I heard a great piece of supposed wisdom yesterday a few moments before I ate a great piece of traditional cake. It was from a famous pop singer here in Ngaoundere who told the entire audience, made up of private invitees--worry not I will unfold the tale more thoroughly presently--that "when your lips say you love me / but your heart never says yes / then you kill me." this got me thinking, as I was digesting various forms of awesomeness, that the most erotic moment of saying I love you is the lip formation of you. Because you proffer a kiss with it, and if the parter responds with either "I love you too" or "I love you also" then the lips can meet somewhere betwixt the people. This seems a nice meeting in the middle, but if you are asking heart to yes, well there are many problems. For the start, it will be hard to hear the heart unless you are awesome at Morse code, second yes is rather a snake-like hissing response. That is why it is best when one responds to a marriage proposal not to say yes, but rather "I never had a clue, but I will" something like that, a response that keeps the snakes away from the chicken eggs of early love.
Are all of you readers thoroughly confused yet? If this were a Harlequin posting, it would end with you learning that I had actually proposed and there would be at least three scenes of lovemaking and probably six horse-back rides between persons of incompatible job descriptions but nonetheless star-crossed qualities and certain muscular thighs and shapely triceps. (I'm running out of reading material).
Still confused, well, I shall explicate. This week's post is about appetite, but I wished to open with a false trail, for it is actually the appetite of the belly.
On Thursday my darling mischievous students in 5B invited me to a party. Now I was a bit hesitant because they had invited me to a soccer match the day before that proved to be a myth but I accepted because I saw something of actual veracity shining out of their normally mendacious eye-sockets. And so on Friday at 9:30 am (also known as third hour) I found myself outside a classroom being asked to wait for the other professors. Ahh, at last a sign of the veracity of the situation. As a result, I stood gently off to the side and began reading my book, some seven or eight minutes later Aie Sabine came to me with a gym t-shirt over her arm, as though she were a server in a high class restaurant, and she gestured me inside. I was the first, a typical state to which I have accustomed myself, and I sat behind student desks turned buffet table. There were vegetables, five types of spaghetti, salads, meats, juices, grains. It turns out that the class was throwing a surprise party for their professors. Soon after me, in filed others. We filled our seats to the cheers of students, two of whom gave darling speeches about thanking their professors who work too hard. The principal was there and gave a gracious speech, and then we ate to a chorus of M. X eat my food Mlle. Eat my thing, I did not make it, my mother did. Mdm. You make sure to try my salad I put extra avocado in it for you.
It was in all a marvelously warm experience wherein I was far more happy for my lips (which held the food in my mouth) than for my heart.
Of course I discovered an hour later when I returned to teach the reason that they had specified that "sometimes their professors work too hard." They wanted the day off! I told them to keep dreaming and cooking and we spent an hour on the vocabulary of computers.
On Wednesday Alfred's wife gave me an invitation to be present at a community even. The invitation and envelope were quite large and I expressed my gratitude. Alfred then told me that one best expressed gratitude through hidden sums of money in marked envelopes, so I slipped some cash in it and waited until saturday night. Now I am sort of used to the wild inconvenience that is called African time (and, sometimes rather awkwardly for me, Black Time). So I figured, the invitation said seven so we ought to arrive at eight. And so we did, but we were the third group there. I went with Alfred and Genesis (the president of M'Baya). And we sat and sat and sat and at ten thirty the event began and we could begin eating the small sugared pop corn and drink some luke-warm beers. But the event was really fabulous. The president of group we were celebrating stood up and said that they had invited the governor and so had to wait for him. Even though the governor was on drips all day (.I.e. He had malaria) he said he would try to make it and so the organizers were under compulsion to wait because "protocol must be followed." but once it began the cultural evening was stunning. Alfred's wife comes from the south, from a region called Kumuda, short for Kupe Muanengouba. The people are called the Bakossi, which means "you hate us." the president of the Ngaoundere branch explained that the name originates from the first German explorers who asked the people "who are you" but the people thought they asked "why do you think we have come." and so they answered "you have come because you hate us" that is "you have come because Bakossi."
And there was great dancing and great speeches and CRTV (Cameroonian radio and telivision) was there. Something I did not know until after I left and Alfred informed me. They were un-uninformed and I thought the man with a camera was just there to register the archive. There is one definite memorable moment that comes from my certain peculiarity about condiments. You see, if I have the chance to dip things, I dip them. This ranges from women and men with whom I dance to chips and salsa to pizza and ranch to soups and food. Well this latest dip was the famous green soup of the Bakossi. I was supposed to eat it with only the pieces of cow tail already in it. As a brief aside, I have become quite adept at eating tail, a feat that is neither easy nor instinctual for me. But I had a fish head, and so I dunked the fish head in and sucked down the eyeballs. Three other people at my tabl stared at me, and when I repeated it they shot beer and Smirnoff ice across the table as they guffawed at my audacity. Who, they demanded to know, had ever though of drinking the soup out of the empty eye socket of a fish skull. Alfred, fortunately, just shrugged. He's used to my embarrassing ways. And the table soon adjusted so they expressed no surprise to my various other mixtures.
Throughout the evening, we had musical interludes from the famous pop star H. Peizon, he of the opening quotation. Women loved him, men to, but I could not help wonder why, despite his obvious hotness, they were so attracted. He was lip-syncing the entire time, his mouth had a mouthy ironic twitch, and his lyrics were soporificly saccharine to the core. But I guess, at the end of the day, one likes to think that the heart speaks more truth than the lips, even though it is the lips that let great food in. Me, I'd far rather eat some tasty cocoiams dipped in soup that listen to the morse code of another's heart. Or if the person actually wanted to talk, I'd engage in the palaver, but elsewise there are too many linguistic problems with translation that just don't occur in the kitchen or in the dance. After all, as Shakira told us all, hips do not lie, whether they are the hips of a babe still struggling to crawl of or a nine year old poking her honey hips into me, the dance is still the dance.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Seven cups of tea
Reading Stephen Greenblatt's rather caustic review of Ralph Feinnes face in "A Man of Principle," his take on the recent film adaptation of Coriolanus written for the NYRB, I was delighted by his focus on the one moment of great pity that Shakespeare gives us in which a man treats Coriolanus kindly and when the meet again C struggles to remember the man's name. I was thinking about this exchange between anonymous soldier and commoner because the station has recently become inundated (an ironic word to use in the dry season) with soldiers performing military reconnaissance exercises. I did not know this at first, for the first time I saw them they were looking up into the mango trees and I thought they were a community organization devoted to helping cats stranded on high. But their fatigues (and fatigue?) made their allegiance to violence clear. But I decided to withhold judgement because of contemplations on Coriolanus and watched them take their ease beneath a tree. I went to my kitchen and gathered seven cups and glasses (I had to make do with what I had) and took from my fridge a carafe of very cold water. I then took this outside and shared it with the sweaty and frustrated soldiers. I hope by this act of kindness that they will remember humanity if they ever encounter inhuman situations.
