And me, I am still in shock. I have also arranged French lessons so that I will be able to understand why certain things are happening. I can convey anything I want, but aurally I still understand little.

Friday morning was a pleasant surprise, while all of America celebrated veterans day, Cameroon celebrated World Philosophy Day which began by one of the smartest boys I've met here give a talk about philosophy being the love of knowledge, but more than that the zealous pursuit of and then translated his speech into English and the said that many of the most influential philosophers were German (he is an empassioned learner of German and wants to go to university to be a German major) and then he translated hid speech into German. After which the students all applauded his learning. And then s drum began pulsing and a line of students gyrated and danced forward in a traditional dance. Suddenly one light-on-his-feet boy came leaping out dressed in a black tshirt with white paint on his face and a tail draping behind him and did a tremendously exciting and exquisitely graceful arabesque for us all. A good celebration

I take a test and dink some beer

Once upon a time when my synapses fired on school frequently and my palaver was familial and familiar, I would drink beer and drink the wisdom of my sister and whoever might descend the hill from UCLA on a Sunday night. This convivial experience guided me throughout my time in LA and was the hardest part of leaving for my year off. Little had I realized how much I missed it until an experience this week. Now all readers of my locativedisplacement should recall my great success as an internationally recognized expert on Blake and explicator of his fearful symmetry, well Oliver had set a mock exam for the students and asked if I might take a look at it. Of course, I was happy to do so. He gave it to me, and surprise upon surprise, it had three sets of questions. The expected on Blake, a section about Black African English writers, and a section on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. What fun! I sharpened my mind and unstoppered my Blue Bic pen and set to work writing. I had at first intended to simply write one or two things. But it has been three years since I last wrote answers to an exam on literature, and such were always a joy at Bard. The questions Oliver set were very broad and I found myself giving several answers to them all. About the Canterbury tales, of which they read the general prologue and Pardoner's Tale, I wrote in response to the first question, Chaucer uses the tales as a literary microscope to critique medieval Europe, is this true. Well of course and what a fun question to write about. First, the use of the word microscope in the question encouraged one to think about the tales as experiment, a very fertile space of imagining what it is that Chaucer might be experimenting with. Anyway, I wrote about the use of writing in English, the vicious attack on corrupted church, selling relics and indulgences, but my favorite point was that I argued about his critique of the three estate system: clergy, nobility and peasantry. I argued that the very first way he introduces this critique is that the pilgrims are all introduced in class order, that is from the knight down, but when it comes to the telling of tales, that is randomized. And we think it might go in class order because the knight tells the first tale, but the rest do not follow and some even interrupt others. Thus Chaucer creates a utopia of storytelling in which literary creation makes everyone equal. It is sort of an invention of the individual and a radically egalitarian move. Especially because it fights against the genre C fits into, namely that in Boccaccio's Decameron it is all upper class who gather. Secondly, I argued that the poem opens by saying when weather is nice after winter "then longen folk to goon on pilgrimages / to ferne halles couthe in sundry londes" well these men and women are all made equal by becoming pilgrims, by having longings,but most especially by being dependent on the weather.

Anyway, I proceeded through the rest of the questions with equal eagerness. But then I was done and I wanted to keep talking especially about Chaucer and so on Friday when I handed over the exam I told Oliver that he should buy me a beer since I'd done all of this work. He agreed and at a little before one we were settled in a dive bar tucked into a remote area of Ngaoundere under a bare lightbulb with our 'trente trois' before us and some spicy bush meat in a bowl porcupined with toothpicks and for over two hours lost ourselves in literary discussion. Oh thank you Oliver, I must cry to this website, for being so well read. So that was fun. He Aldo requested that I write here his greeting to you. He said that since he knows me, and like me he knows and likes all those connected to me.

