Cameroon likes weeks of celebrations, and I guess yoking them together is the preferred calendrical control. Thus we go from the National Week of Bilingualism to the National Week of Youth but the latter begins on Monday while the former ended on Friday. The week proceeded in three stages, the third of which had to do with ColPro but not bilingualism.
Wednesday
The day of competitions between the various colleges and lycées of Ngaoundere, of which there are over fifteen. I had no idea, and each has its own special uniform, ranging from the scotch-plaid of Amity International, to the yellow of Classique, to the gray with flowing white veils of Islamic, to the sweater vests of a school I never quite caught to our own sky blue with Boy-scout patch on the breast pocket heraldring (I.e. In the shape of a medieval heraldry) allegiance.
The day began with a surprise, the administration had met and decided to give each student five hundred francs for the day. Now the words sit easily on the page, but the battles that took place to make it happen would scar the screen of my iPad and burn the eyed of any readers out there. As it was, we were the only school to bring all our students by moto and not some sort of rented vehicle. This is, as a sideline, one of the most enormous differences between America, at least Yankton, and Cameroon. I never attended a school activity and did not have my transport guaranteed. In fact I had to fight to attend the event in any way other than by the school provided transport. But here someone must know someone who knows yet another to get a vehicle. The school does not even have possession over a car, much less a bus. And what is more when they tried to borrow from the ELCA bureau they learned that certain vehicles lacked the papers to be driven. But we arrived at the competitions and took our places. We were only abou an hour and a half late which meant we were an hour and ten minutes early to the actual start. And why did we wait? For the same reason as at the military camp many years ago. These official events like to have public figures, who are less than thrilled to be there, launch the ceremony, and the new regional director of bilingualism took his sweet time in getting there, stood up, sat down, hear a rendition of the national anthem (marvelously performed, I might add, in a really stimulating and understandable manner. The words and rhythm of the anthem are impossibly hard and most people sing it without understanding it). And the director stood up and delivered an utterly unpracticed speech, some lackey must have written it, and struggled through the English making the obvious mistakes of someone uncomfortable to be reciting (much less speaking) a foreign language. And then the speech switched to French and that two was painful. And this man is director of bilingualism? Ahhh, okay we accept such things as cameroonian, I suppose. Hut then he left and the truly bilingual directors of Ngaoundere Launched the program. We began with:
Poems. The style here is not that of oral interp in SD, but of a cross between epilepsy and rap with some limb-throwing gestures. At least that is what the popular ones do. The dullest were a series of acrostics. And the other style is a crisply spoken English with lots of military metaphors connected with styles of education. The most bizarre a man came out and introduced himself as Cameroon. A woman came out and said she was English. Another woman came out and said she was French. The boy proceeded to say "I am a polygamist. I am married to both. I sleep with English when I want to do business and go oversees. I sleep with French when I want to travel in Cameroon and conduct civic affairs).
Songs: everyone was supposed to have three minutes, but this they told us only upon arrival (organization is something Cameroon education waits for) and so some schools entered singing, sang three songs, and left, here too there are differences. Some schools featured a dynamic singer with a backup, other schools made signs that they would throw up to intitiate chanting. Also, I heard We Are the World five times and in three of them the singers were crying even as the impresario was pushing them off the stage. It is pretty cool, though, because everyone knows it and would join in.
Newscast. Self explanatory, and very hard to understand as the mics failed here. Also, for a country where all the kids I've met want to be journalists (that is television newscasters) there is a major lack of creativity and practiced voice presence.
Skit. These varied from classroom scenarios where a student refused to go to English class and thus finds her future closed off to confrontations in a hospital about AIDS prevention.
Debate. I thought this was going to be really dynamic but it turns out not to be a debate between schools but rather a school presented a practiced discussion. It was pretty boring, but there was a funny announcement before it began that said this was an academic exercise and we were not to think that the opinions revealed belonged to the students, the teachers, or the institution.