The above is written with charming naïveté. No? The reality is that I live in a city where there are infrequent clashes between the police and the army that end in death and property destruction. That might be something you do not know, the sheer level of violence that I hide in my Potemkin village.
School this week was wonderful. I gave the exam, the students complained, and almost universally their grades improved. My enforced system of note taking culminated when, on Monday, I looked through their notes and offered extra credit (one says bonus points) ranging between .25 and 2.25 for them. By the way, my students are terribly confused by my system of grading. In Cameroon, and perhaps elsewhere, when a teacher makes a check on the paper it means that something is correct. But when I do, it means their is an error. Here is a common scenario. One side of the sheet has three sets of five questions each for a total of fifteen. I tally each of the sections and write the number to the side and then the total at the bottom. But I guess this is difficult to figure out because the students will approach me and say that I counted incorrectly and proceed to add the four numbers together! Or, say there are five questions. Two of them are wrong. I thus put 3/5 at the top of the page. The students who missed the two questions laugh thinking that I made a mistake (after all there are two red marks and the student thinks he or she should have gotten 2/5). But the students that actually score 2/5 groan at me that they should have 3/5 because there are three red marks.
It is all very confusing and made all the more so by the secret of the stickers. I handed out my exams and made sure everyone got one sticker. Anything over 12.5 earned two stickers and over 17 three. Well what a hullabaloo. Students pealed off stickers and claimed I forgot while wearing the sticker on the forehead or ears. They begged for an additional point not, though, to change the grade but simply to gain more stickers. Others thanked me for the gifts and one particularly wiley girl exchanged stickers with other students put two more on her exam and showed me that she had three stickers and thus I made a mistake with the grading, she had earned 17/20! So I had a big laugh with them all.
The only other relevant event to relate concerns an experience I had while drinking shah. I remain the only white person I've seen drinking the nectar, and so am used to people coming in and joshing a bit with me. But yesterday five came in and started complaining that tourists were overrunning everything. They then proceeded to try and order shah, but had no idea how to do it. When they got their tasters they received the small colored cups with only a tiny sip. For contrast, when I enter I get a long handshake, greetings from the kids, laughs and hoots. I receive my shah in a big translucent cup and it is always full. You see the irony of the situation?the Cameroonians were complaining of me as a tourist, but they were the tourists to this small world of mine. After they left we all had a bit of a laugh and I ate some corn fou fou djamba djamba.
The above is written with charming naïveté. No? The reality is that I live in a city where there are infrequent clashes between the police and the army that end in death and property destruction. That might be something you do not know, the sheer level of violence that I hide in my Potemkin village.
School this week was wonderful. I gave the exam, the students complained, and almost universally their grades improved. My enforced system of note taking culminated when, on Monday, I looked through their notes and offered extra credit (one says bonus points) ranging between .25 and 2.25 for them. By the way, my students are terribly confused by my system of grading. In Cameroon, and perhaps elsewhere, when a teacher makes a check on the paper it means that something is correct. But when I do, it means their is an error. Here is a common scenario. One side of the sheet has three sets of five questions each for a total of fifteen. I tally each of the sections and write the number to the side and then the total at the bottom. But I guess this is difficult to figure out because the students will approach me and say that I counted incorrectly and proceed to add the four numbers together! Or, say there are five questions. Two of them are wrong. I thus put 3/5 at the top of the page. The students who missed the two questions laugh thinking that I made a mistake (after all there are two red marks and the student thinks he or she should have gotten 2/5). But the students that actually score 2/5 groan at me that they should have 3/5 because there are three red marks.
It is all very confusing and made all the more so by the secret of the stickers. I handed out my exams and made sure everyone got one sticker. Anything over 12.5 earned two stickers and over 17 three. Well what a hullabaloo. Students pealed off stickers and claimed I forgot while wearing the sticker on the forehead or ears. They begged for an additional point not, though, to change the grade but simply to gain more stickers. Others thanked me for the gifts and one particularly wiley girl exchanged stickers with other students put two more on her exam and showed me that she had three stickers and thus I made a mistake with the grading, she had earned 17/20! So I had a big laugh with them all.
The only other relevant event to relate concerns an experience I had while drinking shah. I remain the only white person I've seen drinking the nectar, and so am used to people coming in and joshing a bit with me. But yesterday five came in and started complaining that tourists were overrunning everything. They then proceeded to try and order shah, but had no idea how to do it. When they got their tasters they received the small colored cups with only a tiny sip. For contrast, when I enter I get a long handshake, greetings from the kids, laughs and hoots. I receive my shah in a big translucent cup and it is always full. You see the irony of the situation?the Cameroonians were complaining of me as a tourist, but they were the tourists to this small world of mine. After they left we all had a bit of a laugh and I ate some corn fou fou djamba djamba.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Wherein I teach heart with a silent aitch
What a peaceful and restful and productive week this was, no onerous duty, no surprise landings by aliens, in fact there were only four blows of note on the gong of life.
In the first gong, whose echo sounded brazenly, we administered the loot from bilingual week to the students, the administration came up to our small office (principal, vice, discipline master, chaplain) and each said a dozen or so words in English and then we coordinators called the names and told what the prizes we for and the administration handed them out. The prizes were crayons (called colors), erasers, pencils, notebooks, scissors, and pencil sharpeners. Following this we had a feast which Oliver's wife had made of fish, fuleri juice, and plantains. We was a very pleasant affair.
