From the sartorial to the gustatory

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

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

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

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

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

CHEDDAR CHEESE 

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

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

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

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

A dance never danced

Last week I received an invitation from Oliver and Alfred to attend them at a meeting of their brotherhood, I had no idea what this might mean, but I agreed and the week passed. Sunday afternoon, I met Alfred in the early afternoon and we walked the mile to one of his farms. As near as I can tell he has one large farm and several small plots. We arrived as the trees became shaded in crepuscular greens and browns and shifting blacks, he walked across a burned hill, burned because it is now the dry season and the tall tall grasses provide opportunities for those who prefer to earn their livings by lurking in ambush and leaping out at the unsuspecting passerby. Then we slipped our way down a steep and jagged goat path before traipsing across a board that one might call a bridge if one were inclined to extend definitions of known words to their very extremes. First we admired the pigs that he keeps. They were large and very hairy, long white hairs that look simultaneously sharp and soft. I especially appreciated this moment because one of my last actions before leaving America was to attend the Turner County State fair with my grandparents and father and we admired the hogs that were there. We also admired my grandmother's prize winning photograph but alas did not admire, gustatorily, her prize winning pie. Mmmmm. Pie. Maybe there will be pie on Thanksgiving. We also looked at the plantain and banana trees. Now I have never looked closely at either but the way that they put out fruit is amazing. They shoot skyward these swollen purple rockets that then bend lazily outward and downward tugging the the stalk. After. Few days it splits open to reveal the beginnings of the fruit forming. It is spectacular. And even more alien is the fact that the purple rocket continues to stretch earthward under the arm of the formed fruit. It is hard to describe, but it sure does change the way that I think about bananas. I learned, too, that one plants plantain and banana trees in holes because they grow up and do not have an extensive root system, thus many of them are propped up on account of the displaced weight of the purple rocket.

We returned to his brother's house, who is also the chief of his village in some capacity. It can be confusing because everyone throws around the word chief with wild abandon but sartorially it concerns a hat. That much I've figured out. The meeting began with round after round of Shah, the corn beer that I am increasingly developing the palate for, and members paid their dues. It turned out, after a long time during  which it seemed like no one did anything, they gave the money to a needy member of the brotherhood. The fact that I just wrote "seemed like no one did anything" reveals how deeply American I am. For this group of men, just being in each others' presences was doing something. I find this a difficult concept realistically, I can understand the lifestyle on a philosophic level but could never live it. Well just as a was drifting in my thoughts Alfred rose with a sforzando shout and began to dance. He danced his way out the door and some other men followed. What followed was fellowship. We ate some chicken, drank some bottled beer, drank some shah. This whole time I had yet to see anything meeting like in an American sense. I guess in some way I still expect a schedule to be handed out! The brotherhood is called the M'baya. At first I thought this was the name of the village, but it turns out that it is a very specific dance and that there are dozens of such collectives that identify themselves through their dance. Unfortunately it was not danced that night because they had to go and sit with a bereaved family. This is another extraordinary example of community. When a member of the extended village family dies, people congregate at the house and stay awake until five in the morning remembering the dead and comforting the family.

So after last week's debacle of maintaing order I worried a little about what would happen, but I came out strong in all three classes with a whirlwind of grammar-changing adjectives to pronouns- and kept them distracted through Monday. And then on Tuesday, a great change occurred, I announced that we would have a test (or rather I announced the examen) on Black Friday (which I just called next Friday). And suddenly the focus was back. So this is what I think. It is not that the students have short attention spans, it is that they need something to work towards, a temporary telos against which to pit themselves. For too long they had been learning English in a nebulous vacuum, not knowing where we were heading. The date of an exam places them epistemologically and calendrically, their entire universe suddenly makes sense in a way not experienced collectively since the Julien calendar. This was a good lesson for me to learn, and one I could perhaps have reached, after all students crave syllabi at the college level, why should it be any different in middle school. Though I cannot remember having a syllabus. So much of middle school is lost in terms of the quotidian, I would very much like to sit in on a day of Christian's life in seventh grade. I seem to recall weekly schedules, though, written on the board. Yes, I think this is the way it was handled. Anyway the students immediately launched themselves into their work. Another improvement I made is an official start to class. From the beginning, when I walked in some students would stand up and some would not. I thought this a bizarre practice and would always tersely gesture them to sit down. But this week I would enter and stand at the front of the class and tell them all to rise. After they had done so I waited for them to be quite. I would then speak a few sentences in English emphasizing the grammar and vocabulary of the day before and share a very brief anecdote in French. The I told them to it down and take out their notebooks. In this way I gave more structure. I also stopped class in a more official way. I hope that this will help. They also seem to be self-policing more this week. But I will see if that continues. The culmination of this was an excellent series of dictations on Friday, but the surprise of it was that on Thursday, while I was working in the teacher's lounge, five of my best students entered about three minutes before class. They picked up my books and distributed them amongst themselves. They then gestured me to follow and began to throw imaginary flower and announce "vous etes le prince." this was strange.

