Wherein I post a list

I am home and therefore this blog has come to an end. To celebrate the finality, I here present a list of things to help the next teacher: To Teach at College Protestant This list is not exhaustive. It is limited to my experience and personality and derives mostly from my errors and missed opportunities in the classes of 5e and 4e 1) Bring dress shoes and semi-nice clothes. A suit jacket or two, a nice skirt, some dress shirts and ties (wild ties are excellent). The teachers, as a whole, dress very nicely and especially the shoes are very shiny. You may very well want to leave everything behind as well, as you will want room for the beautiful African clothes available. 2) Start buying them as soon as possible as the students love it and will wildly salute you and the neighborhood of Norwegian will start treating you differently and giving you good prices. Ask a teacher to help barter for the fabric and teach you how and then find a good tailor and stick to it. 3) LEARN the names of your students as fast as you can. One method I discovered was to have a question of the day and ask it to everyone. The next day have another question, by Friday you will have five questions and be on the way to learning all the names and the students will be answering well. Also, it is important to teach a variety of responses. These students are used to rote answers: try to get them out of the rut of “How are you?” “Fine thank you, and you?” Teach them it is okay to be awesome, super duper, sad, disappointed, etc. 4) The first week is downtime; use it to gauge what the students know / remember. Drill verb forms (esp. irregular verbs and the third person singular present), numbers (cardinal and ordinal and pronunciation of 14 and 40 etc, 15 and 50, etc). Subject pronouns (esp the fact that in English a table is not a she unless you are being precious) and object pronouns (no helpful parenthesis here) and question words. Always come back to these basics and the days of the week and months. 5) Figure out which students are strong and eager and try not to call on them first. 6) Let students write on the board. Start with the date every morning and then expand to various homework exercises. The correct with a different colored piece of chalk. After a week or two let the students try the corrections and correct them. Students love to write on the board. 7) If you teach at 7:30 in the morning on Monday or Friday you will lose a chunk of your class because of morning assembly. Plan accordingly. 8) Students lie. If they tell you there is no class, there is. Ask another teacher, don’t just go home. I did, there was school. Ooops. 9) Try to learn the names of the teachers. This is a bit harder, but especially learn the names of the teachers who have class before you and whom you will see coming out of the door. This is helpful when you need to yell at them for eating up your class time. Enjoy sitting with them “sous les arbres” and hearing the gossip. Most like to speak a bit of easy English, encourage accordingly. 10) Students hoard chalk like it is gold bullion. If you have your own small hoard of white and colored then you can always start class on time. The student who is responsible for chalk will often lie and say that there is none in order to be excused to go out and search for it and waste class time 11) Students are great at finding ways to waste precious minutes. Cut them off at the turn. 12) There is faculty coffee Tuesdays and Thuursdays from 10:10 to 10:40 and it costs a thousand francs a month. 13) Students like to sing and learn songs (especially at Christmas and the music (noise?) of Rihanna. Bring something that can play music without electricity as there are no plug ins in the classroom. 14) For holidays and your birthday you can bring treats. My bringing them was the first time anyone had done such a thing. Small biscuits can be found rather cheaply and are very popular. Share with the faculty as well. 15) Celebrate American holidays with them and explain. We had a wonderful Valentine’s day tearing out hearts and writing “Roses are red…” 16) *****BRING STICKERS***** to reward and encourage student work. I cannot emphasize enough how life changed once my mother sent some to me and I began to use them. In April. 17) GRADING. I never figured out a great way of evaluating daily work and making it count. So I ended up creating a system for bonus points on exams. 18) When a student says “give me bonus” don’t facetiously write +5 on the paper. She’ll bring it to you after the exam and demand the credit. 19) ***Exams are out of twenty**** anything below a ten is a failing mark. If a student deserves to pass try to figure out how to give over 9. Arbitrary “participation boosts” help justify such moves. 20) Exams are usually two parts. Reading comprehension and grammar with the occasional third part of a verb chart. 21) The year is trimesters divided into two. There are six terms. Thus six exams. The last terms is brutally short. Try to plan for this by having something of a super review. 22) Lay out the structure of the exam for the students and make sure they understand all the instructions beforehand. For example, if the instructions say “change the underlined word” make sure the student understands underline. 23) Never rely on common sense. 24) Recycle vocabulary on a regular basis and don’t just teach common / main nouns. For example, my students loved learning “space ship” during our week of means of transportation (which also meant they had a head start during space week) and “tuxedo” during clothes. And the sounds of animals during animals. Most common example: French cocks say coco-ri-co, but you know what English speaking cocks say, cock-a-doodle-do. 25) Great exercises are: 1) give the opposite adjective, comparative and superlative. 