The second gong, which thudded bodily, was on Valentine's day. A day where things happen here in a rather subdued manner. I began each class by drawing an enormous heart on the board and dozens of small ones. I then game a short lecture on sending, always a good verb, valentines (thanks again for the Tree ma). I then brought out a piece of paper and gestured for the students to imitate me. I folded it in half and tore the folded side along the lines of an exaggerated question mark. Ooo the students were delighted to see that I suddenly held a heart in my hand, and incidentally all their hearts in hand as well. How delighted they were, insisting that they could not figure it out and I simply must do it for them. But I simply
Put on my long-suffering look and began a slow glasses polish that jumpstarted their brains. I then had them all write out "roses are red / violence are blue / sugar is sweet / and so are you" and told them to give it to their mothers. I then began to start on the lesson, but could get nowhere for every time I turned around one would yell for me to look and he or she would show me a valentine fresh-formed. Some students had near a dozen at the end, and then by Thursday they had the audacity to tell me they had run out of room in their notebooks! That evening I delivered my own valentines. Mommie Shah got a bottle of Djino (a very sweet tropical fruit drink that people like) and so did Alfred's wife. Then I got cooking. The other day one of the three recently arrived Canadians mentioned a hankering for reeses. I tucked the knowledge away and then went out on Tuesday to purchase a small thing of Tartina (like nutella but without the hazelnut) and some scoops of ground peanuts. I then melted the tartina in the sun, which is now blazing merrily, and poured it over the mounds of peanut and pricked it with a toothpick and set it in the freezer. Wait wait wait. I delivered the platter and ended the giving of valentines.
The third gong sunk into the spirits of all woodenly. My mom sent me some stickers and I graded the student homework with them and suddenly had students throwing homework in my hands at the end of class that they had "forgotten" to give me the day before. Yeah right, they just wanted stickers! And to do what with? Well to feminize the male of course, for it is apparently great fun to stick them on the ears and adopt a Runway Strut. I also, during coffee, rather impishly stuck one on the hand of the vice-principal next to whom I sit. He sort of looked stunned and the administrators at the table were nonplussed while he asked me why I had done it. I said that it was because he was good homework, a comment which got the table laughing. Then he asked why I had chosen pink to give him. Well I had not chosen the color for it was simply the next in the row of stickers, but since he was wearing an elegant pink tie I told him that I wanted him to match. Well, that afternoon, while sitting on Alfred's porch-he is convalescing from a flare-up of his old injury-the vice came to visit as well and proudly showed me his hand which was still adorned with the sticker.
The fourth gong sounds hollowly. I came into class pouring forth energy, brilliant lesson in hand and was met, not with the accustomed cheer of thirty voices, but with thirty hollow eyes. That is right, I am not miswriting (though given the atrocity of the spelling on this blog I can forgive you for thinking that). I only had fifteen students. The school the afternoon before had driven everyone out who has not paid. And thus in my other classes I had nine and twelve. It was, sad to say, amazing. We were productively to a scary early-Fordian manner. The students labored along the assembly line of knowledge and as a class produced brilliant vehicles. And by vehicles I mean conversation vehicles. And by brilliant I mean that the sentences had subjects and matching verbs in a tense that made sense.
In the first gong, whose echo sounded brazenly, we administered the loot from bilingual week to the students, the administration came up to our small office (principal, vice, discipline master, chaplain) and each said a dozen or so words in English and then we coordinators called the names and told what the prizes we for and the administration handed them out. The prizes were crayons (called colors), erasers, pencils, notebooks, scissors, and pencil sharpeners. Following this we had a feast which Oliver's wife had made of fish, fuleri juice, and plantains. We was a very pleasant affair.
The second gong, which thudded bodily, was on Valentine's day. A day where things happen here in a rather subdued manner. I began each class by drawing an enormous heart on the board and dozens of small ones. I then game a short lecture on sending, always a good verb, valentines (thanks again for the Tree ma). I then brought out a piece of paper and gestured for the students to imitate me. I folded it in half and tore the folded side along the lines of an exaggerated question mark. Ooo the students were delighted to see that I suddenly held a heart in my hand, and incidentally all their hearts in hand as well. How delighted they were, insisting that they could not figure it out and I simply must do it for them. But I simply
Put on my long-suffering look and began a slow glasses polish that jumpstarted their brains. I then had them all write out "roses are red / violence are blue / sugar is sweet / and so are you" and told them to give it to their mothers. I then began to start on the lesson, but could get nowhere for every time I turned around one would yell for me to look and he or she would show me a valentine fresh-formed. Some students had near a dozen at the end, and then by Thursday they had the audacity to tell me they had run out of room in their notebooks! That evening I delivered my own valentines. Mommie Shah got a bottle of Djino (a very sweet tropical fruit drink that people like) and so did Alfred's wife. Then I got cooking. The other day one of the three recently arrived Canadians mentioned a hankering for reeses. I tucked the knowledge away and then went out on Tuesday to purchase a small thing of Tartina (like nutella but without the hazelnut) and some scoops of ground peanuts. I then melted the tartina in the sun, which is now blazing merrily, and poured it over the mounds of peanut and pricked it with a toothpick and set it in the freezer. Wait wait wait. I delivered the platter and ended the giving of valentines.
The third gong sunk into the spirits of all woodenly. My mom sent me some stickers and I graded the student homework with them and suddenly had students throwing homework in my hands at the end of class that they had "forgotten" to give me the day before. Yeah right, they just wanted stickers! And to do what with? Well to feminize the male of course, for it is apparently great fun to stick them on the ears and adopt a Runway Strut. I also, during coffee, rather impishly stuck one on the hand of the vice-principal next to whom I sit. He sort of looked stunned and the administrators at the table were nonplussed while he asked me why I had done it. I said that it was because he was good homework, a comment which got the table laughing. Then he asked why I had chosen pink to give him. Well I had not chosen the color for it was simply the next in the row of stickers, but since he was wearing an elegant pink tie I told him that I wanted him to match. Well, that afternoon, while sitting on Alfred's porch-he is convalescing from a flare-up of his old injury-the vice came to visit as well and proudly showed me his hand which was still adorned with the sticker.