Meanwhile, my mother is winning the race of sending me the most mail. I received my third letter from her today, I neglected to mention the second, but it was well received and the comics funny and the postcard of Augustus wonderfully apropos. Today's letter, like the last, arrived with four stamps bearing an image and label of South Carolina and celebrating the bicentennial with the date May 23, 1788. I can only imagine the the delight these four stamps (each worth 25 cents) offer to postal workers around the world and I like to think that they borrow the letters to take home and show their families and murmur wondrously at the eccentric south Dakotan lady who sends such bizarre mail.

Bared Palms

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

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

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

I take a test and dink some beer

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

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

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

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

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

The Legacy of a Godmother

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Teacher Inservice

It has happened, in the past, in the deep past of the duration of which my time here in Cameroon has yet elapsed, that I have attended meetings that were such an enormous waste of time that I felt my brain atrophy in an attempt to cope. Such an adaptive mechanism, while useful for survival, has rather detrimental effects with respect to socialization and personal development. It was with this experience behind me that I learned, on Tuesday, that there would be an inservice on Wednesday. Only here is how the conversation actually progressed:

I happen to be up in the English lab preparing for class. M. Oliver, with whom I recently went to lecture at his other school, comes in and announces, "tomorrow we have a meeting, I don't know when I got the letter on the fourteenth. I could not tell you because you have no cell phone."

Of course, he could have told me when we talked on Monday, or even when I spent all afternoon of the fourteenth with him, but rather it is the fault of mine for not having a cell phone. As though such reasoning is any reason at all. It is glorious to not have a phone. If I wanted to actually contact anyone I might feel differently, but as the person I usually most want to talk to is myself, there is no need for a phone. At receiving this piece of news, I had to at once replan my day. I could still have the lesson plan, but I needed to revise my idea for Wednesday and come up with some homework. This I did, and was pleased at my students' regret that I would not be in class Wednesday.

Part of the problem had now been solved. I still, though, had no idea where this mysterious meeting was going to be. I asked Oliver when he was going to go, and he declared sometime after his courses "after all, these things never start on time, it is Africa." I wanted to be there at the start time of eight, though. Well at last I found Rev. Beson who was going at 8.30. Since this was the earliest I could find, we went. And would you believe it, the meeting had already started! This is the first time since getting to Cameroon that something started on time. I knew at once that I was in for a treat. And further, this was no run-of-the mill annual meeting, it was a full-fledged Pedagogy seminar. From 8.45 until 2 we had solid discussion and lectures. There were no breaks for the bathroom and no food or drinks provided. The latter point proved far the most contentious as all seemed to think we had been treated unfairly. But, I asked sweetly, if this is the yearly affair that you all know so well, would you not expect there to be no food or drink and thus plan accordingly?

There were three speakers. The first was a consummate teacher of Grammar who had a whole system worked out for teaching: Start by introducing the lesson, then make a presentation, then practice the presented "focus" of the day, and then evaluate. Seems pretty self-explanatory, but oophta it caused some problems. I was pleased that most of what he was saying fit nicely into the patterns I have been developing through my trial and experience. He then broke us down into groups and gave us different assignments. Our small group was to analyze a procedure for "presenting: has been...-ing...for..." and to use the imaginary situation that "a woman starts waiting for a bus at four o'clock. At five o'clock the bus comes. She's been waiting for an hour." We then had the lesson plan and had to put them in the correct order. Now it could just be that I am brilliant, but all the sentences had the keyword that the presenter had just focused on himself. Thus it was a simple matter of lining them up. But woah, my horses skidded to a halt. Another member of the group wanted to rewrite the sentences because his pedagogy was different. Hardly the way to show mastery of a topic, especially when his way would create mass confusion. And so I was in the group that was scolded for not being able to attend to a simple task. I hate group work.

1- The teacher says "she's been waiting for an hour" and asks the class to repeat it.

2- The teacher explains how the structure is formed.

3- The teacher writes the sentence on the board: She's been waiting for an hour.

4- The teacher gives other situations and examples: Another person arrived at 4.30. He's been waiting for half an hour. etc.

5- The teacher asks the class to copy the sentence.