There are some new arrival here to the camp that I should mention, the Fredricks First came to Cameroon in the early two thousands to be pastor of an English language church here in Ngaoundere, and they were here for four years. They have also served in South America. Coming from Canada, they are both retired but rather astonishingly active for their ages. Val, the missus, had a nasty fall this week and conked her head and cinked her neck something horrible. Phil was gone all week on a trip to the Central African Republic and so there was a great emptiness all week. But the real successes this week were in my classrooms.

It began on Monday with the introduction of new vocabulary, occupations, and some new verbs. Mostly these were associated with jobs, e.g. A pilot flies, a doctor practiced medicine, or helps, or heals. I thought we might have to work all week on the vocabulary and the students lamented the sight of the filled chalkboard. But lo and behold my strolling in on Tuesday but they knew all the vocab it was excellent and meant that I had to whip together a new lesson plan. So I introduced three specific verbs to lose, to look for, to find. And from that moment everything changed. Suddenly people were losing things left and right in the past tense. They were looking for the lost things in the present continuous, and they were eager to find them in the future. All the grammar came together too, especially the pronouns that they've been struggling with. After all. If one loses and finds one's car, he or she does not say "I lost my car." "I am looking for my car" "I hope that I will find my car under the tree or next to the house" no, one uses "it" in the latter sentences, finally they realized that a car is ungendered. Ha. I decided to reward my fifth levels and brought in my iPad the next day. Now I have had a long term plan for trying to each a song, and looking forward to the execution of my plan I had several weeks back asked the students what songs they liked. A resounding chorus of "o na na what's my name" crashed through my ear canals. And mixed with it was a tribal chant of the name Rihanna. I thought perhaps I had been transported to a bacchanalia of some sort and hope that I had not stumbled among some set of mysteries, which upon my viewing I would be rendered limbless. Well, I went back and downloaded the song and also looked up the lyrics. I then took the lyrics and edited the choruses out and pasted them into a document. I wanted to save paper and so made two columns. But the lyrics, despite my editing, still exceeded one page. Then I remembered that we use A4 paper here, a paper that is a bit longer than what we consider normal. With the slight tweak, I had everything as I wanted it. I then proceeded to remove every mention of a personal pronoun or a possessive adjective and put in a blank underline. The song, incidentally, as I have discovered with all written texts, has a huge number of pronouns. You should try this task some time. Take s common song and delete the pronouns. It takes a long time. Then try to figure out what it says. If you are not familiar with the song beforehand it is rather impossible but can make for delightful ambiguities. When I printed these sheets, by the way, I used my flash drive and that is how it was infected. Thus when I put it back into my computer later I diseased it, I am still waiting on its return and have just learned the hard drive is destroyed so I will buy a new one of those. Armed with the lyric sheets, I went into class on Wednesday and demanded absolute silence. Then I pushed the play button. Alas, it was so quiet. The song which played so loudly in my chateau was a mere murmur in the vastness of the classroom. Rats I muttered. But no. As soon as my learners (that is what I a actually supposed to call them) figured out the song and realized I could make it no louder they huddled together and listened in silence, except for the chorus which they shouted forth. And after playing it, they asked for it again but instead I presented them with the sheets. At first they had no idea what I gave them and I realized that it was because they have no idea what happens in the song and do not hear words when they listen to it. But once I had them read aloud, they caught on that the song had actual words, and that they now had the words. Of course this created a further problem because I wanted them to write on the sheets of paper at which point they wanted a second copy in