The fourth gong sounds hollowly. I came into class pouring forth energy, brilliant lesson in hand and was met, not with the accustomed cheer of thirty voices, but with thirty hollow eyes. That is right, I am not miswriting (though given the atrocity of the spelling on this blog I can forgive you for thinking that). I only had fifteen students. The school the afternoon before had driven everyone out who has not paid. And thus in my other classes I had nine and twelve. It was, sad to say, amazing. We were productively to a scary early-Fordian manner. The students labored along the assembly line of knowledge and as a class produced brilliant vehicles. And by vehicles I mean conversation vehicles. And by brilliant I mean that the sentences had subjects and matching verbs in a tense that made sense.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Wherein the gong is forgotten
How wonderful Monday was this week, I three upon the board a brilliant set of vocabulary, which the students eagerly copied. Animal, the sound it makes, and a common verb associated with the animal. Thus the sound of a duck is a quack and the duck can swim, waddle, or fly. And so on and so forth. I was very excited to have this preliminary vocab development out of the way because this week we would be practicing comparative adjectives and superlatives. Feeling might, I returned home. And then I came to school on Tuesday.
I had known that there would be a phenomenon called Youth Week, but I fused to let it enter my intelligence in such a way that it would play a role in forming my calendar. But it was not to play a formative role but rather a destructive one. I thought for sure I could teach until noon, but at morning coffee I learned that all non-testing grades had school canceled. Arrggghhh, I watched my intellectual property (my syllabus for the week) grow dusty. So I passed the week by coming to school in the morning to see if maybe there would be a chance I could teach only to have my hopes continually dashed, though on a brighter side my students delighted in seeing me and we spoke a bit of English together while they, very kindly, lamented the fact that they could not be in class. I say "very kindly" but a great deal of the actual reason is that the students have to march for hours. This is the phenomenon of youth week. It culminates in every school marching in Independence Square. And the marching needs to be well rehearsed. But also, and I did not now this until Thursday night, the students practice for a talent show, which brings us to...
The gong show of Ngaoundere wherein someone neglected to bring the gong.
Thursday morning Alfred and I went to a dingy quarter of Ngaoundere because I wanted to try a new drink that is only really served in the morning. Bili-Bili is a drink made from millet. But where shah is smooth, almost food like, bili-bill is sharper and foamy if it sits. It is also a mysterious red color that swallows the light. Not great, it is nonetheless fun to drink because it comes in small pails for 500francs and one serves those around and is equally served in turn. And the cups are the bottoms of calabash gourds. We did not take a lot since we arrived late and it was gone for the day, but after grabbing a quick piece of meat some folks there decoded to share with us do we had a taste. An enormous diffence between this place and Mommy-shah. Is that the latter is small and intimate and the former is rowdy and filled with workers about to head out on their day. Also it had a courtyard wherein a constant impromptu market is in session, and in a delightful manner everyone has a calabash resting on the ground before him or her as though they were school children gathered alongside a river bank preparing to release their boats like so many little rascals.
After we ascended the hill back to our quarter and went to school for the daily disappointment of not teaching, I ran into Oliver whom I hadn't seen all week. He proceeded to tell me that the English club would perform that night. I responded enthusiastically but confusedly because I knew nothing of any performance. Turns out that all the schools that would march on the weekend also have talent shows on the thursday before. How I wish I had known since it would have been great fun to plan a whirlwind to some other schools. The event was to begin at six o'clock, but being accustomed to the fact that Cameroonian clocks are all broken, I was at ease when we did not arrive until seven ten. After all, we should get a chair at least. But it then did not begin for another half hour. It was neat to see my students come in and take their seats as well because I never see them outside their school uniforms and they all came very well dressed. It is also interesting to see who travels together outside the classroom. If I had guessed about close friends before that night I would never have paired those who were together. It was also really wonderful to see the older kids in the class watching out for the younger and making room on chairs for them. They're good kids, I suppose, just with ephemeral memories and that is what I struggle to remember myself.
The show began with a traditional dance number by the youngest classes and they performed admirably, and then everything intensified as the em-cee raised his voice to welcome the youth of Nigeria, the name of a five-male breakdance troupe. And who should lead them than my very own Nana, the same young man who broke dance way back when I did my lesson on Rihanna. It was quite thrilling and everyone was watching eagerly. Then came the strangest dance of the evening. The Chadian dance. Out came six or seven boys in garb, the leading one waving an umbrella, and they bobbed up and down to know rhythm I could figure out, and the crowd went wild, they went wild not for the dance but for what was suddenly happening. Chadians poured out of the crowd and were throwing 500, 1000, 2000 franc bills everywhere and this went on for at least eight minutes. Then there was a long series of lip-syncing, called playback in French, which is horrifyingly popular here. The way in which it works is that a group gets together, practices a dance, and then pretends to be the performer. Some are entertaining, but it is the sort of thing that is neat once or twice and in doses of under two minutes. But tens of these shows of five minutes gets unbearable. Intermittent with these entertaintments, came the out-of-tune / step / energy gospel singers, the unique form of Cameroonian entertainment called the NewsCast, and a brilliant brilliant ColPro school day in three minutes. In the style of Complete Works of Shakeseapre, abridged, these students went through all their teachers and the imitations were spot on, from the physical and tonal characteristics of the principal, to the whistle of bell, to the students who are hungry, lazy, sleeping. It was the highlight. Every time my students were out I felt very proud, so that was nice to recognize in myself. Although I am torn because a show like this should, I still feel, be organized outside of school and not have school canceled for it. Then Alfred, Oliver, and I left because our ears hurt. Two hours later when we came back, the show was still going strong and indeed continued until midnight, and that is just too much playback for me.
The marching on Saturday was as you might imagine, hot and dusty and tedious to watch. But I only saw two or three schools. Lycee Classique and ColPro before retiring to a bar with a chief of Buminda who came with me and Alfred and Oliver, driving us around in his military jeep that Nader would have written a sequel to his first book about. Not just unsafe at any speed, but unsafe at no speed.