6- The teacher asks individual students to repeat the sentence.

How did you do? (correct order: 3, 1, 6, 4, 2, 5)

One of the most interesting discussions arose from the first question wherein the group had to analyze four different methods of making presentations about comparisons. In the first, the teacher calls two students to the front of the room. In the second she draws lines on the board. In the third, she talks about random buildings in town (post office is bigger than bank) and in the fourth she draws two pictures on the board rather than lines.

Now this is exactly what I am interested in because it concerns controlling the class. The other teachers, the majority, wanted to call students to the front. I rose in grand defiance. This offers an opportunity for disruption, the other students will wonder why they were not called and think that by raising their voice they shall be chosen "next." Another said this would not happen if I could control my class (valid), but I responded that no matter what you ask the students to compare, they will make their own. Thus you are asking for students to be mocked. Perhaps the short kid you chose is seriously self-conscious about his height. Perhaps you pick a Muslim by accident and ask an offensive question. Perhaps you pick a child with long hair who is also very fat. You say this one has longer hair than that, but everyone is thinking "this one is fatter than that...Mary is fat...hahaha." I won the day and argued that the best is putting men on the board with cartoonishly large features. This is my own strategy, anyway. But since this is workshopping, it was productive to have to defend my own strategies.

The second talk concerned reading comprehension. (are you still reading? is this terribly dull for you?, o reader? next week will be more voyeuristically thrilling). This was really great because I have no idea how to do it. Unfortunately the lady with her loud yellow dress and voice (a bit of zeugma there) was quite distracting. She stood while she screamed with her belly in my nose and I rose to move when she turned her back. She completed her circle and blinked owlishly in surprise, for the head of curly hair that was formerly where the button of her belly would be had vanished.

The main points here, that I will definitely adopt, are to generate interest by having the students speak among themselves about the subject of the approaching reading. Thus, if the reading is on a birthday party, have them talk about that. Then generate a list of likely vocabulary. Then provide very simple guiding questions on the board. Following this, the learner (never student!) should read silently. And then comes a more detailed set of questions (drawing conclusions, explaining reasons, etc) and finally ask for a brief summary.

Really helpful, I think.

And after this came the business aspect of the whole affair and was to me the most frustrating, because much of my confusion could have been clarified if I had known upon my first day the information that this man related.

In every classroom, there is a blue book. I had no idea what this mysterious blue book was for for the first four weeks of school. Every once in a while, though, a student would gesture to it and in turn I would open it and nod sagely. But it turns out that this book is then sent on to the government regional pedagogy committee who reviews the various lessons and makes mysterious decisions. Now, if only I had known this at the beginning of the year. Everything would be so organized. Instead of metamorphizing into the proverbial beheaded chicken, I'd have moved fluidly through my various forms and functions of being an English teacher. But Thursday and today I made awesome entries into the blue book. I wrote the date, the time of the class, the objective, the lesson plan, and my thoughts on its success. I also noted what did not work. I also noted the homework and when it was due.

But from this information about technical aspects, I received the most astonishing piece of world-shattering news. The system here has no interest in even half the students passing. There was a question about entering grades. The lecturer wrote on the board the various levels of scores (scores here are out of 20 not 100). And it was as follows:

less than 7.5

betwen 7.5 and 8.5

between 8.5 and 10

greater than 10

So for the past weeks when I have lamented the lamentable scores of my students and been greeted with their open acclamation at what I considered egregious marks, they were actually celebrating because in some perverse way they had done well for getting close to fifty percent.

Now I must be missing something, I though, but then I entered my mid-trimester grades in the computer system. This system writes comments at the end of the line. Here is one score

9.5/20 bien assez [good enough]

a score of 19 gets an excellent, but 15 gets a very good.

And then 6.5 weak

4.5 very weak.

And henceforth I shall enter the class armed with the knowledge that I have insane standards.

Island Ho

Here is a road that does not actually exist, yet Phil found a path to drive along and soon he led us to the following picture.

Wow, what a sight. It was really overwhelmingly beautiful.
Here is an island that is not visible from shore, but once it rains, the rain falls in such a way that it juts out. On Sunday we canoed over. Look at the bird nests. These birds are crazy loud. The males build the nests to woo women birds. When these lady birds (no not the wife of a former President) show up they can either accept the domicile or ask that the man do better...elsewise she will find a different carpenter.

Guava tree. Tasty. Just split it open and suck; though the seeds kind-of hurt the teeth. Phil eats the skin, but I am not that manly.

Here we are approaching the island. See what I mean about it being hard to make out?

Even harder to make out the island here. Nice prow, eh?