case they made a mistake. I was firm. We learn through mistakes and if you want an unmarred sheet you'd better listen closely. We then proceeded through a line by line listening of what is a very tedious song for me but which the students absolutely adored. Each time we came to a pronoun, I would stop and ask what they heard. Sometimes the pronoun was really clear but others, like elided "you" they really struggled with. But what was most beneficial is that there is a male singer in the first part and thus there are both he and she pronouns used. I made the students then tell me who the pronoun was. They quickly realized that when drake was singing about a she, that she was not Drake because Drake was the I. And from there we proceeded. I also demanded they tell me the grammar, thus they had to know if the pronoun was a direct object or a subject, or if the word was a possessive adjective. Having to do this with every single pronoun really iterated two points: word order in sentences, the importance of knowing when "you" is the subject or the direct object. Finally for each pronoun I made them switch the gender and give me the plural equivalent. The exercise took scads of time but the focus was really tremendous as well. It also gave me a chance to show the importance of understanding proper English and pronunciation so that we could figure out the strange word "wanna" and that it means "want to" I did this for all the words that are not quite English as well as supplying missing verbs of which there are several in Rihanna's love song pop genre. In both my classes we ran out of time and my students begged for class to continue. I just shrugged and said it was a one day exercise. The next day, Thursday, I went in and they all begged for music. I said no and we did a jumbled sentence exercise. I had planned the whole period for it as that is how long it has taken in the past. (this is where I write several sentences on the board and make the students reconstruct the order). Well with their mastery of pronouns, the students put it all together in half the time I thought they would. And so out came the iPad, whose red cover now makes them ever so eager, and we finished up working about twice as fast as the day before. I then played the whole song and did not even have to tell them to look at the sheets, they did so automatically, eager to know what Rihanna's song looked like. We still had some time so I asked if anyone wanted to sing. I had one volunteer and she did a fine job, and then I asked if anyone wanted to dance, suddenly the class energized even further and all started screaming at Nana. I gestured him to the front, and pushed play. I had, I should say at this point, made a discovery that morning. If I put a book behind the speaker, the song is much much louder. This is a lesson in acoustics. See the students are not the only learners in the classroom. Anyway, he proceeded through a just extraordinary break dance. For about a minute he gyrated and torqued and flipped and moved. At one point he moonwalked over to me and took my glasses from my face and mocked a pantomime of my teaching to the raucous delight of myself and his peers, when he was done, there was no shortage of volunteers. All of whom danced a different dance. This is crucial and I want to end on this point. In every other activity, young people, and adults to a certain extent, try to conform and look to see how others are acting and answering people doing so themselves. But in dance it is different. I don't know why, but the self expression and creativity was mind blowing. And I had untapped it. Thus in Friday, no only were the students attentive, but in doing the writing exercise (I have invented a week long activity of a detective story and they did part one, writing questions for the detective to use during the interrogation of the suspects, all of whom are identified by occupation) they continued to show creativity. The week provides a microcosm for the change in mentality. On Monday after the vocab lesson I had them ask each other questions by pretending to be one of the new occupations. In my example, I said "I like to go really fast, I am not afraid of high places, I like to be in the sky, I like to have a lot of control. What am I." then I turned over the example and every single student imagined him or herself as a student. But on Friday they were asking any number of interesting questions that related in specific ways to the specific suspect.