2) write sentences in various tenses and then change to the negative 26) Never, during exercises, (you can on the test) just let a student write one word responses. Demand a sentence and insist on capital letter and punctuation. 27) Teach parts of speech so you don’t waste time when asking “what is the subject (etc)? 28) Take it slow. Class works well with three parts: 1) review of day before 2) new lesson 3) students do new lesson for you a bit 29) 3 out of 4 Fridays I did dictation. I was doing it a lot more often in the beginning because it takes awhile to adjust to the accent. IF you let the students write the dictation sentences / words on the board they’ll pay more attention. 30) A great day of fun is to play competitive games. I divided the class up into two teams and gave dictation to one set of players at a time and had them write as quickly and as correctly as possible. The first three rounds went great. After that chaos erupted. They had never played such a game before and so were absolutely unused to the rush of adrenaline. I wish I had thought of it earlier as I only got to do one round and never had time for another day. But it should really work well. Only do it when you know all the names. 31) The main holidays are Christmas and Easter 32) Occasionally a teacher gets sick or dies; everyone then is expected to contribute money. Even if you never knew the person or it happened elsewhere. Contribute. 33) It is difficult to do a lot of worksheets and excess copying is discouraged and tedious. 34) Not all students will have books, but they all have access to them. Speaking of which, the books are frustrating, conservative, and generally not conducive to teaching. Nevertheless, students are proud of them. So try once or twice a week to do something with them like reading aloud and answering simple questions. If a student forgets the book, count him or her absent. 35) When reading aloud, “popcorning” works well: at any moment you can demand a different student read (helps learn names as well) or even let the students popcorn, provided they pick new students and read at least a sentence. 36) Discipline. I am probably the worst disciplinarian in the works. Read the penultimate chapter of D. H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow and you will have a good idea what you are facing. Beatings are regular as is asking students to “take your knees” in order to humiliate. Sending students out does not help, though it might relieve tensions. 37) Ethnic and tribal strufe and conflict run through all classes. I never understood it, really. If a fight happens, don’t try to separate it. These students are stronger than you and when mad will lash out without thought. 38) If you complain, the teachers will beat the students behind your back, so be very careful what you say. 39) Students hate taking notes and will refuse to do so if they lack a blue pen. Try to encourage them to use a red pen or a pencil just for one day. 40) Don’t write too fast on the board. Write a little something and then walk around a bit. I never really learned this. 41) About notes. Every three or so weeks, spot check the student cahiers for three specific lessons. If the student has them, give some bonus or a sticker or something to encourage active note taking. 42) There are 2 blue books. One is attendance: take it everyday and if a student is late demand a billet d’excuse, otherwise he or she is absent. The second blue book is to write down the lesson. Use this for exams. For instance: If you did comparative adjectives on January 16-18th and the exam is in April, you can tell the students to review those specific days. It also cuts down on complaints that the exam is unfair. 43) Make someone give you a tour of the school. Life in Ngaoundere 44) Ngaoundere is fun. Go out, drink, talk to everyone and get talked to. If you are paying more than 500 CFA for a 33 or 600 for a Castel, you need to find a new bar to be a regular at. Eat the food from vendors, barter in the market, get to be known as a regular at a few places and life will be good. 45) If you are living at the station, you will be deranged by fruit vendors, art sellers, begging kids, blind people, sick people, and liars of every shape and size. Say no to exotic fruits (so much cheaper in town) but the bananas are usually a fair price: 3 for 100 CFA. If you want art, wait till you’ve been around awhile and learned to haggle. For kids, have some pencils or pens around to get them gone. If they say they’re hungry, keep some small sachets of milk handy. Always remember you are not a restaurant. For everyone else, send them to the station chief (especially for monetary things). Also, kids will ask for empty bottles, go ahead and give them away. But not beer bottles. 46) Beer. If you buy beer to take home, you must pa a consigne. They will give you a receipt (ask for it) and return the money when you return the bottle. Or just keep the bottles and keep exchanging them for other beer to take home. 47) Get to know the guards’ names. It will make life very pleasant. 48) Wine: J.P. Chenet is drinkable as is the cab sauv / Merlot mix. Give it a try, but try to avoid the Baron (though if you are with Africans this is what you will drink…also you’ll have it at communion). To buy it, go to the grocers at Bethel (expensive) at Populaire (okay priced) or the two sellers down the street from Populaire. Or just walk down the street of Norwegian: there is one store there. 49) Take motos. Very fun. Learn the names of the carrefours and zip zip zoom. 50) Hire Justine to clean every few months. It’s not expensive and it will make for great happiness. And great embarrassment. 51) Take some soccer balls and pumps and after a long time give them away to the teams that play around and who will inevitably have destroyed whatever ball they had. 52) Bring some magazines like highlights, cricket, etc. for the English club. 53) Bring lots of bright picture calendars: great presents at Christmas.