I had known that there would be a phenomenon called Youth Week, but I fused to let it enter my intelligence in such a way that it would play a role in forming my calendar. But it was not to play a formative role but rather a destructive one. I thought for sure I could teach until noon, but at morning coffee I learned that all non-testing grades had school canceled. Arrggghhh, I watched my intellectual property (my syllabus for the week) grow dusty. So I passed the week by coming to school in the morning to see if maybe there would be a chance I could teach only to have my hopes continually dashed, though on a brighter side my students delighted in seeing me and we spoke a bit of English together while they, very kindly, lamented the fact that they could not be in class. I say "very kindly" but a great deal of the actual reason is that the students have to march for hours. This is the phenomenon of youth week. It culminates in every school marching in Independence Square. And the marching needs to be well rehearsed. But also, and I did not now this until Thursday night, the students practice for a talent show, which brings us to...
The gong show of Ngaoundere wherein someone neglected to bring the gong.
Thursday morning Alfred and I went to a dingy quarter of Ngaoundere because I wanted to try a new drink that is only really served in the morning. Bili-Bili is a drink made from millet. But where shah is smooth, almost food like, bili-bill is sharper and foamy if it sits. It is also a mysterious red color that swallows the light. Not great, it is nonetheless fun to drink because it comes in small pails for 500francs and one serves those around and is equally served in turn. And the cups are the bottoms of calabash gourds. We did not take a lot since we arrived late and it was gone for the day, but after grabbing a quick piece of meat some folks there decoded to share with us do we had a taste. An enormous diffence between this place and Mommy-shah. Is that the latter is small and intimate and the former is rowdy and filled with workers about to head out on their day. Also it had a courtyard wherein a constant impromptu market is in session, and in a delightful manner everyone has a calabash resting on the ground before him or her as though they were school children gathered alongside a river bank preparing to release their boats like so many little rascals.
After we ascended the hill back to our quarter and went to school for the daily disappointment of not teaching, I ran into Oliver whom I hadn't seen all week. He proceeded to tell me that the English club would perform that night. I responded enthusiastically but confusedly because I knew nothing of any performance. Turns out that all the schools that would march on the weekend also have talent shows on the thursday before. How I wish I had known since it would have been great fun to plan a whirlwind to some other schools. The event was to begin at six o'clock, but being accustomed to the fact that Cameroonian clocks are all broken, I was at ease when we did not arrive until seven ten. After all, we should get a chair at least. But it then did not begin for another half hour. It was neat to see my students come in and take their seats as well because I never see them outside their school uniforms and they all came very well dressed. It is also interesting to see who travels together outside the classroom. If I had guessed about close friends before that night I would never have paired those who were together. It was also really wonderful to see the older kids in the class watching out for the younger and making room on chairs for them. They're good kids, I suppose, just with ephemeral memories and that is what I struggle to remember myself.
The show began with a traditional dance number by the youngest classes and they performed admirably, and then everything intensified as the em-cee raised his voice to welcome the youth of Nigeria, the name of a five-male breakdance troupe. And who should lead them than my very own Nana, the same young man who broke dance way back when I did my lesson on Rihanna. It was quite thrilling and everyone was watching eagerly. Then came the strangest dance of the evening. The Chadian dance. Out came six or seven boys in garb, the leading one waving an umbrella, and they bobbed up and down to know rhythm I could figure out, and the crowd went wild, they went wild not for the dance but for what was suddenly happening. Chadians poured out of the crowd and were throwing 500, 1000, 2000 franc bills everywhere and this went on for at least eight minutes. Then there was a long series of lip-syncing, called playback in French, which is horrifyingly popular here. The way in which it works is that a group gets together, practices a dance, and then pretends to be the performer. Some are entertaining, but it is the sort of thing that is neat once or twice and in doses of under two minutes. But tens of these shows of five minutes gets unbearable. Intermittent with these entertaintments, came the out-of-tune / step / energy gospel singers, the unique form of Cameroonian entertainment called the NewsCast, and a brilliant brilliant ColPro school day in three minutes. In the style of Complete Works of Shakeseapre, abridged, these students went through all their teachers and the imitations were spot on, from the physical and tonal characteristics of the principal, to the whistle of bell, to the students who are hungry, lazy, sleeping. It was the highlight. Every time my students were out I felt very proud, so that was nice to recognize in myself. Although I am torn because a show like this should, I still feel, be organized outside of school and not have school canceled for it. Then Alfred, Oliver, and I left because our ears hurt. Two hours later when we came back, the show was still going strong and indeed continued until midnight, and that is just too much playback for me.
The marching on Saturday was as you might imagine, hot and dusty and tedious to watch. But I only saw two or three schools. Lycee Classique and ColPro before retiring to a bar with a chief of Buminda who came with me and Alfred and Oliver, driving us around in his military jeep that Nader would have written a sequel to his first book about. Not just unsafe at any speed, but unsafe at no speed.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Wherein many hips tell many truths
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.
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.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The Wrist Flicks and the Crowd Roars,
And no I am not describing a ceremonial Sharro bout wherein I am whipped to prove my manliness, rather we must go farther back in my history to understand the particular flick of the wrist.
When I was in the sixth grade, a wind carried on it a rumor of a newly re-popularized toy. It was before the age of Facebook, before the blogosphere announced cool, rather we understood what to buy based on what the Kmart stocked and what people might have picked up from their family reunions and visits out of town. Other notable manners to learn of the cool would be kiosks in malls. And this particular peddling wind brought with it the Yomega Yo-Yo. Suddenly strings were cutting the circulation of middle fingers to a trickle and then stopping the blood entirely. A rash of cases stood before the nurse to rub the fingers back to life, a most painful process, but how pride shone across the face as one had proven his or her stamina. And then there was a small small crowd, those who advanced beyond the yomega, those who could sleep their Yoyo the longest. And with Butterfly Bumblebee whizzing at shin level, its blacks and yellows mixing stood Christian winning the longest sleep contests.