I was going to end there, but I want to mention my fourth levels who, even though I did not give them a song, nevertheless showed a huge leap forward as well. On Friday I had them write the story of losing something and asking others to look for it and then find it. I had them work in larger groups, four to six, and this might have contributed to the success. I was able to work with many people on one text that they had created and so we got through a lot of cruxes in the first part of class. The second I let some perform. And the group of my rowdiest put together a very funny drama about losing a pen, looking for it, thinking one person had it who in turn thought another had it. This went on with more or less comprehensible English, until it turned out that someone in the corner actually had it. Well all the people previous to this, who had joined in the search after being questioned, declared this man a thief and basically put together an impromptu tribunal. It was great.

The Legacy of a Godmother

Allow me to commence this present post with an apology for what shall most probably be the most egregious example of my inability to formate and spell check. For you see, I shall be doing all from my iPad. This is not, let me state lest mine action be misconstrued, an attempt at honoring the late Steve Jobs, but rather it is out of necessity. My computer, you see, has perished from an epidemic that razed all the computers of Cameroon. It is likely that I shall salvage it. Indeed, I have handed my computer over to a graduate of Augustans college, and is great Viking merely nodded when he saw the problem and asked to see my flash drive. How, I expressed in wonderment, did he know I had such. He said simply that every computer in Cameroon feasts upon the host that is the USB drive. And. So, when once upon a time I carried my exam to school in my flash drive I took from that experience a way for my computer to become most ill. From here on, I shall email myself files, if indeed there is a from here on. I shall wait to make any indicative statements till the computer be settled upon my desk once more.

Some might express surprise that I have a computer and an iPad along. Is such not technological overkill? I want to emphasize that the iPad is far from a word processor and for the length of my communiques, much less the expose on Blake from a few weeks back or the intense brainstorms toward a dissertation that I write, I require the rapidity that a keyboard encourages. Further, the iPad rejects several online features like flash, which I use on some sites from which I steal text book materials and from which I must acces ceretsin sites within which I download PDFs.

Now this has been quite a week, and if my computer had not broken you would know none of the reasons why for I had a much different experience planned for ye readers of integrity. But instead I present you the wonder of the last weeks of the last time I shall experience October whilst in my twenty-fifth year.

My mother, the pastor Erika, was once a pastor of a paradise called Roseni. Here a small child frolicked through cornfields, stole combine rides from noble Norwegian farmers named Don, lost himself in a system of culverts and hunted crawdads. And when barbed wire cut his thigh, a bandaged poultice from torn maple leaves served to staunch the blood. Why, you may ask, to I delve into the depths of such memory? After all, I did not begin this series of blogs with a comment on the state of my candle before falling asleep (apologies for the recondite Proust reference). It is because I have had recourse to a lesson delivered to me in those early days of misted memory. One of my marvelous godmothers is a beautiful woman named Janette, and among her many skills is the ability to squarsh with her foot bared to the elements any cricket that might come her way. I have exaggerated memories of her tripping the light fantastic through our garage and across thousands of insect carapaces, though in reality I am sure I only saw her perform this feat once.

Well, here in Cameroon, in preparation for the dry season, I was allowed a rare glimpse into a phenomenon of crickets. Sunday night out of nowhere one leapt into my chateau. But these are not our darling black small crickets that an intrepid children's literary journal taked for its name. No, these are two inch flying beasts and they coated the floor within moments. They search water, you see, and every morning the ground is littered with the desiccated corpses of those who failed in their quest. Now that these bugs would come was a closely guarded secret from Phil and one that caused much surprise, I will admit. However, I was well prepared for I had fortified myself with the legacy of my godmother and once an hour I sally forth like George of the red cross across the battlefield of my concrete floor and percuss the night with the splintering of their backs and in the morning sweep them out the front door where they remain about an hour before they are born away to the happy mastication of ants.

That made me seem rather bloodthirsty, didn't it. But you must understand that these crickets interrupt my evening readings of Shakespeare, the complete works of whom I am currently completing.

On Saturday I also had a nice first for the year, I got a haircut. My last was in Peru last christmas while dancing south from the beacher's hedonism of Huanchachou. I decided to do so in the midst of severe abdominal cramping. (readers less inclined toward knowing my digestive awesomeness might want to skip a few paragraphs). I had been since thursday rather constipated. I, and I have since learned better, thought that the best way to solve this problem was to eat some fruits to get things working again. Consequently I bought about 1,000 francs worth of bananas. Now this provided me with about sixteen bananas and I ate them over two days. It turns out that bananas have a rather opposite effect from the laxative and I found myself greatly discomfited. I went to a pharmacy and purchased some laxatives, though I don't think they really worked, I took up daily Constitutionals of an hour and ate a raw potato and carrot every day. Still nothing happened. Friday, going out for our evening meal at he coffee shop, I ordered Ndole, a dish rather similar to the horta of Greece, and a few hours later found myself splendidly emptied. But, let me warn any yet again, bananas are not a purgative.