Wherein I give a lecture

Several months ago there was a meeting here in Ngaoundere. At this meeting, Ann introduced me to Pastor Koulagna who is the doyen of the seminary in Meiganga. At the time we tossed around the possibility of a lecture. I began writing it, and indeed it was this lecture that I gave to the students at the seminary in Ndu while I was traveling with Alfred. Nothing came of the initial meeting, but I happened, while Ann was here before, to hitch a ride to see Meiganga, simply in order to see more of Cameroon. Well, she was quite disappointed to learn that nothing had come of those initial conversations and especially so since I had written the thing. For me, there is nothing so sad as a disappointed Ann, not a bedraggled cat, not wilting flowers, not an unattended funeral. In order to rectify the situation, I performed an action that is the equivalent of drying the cat, tending the flowers, and hiring funeral attendants-- I said I would come back. We arranged for Friday the 18th and I figured out the bus schedule. But then, yee-haw, Phil came up with a few things that needed to be sent out in that direction, so I would get the car. I was all set to drive, especially since the local driver had gone missing, when said driver suddenly showed up on thursday afternoon. So he ended up driving me and then continuing on to GB before fetching me in the afternoon. All in all everything was in order and sounded great. I arrived early in the day, around 9:05, roughly an hour and a half before my lecture. I went straight to the doyen to say I'd arrived and then ensconced myself in the library to fine tune my discussion and quickly write in some more details on the handout. That finished, I gave the handout to be photocopied and settled down with Ricoeur's "The Rule of Metaphor" which the library happened to have. At ten thirty I heard a great clanging of a bell, the resonance of which announced the fact the the lecture was imminent. Fluffing my bubu and straightening my cap, I walked down the stairs and into the chapel, which is where they decided to have the talk. Yikes, it was not the cost seminary style sit-around-a-table and talk like at Ndu, no, here was row after row of chairs all facing forward. I made them give me a chalkboard, though, and chalk and then picked up a small table from the back and carried it to the front. WHUMP! Then something went bump, how that bump made me jump. I had slammed the table into a cement support on the ceiling. No harm, but the sudden arresting event soon became the dominant characteristic of the day. I told them to settle in amongst themselves and talk while I wrote on the board. I wrote the map of the lecture, key names of antiquity and dates in the church history that I'd be referring to often and a handful of Greek words that are important to understand me. I was waiting a bit and then I asked where the teachers were, turns out they were not coming, so there was another big difference between Ndu, where the professors and students had participated equally. Well, though disconcerted, I quickly shrugged it off and began. Now it had never been clear what language this event was expected to be in, and my requests to know were met with things like "our students know some English" or "if something is not clear we can translate it." well the two teachers that actually could have helped in translation were also the ones who were not their. I began, having written an introduction in French and a detailed list of my four main theses. And then, because it was in front of me in English, I began to read. At first there was silence and attentive reading, but then the table smacked the ceiling and they roared in unison for me to stop. Now, if it had been a roar of disagreement with my ideas, that would be one thing, but this particular roar was one of stupefaction. I brainstormed with myself for a reasonable amount of micro seconds and then decided that I would translate on the spot. Now this is eleven pages of academia containing: literary background, historical background, history of church, discussion of philosophies of maintaing hegemony by maintaining the archive, and an intense literary exegesis with forays into theory of genre. So not only was I translating, I was simultaneously reformatting all my ideas into the thousand word vocabulary that I have easy mental access to. Also, because I was afraid of losing them at certain points, I gave the lecture in the following style at each shift in thought. "here is what we just discovered. Here is what we are going to discover." then I would show the steps for the next leap of knowledge and do the same review. I like to think they thought I was like a pedantic six-year old, but I'm sure they just thought I was crazy. But at the end, some had questions and had even followed me through the twists and turns and stalls on the speed bumps.  One of the interesting things in doing the translation was to discover a major gap in my knowledge. Mainly, I had no idea about how to speak of BCE and CE, it took a second, but eventually I found out that it was AVJ and APJ (before Jesus and after jesus). This discovery facilitated a great deal. After a question and answer session of about eight questions, I retired to the library to hold an informal office hour. I had two students come up to continue the discussion which was pleasant.  I then read for a while through a marvelous rain storm, went with one of the teachers to eat cold fish, uncooked potatoes and weak piment and then Dennis picked me up and we whisked home.  So differences with Ndu: at Meiganga, the students had much more Greek and were interested in the church history side of things, though they struggled to understand the fact that arguments seemed based on words that seem to be similes, so I had to detail the way that nuance is crucial not so much to explicate the word, but for the person arguing to maintain distance and power once the word is chosen. At Ndu, the students were interested in the ways the New Testament was canonized and my theory of quotation. Today is National Day, so I am off to the marching and then the English Club students are hosting a small farewell.