The fad soon enough lived up to its truncated name and faded leaving in its wake confounded memories. And middle school passed. And high school passed. And out of the faded recesses of memory a painful return began to claw its way through my cerebellum, the nostalgia of the Yo Yo. It took long to require my old butterfly bumblebee, but luckily the young man to whom I sold it just before the Yoyo bubble burst (still my best investment, although repurchasing it cost me an arm and a leg, alas for retro). I wrote a speech, I practiced it while sailing about Lake Superior, and then performed a now legendary graduation speech in the gymnasium of Yankton High School.
And then the Yo Yo faded once more, this time it sank and slept on its string for a much longer time as it perplexed Morpheus himself with its whirling spangle of yellow and black, but it returned and once more the crowds cheered. Like the great High Wire walker from the classic children's book whose name I have forgotten, I found my gift once more. I walked into class to see some chaos prevailing. Onguene, the hero of last week's narrative, was bouncing a Yoyo on the ground. The simple blue contraption has rubber runners along its edges to protect it from just such abuse. I reached out my hand for it, and Onguene meekly passed it over and moved to take his seat. He did this because of my new rigid policy on class comportment, but I decided to not place it in the treasury of plundered objects that I collect throughout the class periods. Instead I shrugged off my satchel, cracked my knuckles, and rapidly unwound the string. Examining the Yoyo, I found it cheap, but luckily with a fixed axle which would allow me to perform, and with a few experimental ups and downs, I looked around, the students stood around, some stop benches others crouched on the table tops and others peering between the crooks of their fellow students' elbows. I began clearing a space with some languid shootings of the moon, and the I whizzed into a routine. It took a second, but after the first around the world when they saw that I could manipulate the string as an adept (I claim no great superiority, but they had never even seen Yoyo sleep before) soon they were chanting Mr Christian in unison and I rocked the baby, through a rocket over my elbow and tossed some figure eights their way. I soon showed them some one and two handed stars and heard shouts of "les etoiles!." and just as quickly as I began, I ended, unclasping the tightened string from my now whiter than my other white fingers and took up the chalk to begin the day's lesson and together we learned to discuss things that we can't do and things that we won't do.
The other even of great note is that the English Club finally took its excursion, a picnic to the site of Wacwa where there is a facility to study cows. The area is quite beautiful, tucked into the bush beside a natural crater lake with the looing of cattle harmonizing with the mosquito's tzzzz. To get there took a hassle and three quarters, for the school has no truck to lend us, but fortunately Ninga, a co-coordinator (a model of bilingualism as he is a native Francophone and teaches geography) contacted an elder from his village who lives in Yaounda and had a pickup. And then with ten girls tucked into the back end and the cab crammed, we bounced and boinced our way out of town. And as we hit the main road, the kids all hit a stride of exhubersnce and began bellowing forth the lyrics to songs praising bilingualism (yeah yeah yeah bilingual, / yeah yeah yeah is important) hardly inspired songs, but when ten voices rise above the noise and clutter of the streets of Yaounde, it is a beautiful thing. And so we arrived with dust clouding around our tires and musical strains resting in our ears.
The site is actually quite depressing, it is a cross between something out of Poe's "the system of doctor tarr and professor fether" with a haunted house at the midway in Levitttown. Once upon a time it was a leading experimental lab, but today many rooms are locked, the lids on glass containers with snakes and various pickled parasites are cracked and fumes leak, the floors are coated with the husks of dead bees, cobwebs creep from every corner desiring to transform themselves into a new mode of haberdashery, and the dried bones of horse skeletons sit in boxes awaiting identification by students that may never come and looking, thus, like the floor of Jack's giant must have looked after he fell to his death and his servants and dogs and wife left the house, leaving only the gnawed remains of horseflesh. The unarticulated bones still rest behind my eyes, but most haunting, for me, was to stand in the bizarre jaundice-painted halls and see in kaleidoscopic perspective the door at the end of the hall, but it did not say exit, nor did the other, instead the smell filled the area of anesthetic/dust odor and the students filled obediently past our guides to look at the active areas of the site (where, to be fair, there is some really exciting work happening on a vaccine for something that hurts humans here in Africa) but our tour guide was a strange woman who kept taking us into different rooms to uncover and object and declare it to be a microscope and then switch rooms and do the same and then have the effrontery to ask why the students were bored. But they were not bored at all when the veterinarian gave his speech. This six foot two Adonis with the languid eyes, expressive hands, and easy knowledge bout performing a c-section on a kicking horse, had the young ladies pecking corn from his calloused palm. And a great question session followed, from the students of ColPro did not even know that such a profession existed and it was awesome to watch their minds torque toward the future and contemplate having a job that they desired and could find fulfillment in. And then it was over and we ate some fish and plantains on the lawn outside the compound and I ate the fish eyes of many fish because at a party last week that many teachers attended, I revealed that I delight in suctioning the eyes of fish down my esophagus and now have a small fame for it. I also am famous for the creation of a new food, namely the "Souris-chauve" the delicacy beloved of the American. It is not a real food. See, a chauve-souris is a bat, but when I was talking about how I would probably not eat mouse but would eat bat, I mixed up the pronoun and gales of laughter met me, and the jokes and elbow prods continued all week as people say that they went looking for the souris-chauve but could not find it, or they asked if I ate any last night. It is, though, pretty funny and I get a kick out of it. (this story makes more since if you know that a chauve-souris translates, literally, as a bald mouse).
When I was in the sixth grade, a wind carried on it a rumor of a newly re-popularized toy. It was before the age of Facebook, before the blogosphere announced cool, rather we understood what to buy based on what the Kmart stocked and what people might have picked up from their family reunions and visits out of town. Other notable manners to learn of the cool would be kiosks in malls. And this particular peddling wind brought with it the Yomega Yo-Yo. Suddenly strings were cutting the circulation of middle fingers to a trickle and then stopping the blood entirely. A rash of cases stood before the nurse to rub the fingers back to life, a most painful process, but how pride shone across the face as one had proven his or her stamina. And then there was a small small crowd, those who advanced beyond the yomega, those who could sleep their Yoyo the longest. And with Butterfly Bumblebee whizzing at shin level, its blacks and yellows mixing stood Christian winning the longest sleep contests.