Ahh, but I was talking about a haircut before I turned from the hirsute to the scatologic. It was easy enough as there are little huts every few hundred yards with young men eager to couper les cheveux. All they seem to need is a mirror, an electric razor, and a chair. After all, most men here basically shave their heads and keep their scalps as close to the air as possible. And so into one of these wind unresistant huts and got a haircut for only five hundred francs (a bit over a dollar). He did it all with an electric razor too. I shall try and post a picture next week.

I thought that some would notice, but the entirety of Ngaoundere seemed to stand up and renew their subscriptions to GQ. The lady from whom I purhcase tomatoes said I was now tres beau. From the avocado lady I heard that I was well improved. From Phil I was more distinguished, but the greatest joy came from my students. In the three classes I went into that Monday I received three standing ovations, three iterated shouts of excellent, bien, finalement, hoots and hollers, and from one class a much appreciated "bonjour Jonas brother". it was a bit over the top, and I did not have enough on the top to protect myself!

Of course to regain some status as an eccentric, I began planning and th perfect moment arose Thursday morn when I spotted a small flower in a cranny wall (reference to Tennyson). I plucked it and placed it behind my ear, well, ne'er have my students been so distracted and upset my their feminized teacher. They could not sit still till I removed it, and once I did so I leaped into recitations of Romantic poetry to try and bash poetically through this stigma of difference that is so horrifying to all. It was crushingly disappointing.

Friday, are your tired eyes releived they near the end?

out of nowhere this week we were informed by the Cameroonian secretary of pedagogical bilingualism that the English club would report to the radio station 102.5 for a program that would be recorded and then aired on saturday afternoon. The english club gathered three timed in preparation and put together a truly admirable program involving two discussions of cholera, a thoughtful essay on bilingualism, and several poetic readings. Interspersed were songs sung en masse. We came to the station and all was going well. Until, that is, Madame secretary informed me that though the whole program would be in English, she would ask me my questions in French and expect answers similarly. Well, thank goodness for the warning, at last I managed to convince her to let me know the questions before hand so that I might deploy my limited vocabulary in the best way possible. Turns out one of those questions was how I was using the "ten minute bilingual game" in my class. Ha, I have nothing but contempt for the bilingual game and no one has yet to use it. But we were trapped in this radio station, forced to submit to the indomitable will of an educational government that turns out drones and elects the same man despite the fact that the rest of the world moves forward. I was bound and enchained myself to the yoke if mendacity that we all must endure and like yet another ox I pulled forward propaganda.

Oui, Madame, j'ai trouver beaucoup les choses interessants avec cet program. Il y a plusiuers les elevees qui aiment le jeu. Le plus reussi activite, que j'ai trouver, etait un discussion philosophique sur le role du traduire culturel, literaire, et personnel.

Pardon the spelling, but this program insists on auto correcting and does so even when forbid it. But for the most part, especially errors of grammar, I can be blamed.

Anyway, I spoke for about four minute. Some of what I said was vraiment, namely the fact that my students think it is funny when try to speak French for more than merely a quick phrase and also that they applaud me when I create a phrase well.

Upon my return from the station and after shopping, I returned to school to look for my notebook that I seem to have misplaced. Well it was not in my last 4e class, but one student was in the area I wished him a nice weekend and told him to practice the passive voice. He responded, roughly, "please, sir, I don't understand the passive". What a rally cry for a teacher. With a flourish I dashed into the nearest classroom sniffing out a blackboard and calling for chalk. Slinging off my backpack of groceries with one hand I swung my hand to the outsert he'd piece of chalk with the other and Woochie and I proceeded to have a roaring grammar lesson for about twenty minutes. At the end, when he had such a grasp on the passive voice that he was no longer eating beans but the beans were eaten by him, I pushed the tension from my shoulders and turned around to a small crowd of about seven others who had gathered for the lessons, three of whom were taking notes, and none of whom were my students.