Wherein M'baya is danced contra to the grammar: not passively

I have known for about three months now that I would host M'baya, the monthly gathering that I attend and of which I have become a member. The dance is traditional and one meant to show solidarity and, as I learned Sunday night, contains training and overtones of military combat. But we are ahead of ourselves, and in dance that means we have lost the rhythm. To remind everyone what happens at the meeting: we gather, contribute money, give speeches, award the money, drink shah and often whisky and raffia wine, and set a meal of plantains, sauce, and chicken. But I was hosting, and so there was a brief difference. First, I bought two chickens, not just the one. I bought a third more of shah than is usual, and I also had Irish potatoes. I paid Mado, Alfred's wife, to do the cooking and so it was delicious. Far more so than if I had just brought the raw ingredients to the party and had everyone enjoy that. But there are other differences as well. From my first meeting seven months ago, the members have been speaking of drums. Well, as soon as I learned I would host, I insisted on the presence of drums. As a result, Alfred got busy tracking down the tribal drum that is used for his tribe's general meeting, and they also got the master of culture to bring in two drums. The actual drums of M'baya that he has been fixing, and there was a 'talking drum'. The first drum, also called the mother drum, is a large pregnant looking drum set in a four legged prop. Th twin M'baya drums are tall, red, and painted and carved with superstition (magic) one has a deep tone, the other is pitched slightly higher. And the talking drum soars out above them all. The reason for it's name is that it is used to convey information immediately in a village and to warn of raids and communicate with other drums. And the main difference? Usually the meeting has about ten or twelve people. My meeting had thirty three. And, contra the other meetings, was full of women, including a stunningly dressed Mommy Shah, Alice, Mado, Lisa, and other wives whose acquaintance I missed. It did not take long for the dancing to begin. After roll, payment, and announcements, Alfred leaped up with a "rook-ou-way" and began drumming and the building shook and the cheeks of all routed and the eyes flickered brighter than the sun's reflection on the bronze shields of all the Achaeans as they stand outside the walls of Troy. And the dances were confusing for me and the words of the songs incomprehensible. But, I soon found myself figuring it all out. It is battle training, the moves keep the limbs limber, the choreography takes place along the idea of battle lines. It is men who are the most active, but the women stand along the outside and move and sway and yip and leap. And this was only the first dance.  The night progressed, my horn cup went through multiple drainings of shah, raffia, and a particularly vile mixture of shah, raffia, whiskey, sweet wine. I soon learned that I have no African rhythm nor the ability to play the talking drum, but I could dance and, what is more, I could give speeches, something that I am particularly fit for suffering, as I do, from a lack of understanding the laconic and given, as I am, to pontificating in poetic gnomic phrases with long exposition and generous, even purple, compliments. The first speech I gave before buying the entire room beer, something I continued to do for the entire evening eventually racking up a bill of twenty thousand francs (forty dollars and forty beers). Well after food and some other dances, Alfred got a suspicious cunning look on his joyous face and summoned me up to the front. Genesis came up as well and other elders and they proceeded to pull from a hidden package a beatiful embroidered saro (the full length garment) and dressed me. Then Oliver brought out a stunning blue hat and pressed it to my head, meanwhile there was yipping, there was drumming and Ernest, another colleague of mine, flapped his jacket at me to keep me cool (a gesture of respect) and then we all danced together. I decided that it was a fitting time to give another speech this one was full of compliments for culture, for the astonishing variety of experiences I had, and ended with the fact that in my culture (someday I really must figure out where I come up with all this) one never accepts a gift without giving in return. So out of my bamenda bag I brought forth red pens with Sioux Falls written on them and lapel pins with Mt. Rushmore on them. **Thanks mom!