The fad soon enough lived up to its truncated name and faded leaving in its wake confounded memories. And middle school passed. And high school passed. And out of the faded recesses of memory a painful return began to claw its way through my cerebellum, the nostalgia of the Yo Yo. It took long to require my old butterfly bumblebee, but luckily the young man to whom I sold it just before the Yoyo bubble burst (still my best investment, although repurchasing it cost me an arm and a leg, alas for retro). I wrote a speech, I practiced it while sailing about Lake Superior, and then performed a now legendary graduation speech in the gymnasium of Yankton High School.
And then the Yo Yo faded once more, this time it sank and slept on its string for a much longer time as it perplexed Morpheus himself with its whirling spangle of yellow and black, but it returned and once more the crowds cheered. Like the great High Wire walker from the classic children's book whose name I have forgotten, I found my gift once more. I walked into class to see some chaos prevailing. Onguene, the hero of last week's narrative, was bouncing a Yoyo on the ground. The simple blue contraption has rubber runners along its edges to protect it from just such abuse. I reached out my hand for it, and Onguene meekly passed it over and moved to take his seat. He did this because of my new rigid policy on class comportment, but I decided to not place it in the treasury of plundered objects that I collect throughout the class periods. Instead I shrugged off my satchel, cracked my knuckles, and rapidly unwound the string. Examining the Yoyo, I found it cheap, but luckily with a fixed axle which would allow me to perform, and with a few experimental ups and downs, I looked around, the students stood around, some stop benches others crouched on the table tops and others peering between the crooks of their fellow students' elbows. I began clearing a space with some languid shootings of the moon, and the I whizzed into a routine. It took a second, but after the first around the world when they saw that I could manipulate the string as an adept (I claim no great superiority, but they had never even seen Yoyo sleep before) soon they were chanting Mr Christian in unison and I rocked the baby, through a rocket over my elbow and tossed some figure eights their way. I soon showed them some one and two handed stars and heard shouts of "les etoiles!." and just as quickly as I began, I ended, unclasping the tightened string from my now whiter than my other white fingers and took up the chalk to begin the day's lesson and together we learned to discuss things that we can't do and things that we won't do.
The other even of great note is that the English Club finally took its excursion, a picnic to the site of Wacwa where there is a facility to study cows. The area is quite beautiful, tucked into the bush beside a natural crater lake with the looing of cattle harmonizing with the mosquito's tzzzz. To get there took a hassle and three quarters, for the school has no truck to lend us, but fortunately Ninga, a co-coordinator (a model of bilingualism as he is a native Francophone and teaches geography) contacted an elder from his village who lives in Yaounda and had a pickup. And then with ten girls tucked into the back end and the cab crammed, we bounced and boinced our way out of town. And as we hit the main road, the kids all hit a stride of exhubersnce and began bellowing forth the lyrics to songs praising bilingualism (yeah yeah yeah bilingual, / yeah yeah yeah is important) hardly inspired songs, but when ten voices rise above the noise and clutter of the streets of Yaounde, it is a beautiful thing. And so we arrived with dust clouding around our tires and musical strains resting in our ears.
The site is actually quite depressing, it is a cross between something out of Poe's "the system of doctor tarr and professor fether" with a haunted house at the midway in Levitttown. Once upon a time it was a leading experimental lab, but today many rooms are locked, the lids on glass containers with snakes and various pickled parasites are cracked and fumes leak, the floors are coated with the husks of dead bees, cobwebs creep from every corner desiring to transform themselves into a new mode of haberdashery, and the dried bones of horse skeletons sit in boxes awaiting identification by students that may never come and looking, thus, like the floor of Jack's giant must have looked after he fell to his death and his servants and dogs and wife left the house, leaving only the gnawed remains of horseflesh. The unarticulated bones still rest behind my eyes, but most haunting, for me, was to stand in the bizarre jaundice-painted halls and see in kaleidoscopic perspective the door at the end of the hall, but it did not say exit, nor did the other, instead the smell filled the area of anesthetic/dust odor and the students filled obediently past our guides to look at the active areas of the site (where, to be fair, there is some really exciting work happening on a vaccine for something that hurts humans here in Africa) but our tour guide was a strange woman who kept taking us into different rooms to uncover and object and declare it to be a microscope and then switch rooms and do the same and then have the effrontery to ask why the students were bored. But they were not bored at all when the veterinarian gave his speech. This six foot two Adonis with the languid eyes, expressive hands, and easy knowledge bout performing a c-section on a kicking horse, had the young ladies pecking corn from his calloused palm. And a great question session followed, from the students of ColPro did not even know that such a profession existed and it was awesome to watch their minds torque toward the future and contemplate having a job that they desired and could find fulfillment in. And then it was over and we ate some fish and plantains on the lawn outside the compound and I ate the fish eyes of many fish because at a party last week that many teachers attended, I revealed that I delight in suctioning the eyes of fish down my esophagus and now have a small fame for it. I also am famous for the creation of a new food, namely the "Souris-chauve" the delicacy beloved of the American. It is not a real food. See, a chauve-souris is a bat, but when I was talking about how I would probably not eat mouse but would eat bat, I mixed up the pronoun and gales of laughter met me, and the jokes and elbow prods continued all week as people say that they went looking for the souris-chauve but could not find it, or they asked if I ate any last night. It is, though, pretty funny and I get a kick out of it. (this story makes more since if you know that a chauve-souris translates, literally, as a bald mouse).
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Wherein I'm inscribed, generically
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there emerged and died a genre in English literature that since been labeled the "thing" or "it narrative." It is a fascinating genre in which the author follows an object through it's trajectory. Most popular were coins and handkerchiefs. They would go from factory to pocket, hand to hand, and throughout their existence was punctured between the Manicheaen poles of light and dark. This genre emerged because of a national consciousness of the changing ways of interaction between mankind as a result of the industrial revolution. (for Blake's response the shifting interactions through the metaphor of the Thames and rivers in general, see my Lectures on Blake as Presented to Mercy College, Cameroon). Anyway, out of the death of the thing narrative came a revitalized interest in the passage of man from stage to stage, jostled and hustled by others until he achieved some sort of education, that is, achieved a sense of self. This is, of course, this Bildungsroman. In this genre, the protagonist moves about experiencing various sensations. It is remarkable for its paradoxical passivity. For as the hero actively undertakes adventures and adventures undertakings, his revelations and epistemic shifts occur from external sources and are often the source for contemplation (the thing thinking about what it saw in the light when it returns to the pocket). This tradition, we can say broadly, begins with Goethe' Wilhelm Meister, a man whose last name gives the telos, through Tom Jones by Fielding, Nicholas Nickelby by Dickens, and a Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man by Joyce. This list is, obviously, a minuscule sample joined by a genre link and the fact that I think everyone should read them. It is in the last that we find young Stehen Daedalus (Joyce understands the interpellating power of the last name) having epiphanies forced upon him. It is through his series of epiphanies that Stephen moves. it is through aesthetic spheres that Wilhelm moves, it is by road and through society that Tom Jones moves, it is through violent encounters that Nicholas moves, and it is through writing and grading exams at College Protestant that Christian moves.