Quiz, this was very interesting. Questions were asked in both French and english and varied from grammatical issues to Cameroonian history and geography, to international sports. I did not do very well past the grammar questions.
Traditional dance. And this is where the hips stopped lying. You know the reference? A song sung by Shakira (or a song that Shakira sang) a while back, perhaps in 2006, no? Back when she called out her hips don't lie and she danced for the world cup in Germany. Well these student groups came gyrating out in groups from three to twenty. Boys were bare-chested and heavily muscled and girls wore whirling colors and often skirts of long grasses. And for the most part they had slashed of white paint across their bodied in different patterns according to where they came from. But this was no hula, lest you get the wrong idea, for the drums best impossibly fast and the bodies dashed against nature's imprisoning bodies. Unlike dervishes, these dancers do not move in circles, rather it is a hypnotic pentadecahedron. Shakira might have moved her hips through four or five angles, but these kids gave proof to her mendacity when their moved through a cycle of truth equal to fifteen sharply defined angles of the hips. It is astonishing to watch as they pop lock and drop to the best of traditional drums.
The results gave ColPro
first prize in the essay contest (held on Jan 7th)
second In the poem
Third in the dance
Friday
I found myself accompanying five students to Independence Square for an event before the governor and mistress of education. There was no money, so I paid the student transport. We arrived on time at eleven. We learned at eleven forty that the event had been postponed until two, so I rushed back and taught a class the manner of making comparatives and superlatives with less, least; more, most and then returned to the kids awaiting. Or rather, I awaited them. We were soon together, but I had no ides what to do having been left to fend for myself by the actual coordinators of the club. So I ended up failing to register us in time and so was scolded by someone. But it turned out okay. The prizewinners accepted their loot. Twenty thousand francs, two backpacks filled with notebooks and pens, and six satchels filled with crayons, notebooks, and pencils. Very cool.
Saturday, and the reason I did not post yesterday
The faculty had an obligatory spiritual retreat that was weird because the faculty has not been paid and so are upset at the administration but everyone had to pretend to get along. It bugs me a lot, but everyone seems quite good at it. We were supposed to leave at seven and actually managed to leave at seven forty, so that was pretty good. When we arrived Alfred and I split off because he has some folks from his village there. We were at Wacwa (where I was last week for the student picnic) and when we got to their house they gave us some corn foufou djamba djamba. Excellent. And by the time we returned people were ready to get down. We were in a small airless chapel, which did not really matter at eight thirty, but by three was filled with flies and distress. The program was simple, two two-hour talks by church officials, a pastor and the bishop. The former spoke of dynamic faith and delivered a series of platitudes. The most distressing thing here is that one of the teachers asked the difference between Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr. Then, because we were behind schedule, the coffee pause was canceled so we kept sitting there. The bishop then spoke, his piece on "être use eglise ensemble" seemed a smooth rehash of what he has spoken of before, most angled to defend himself from detractors. Nothing really addressed teaching, though of the first speaker I asked a question about translation (because he was talking about Luther) an the role of translating the world for students in a way that does not bring about blind obedience. This, by the way, was the overarching theme of his speech and continued a bit in the bishops and underneath it all was the demand that they want obedience to themselves. It was rather a pity when I thought spiritual retreat would mean thinking about pedagogy in a church school, but it was instead honoring figures of power. For lunch Alfred, Oliver, and I went and visited another friend of theirs on the camp, so that was refreshing, and when we returned we broke into small groups. At the end, during discussion, I stood up and scolded everyone for talking about being "ensemble" when certain teachers were noticeably absent, our fellow English teacher Rev. Besson who is sick something horrible, but the administration told no one, and I said that if togetherness is desired, than it needs to be a circular share of knowledge and not pyramidal tyranny. Then I clinched it by saying "the faith of an institution is in the people, not the building" and then there was a lot of fuss because no one else had known Besson was sick, and so we ended. We ended at 4:36 a full hour before reported. This is the first thing I have attended in Africa that ended early. So yeah for that.
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