** and we danced again when suddenly a harsh clacking cut through all the noise and celebration, Genesis had gotten two machetes and was clacking them together rhythmic. Alfred gestured me to sit down and the elders proceeded to dance "Nfoo." this is the official dance giving me the recognition of my title as Nformis. And we continued to dance and drink and drink and dance and sing and listen to drums and have the most spectacular time. And I only fell down two times walking home and talking a mile a minute to Alfred who graciously walked me to my door. And once I went inside I carefully removed the saro, looked at it with glistening eyes, took off my hat, and passed out. But other things happened this week as well. I gave the final exam, and was deeply moved by the fact that when I asked my students to write a comparative sentence with the adjective "difficult" many wrote variations on the sentence "the exam of mr. Christian is more difficult than the math" or "the English examen is difficulter /difficultest" some still don't quite get the idea of comparatives with adjectives more than two syllables. I also gave them all the pens and pins of my mother and they whooped and hollered and asked for stickers. But they send very gracious to thanks to my mother, and so do I.some of them, thinking perhaps that it was a compliment, remarked that they would give the pins to their fathers. But I reared back at that and told them that their fathers were not my students and this pin marked the fact that they are among the elite who can call themselves my students. Everyone clapped and shook my hand and some bowed down. Often I don't understand culture. Last night we of the English department went out and there was more drinking and speeching. Often lately I feel like I am an honorary member of the Pickwick Club.

Wherein I witness equality

What a charged week this has been; full of events and people, for Sunday was the ordination of the first women pastors in the Lutheran church in Cameroon. Visitors came from South Dakota, Minnesota, Chicago, Canada, Tanzania, Germany, Ethiopia, and CAR. And who came from SD? My mother. I failed to meet her in the airport since I was supervising the Mock Exam (basically a practice SAT for the students in testing grades), and then she went straight to the meetings at happened all week. But I whipped up into the meeting hall during their break and, wouldn't you know, the she was. And after all that travel and all that waiting all she said was "your really sweaty." and since her arrival I have had to endure two things: 1) everyone saying how much alike we look and, 2) having people tell me that "you must profit from the chaleur (heat) of your mother." It has been really fun, though, to take her around to meet everyone. When we met Alfred and his family, she sang for hours with Alfred and Mado. The next day, after supervising the exams again, we went to visit with Oliver and his wife Alice and ended up talking a lot about culture in Cameroon. The best visit, though, was to Mommy Shah. We walked through Norwegian and I was greeted throughout the district. And then we came to the buvett, but she was not there. Her husband was and he brought us up to the house where, when I appeared in the doorway, her three daughters all charged the portal shouting "Unnnncle" and I swept them all up in my arms and deposited them in the couch. Then I introduced mom to everyone and we had a fabulous conversation for an hour during which I drank a liter and a half of shah and mom had the tiniest of sips. Then we walked down the street to the market and one of my waitresses came running out of her bar to meet my mother. At the bar we walked about and I showed off my quarter and introduced her to some students that were working there. And on Sunday was church. Church for six hours. Six hours. Six hours. Part of it was interminable, but there was a very exciting moment. It lasted forty five minutes but whipped by. When the ordinands were given their robes, women pastors and sponsors circled them to the whooping and hollering of the audience and the electric guitar and drums of the band. And from these cyclones of alb-bestowing emerged the first three women pastors of the Lutheran church in Cameroon. So, why was this so exciting? For me not so much because new pastors were raised, but because I was in the presence of equality in action. Men had been forced to step back and accept their equality with women, to realize that misogynism cannot be a valid structure for any successful institution. One of the very fun things this week is the fact that with so many people here having stressful meetings all day, we have been having excellent wine parties every night, wherein great quantities are drunk, much breeze is shot, and questions posed are questions answered, and the raconteurs stand in the spotlight. It is about as much fun as the parties every night during Dickens Camp.