Of these models, I am most like Stephen in that I have the modernist tradition of self reflection to enable me to state, "ahh I am having an experience of epiphany now I am changing" and rather than have the change affect me, I affect the change. So how did it happen. It began last week when I announced the exam. I then carefully detailed every class between last Wednesday and this Thursday to contain a portion of review and a portion of the new lesson. In this way, I felt, I handed over the manner of achieving perfect scores. And then the exam came and I watched as they struggled and struggled turning their papers this way and that. Confused, I walked around one whispered angrily to me "we've never seen these sentences before" another that "these sentences are harder than those you gave." I was shocked. Of course the sentences were different, of course they were harder an exam is meant to push and challenge. It is a map with the borders but hazy un-inked cloudinesses given Rorschach blots from the stains of the students who learn through suffering. Well, perhaps not all that, but it is meant to apply the lessons taught. So I shrugged off these comments.
And then, after giving the last test of the day, a tiny little boy, Onguene, approached me smiling, I asked him if he thought the exam was easy. He smiled and said, "No, it was a very good exam; I failed." There was my epiphany. Somehow the students were judging the exam's quality rather than its efficacy to actually perform an examination. I wondered why this was, and in the dark of my pocket of consciousness, I decided that it is because I am not severe enough. On Friday, I walked into class, to minutes after the whistle, (the bell is broken) I took attendance and counted as absent all who were not there. Then I made them clear their desks of everything not related to English class. I then wrote the date on the board and a clearly articulated theme. I admitted to them that it was probably my fault as well as theirs (le desordre est commun mais l'echec est individuel) and will now no longer believe them when they tell me that they understand. Also, I now link a common question to each lesson with a variety of responses I have always done this, but now I make them write it down. I decided on this because after asking, every day, last week "how did you come to school today" I had a depressing number who failed to answer with any coherence. And I also am returning to something that I did at the beginning of the year. I go around and force them to ask each other in small groups.
And so we shall see if change occurs. For after all, if Stephen eventually epiphanied himself into one if the greatest novels ever written, "Ulysses," wherein might I?
I realize that little this post covered hardly anything, but I did little but go back and forth to school. At the coffeeshop last night, June jokingly said "O, there're no comics from your mom today, eh?" to which I silently flourished a new envelope from out of my pocket. And after making everyone admire the stamps of hot air balloons, we shared the comics and laughter elicited from them. The best, a drops Hagar the Horrible which finds our hero and his perpetually underfed sidekick locked in manacles in a prison. They resign themselves to their fate and decide at that point that all they can do is shake their chains and sing Jingle Bells. (the connections with my tesching the same song to students are delicious apropos of Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" and the link between state correctional institutions.
Of these models, I am most like Stephen in that I have the modernist tradition of self reflection to enable me to state, "ahh I am having an experience of epiphany now I am changing" and rather than have the change affect me, I affect the change. So how did it happen. It began last week when I announced the exam. I then carefully detailed every class between last Wednesday and this Thursday to contain a portion of review and a portion of the new lesson. In this way, I felt, I handed over the manner of achieving perfect scores. And then the exam came and I watched as they struggled and struggled turning their papers this way and that. Confused, I walked around one whispered angrily to me "we've never seen these sentences before" another that "these sentences are harder than those you gave." I was shocked. Of course the sentences were different, of course they were harder an exam is meant to push and challenge. It is a map with the borders but hazy un-inked cloudinesses given Rorschach blots from the stains of the students who learn through suffering. Well, perhaps not all that, but it is meant to apply the lessons taught. So I shrugged off these comments.
And then, after giving the last test of the day, a tiny little boy, Onguene, approached me smiling, I asked him if he thought the exam was easy. He smiled and said, "No, it was a very good exam; I failed." There was my epiphany. Somehow the students were judging the exam's quality rather than its efficacy to actually perform an examination. I wondered why this was, and in the dark of my pocket of consciousness, I decided that it is because I am not severe enough. On Friday, I walked into class, to minutes after the whistle, (the bell is broken) I took attendance and counted as absent all who were not there. Then I made them clear their desks of everything not related to English class. I then wrote the date on the board and a clearly articulated theme. I admitted to them that it was probably my fault as well as theirs (le desordre est commun mais l'echec est individuel) and will now no longer believe them when they tell me that they understand. Also, I now link a common question to each lesson with a variety of responses I have always done this, but now I make them write it down. I decided on this because after asking, every day, last week "how did you come to school today" I had a depressing number who failed to answer with any coherence. And I also am returning to something that I did at the beginning of the year. I go around and force them to ask each other in small groups.
And so we shall see if change occurs. For after all, if Stephen eventually epiphanied himself into one if the greatest novels ever written, "Ulysses," wherein might I?
I realize that little this post covered hardly anything, but I did little but go back and forth to school. At the coffeeshop last night, June jokingly said "O, there're no comics from your mom today, eh?" to which I silently flourished a new envelope from out of my pocket. And after making everyone admire the stamps of hot air balloons, we shared the comics and laughter elicited from them. The best, a drops Hagar the Horrible which finds our hero and his perpetually underfed sidekick locked in manacles in a prison. They resign themselves to their fate and decide at that point that all they can do is shake their chains and sing Jingle Bells. (the connections with my tesching the same song to students are delicious apropos of Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" and the link between state correctional institutions.
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