So this Africa...

I was going to start this post by giving a hard time to those of you who have been harassing me to write a blog (Aunt BJ, mom, dad), then I read the last one and realized how long it’s been ha ha. 

The most I can say about how things have changed since the last post is that life is really becoming normal here.  Most of the time I think this is a good thing, other times I worry that the insanity is now my normal.  It’s hard to know where to start, animal stories, people stories, school stories, culture stories, the list goes on.  For the Morrison side of my family I will write a post devoted to animal stories, I’ll give you a hint though; foot-sized scorpions, cobras, people eating ants, monkeys, alligators, oodles of lizards, awesome bright green snakes…  Obviously other people can read it too, I just think the Morrison fam will enjoy it more than anyone else ha ha.  Okay, I guess the best place to begin would be to say that I am living in a totally crazy, backwards place.  American reality doesn’t make sense here, it’s like speaking Chinese to an English speaking 5 year old.  Or Temne to a 25 year old American, oh wait that’s exactly what’s happening.  There are times when the craziness of this place makes me wonder about my own sanity.  Having said this, I must also say that I have ever been happier with what I’m doing or where I am.  So far this place is everything I imagined and then some.  On my worst day, and I’ve had some insanely bad days, you could not pay me enough to leave this place, this is really saying something since I’m living on next to nothing, ha ha.  Now that I’ve made it clear that I am happy here and really love this place, let me tell you about my life.  In.  Africa. 

I am writing this by candlelight after charging my computer for a few hours at a charging station, about a 5 minute walk from my house.  I have begun to trust people very quickly out of necessity.  I leave my most valuable possessions with strangers, and come back hours later and pay them less than 50 cents for charging (and not stealing) my things.  Yeah, just think about that for a second.  Back to candlelight, it’s kinda awesome, not much more to say about it.  Batteries needed for lanterns cost too much so I have candles.  Oh and don’t worry I’ve become very Sierra Leonean in that I take every opportunity to take my friends used bottles home to use as candle holders… I don’t know if that’s weird any more…. Awkward…

Today I finished grading my students’ final exams!!!  I can’t describe the mixed emotions involved.  Ha ha, grading is torture in a way, but I get really in to it.  I find myself cheering for my students as I grade, out loud…  I am happy and proud to announce that there was a very noticeable improvement in all of my classes compared to the midterm results!!!  I can just imagine people reading this in America thinking, yeah ok whatever, BUT I have been working my ass off trying to reach these girls.  I haven’t really talked about what I’m facing on the blog I guess so let me explain.  I am teaching 4 classes from forms (grades) 1 and 2, my students are between 12 and 16.  The first 2-3 weeks of my form 1 classes were devoted to teaching how to sound out words.  I am teaching language arts in a country where the national language is English.  Their success in every subject in contingent on their understanding and ability in English, no pressure.  Don’t worry though the national syllabus that I am supposed to be following is years ahead of anything my girls can handle.  

I’d just like to say, teaching is seriously hard.  I’m not kidding, it’s REALLY hard, but it’s amazing when you can see they understand something, or when you can see their improvement.  For example, there is this one girl in one of my classes who is obviously smart, but she’s terrible, she makes my class so much harder and can have the WORST attitude.  Well a few weeks ago I was teaching reading comprehension, for some reason my students in form 2 can read, but they take no meaning from the words they read.  Anyway, I wrote a simple paragraph from a story on the chalk board along with some easy questions about the paragraph.  I’m not exaggerating I had to walk them through it in a way you would never expect necessary.  Well this one, terrible, girl suddenly got it.  She was so excited and proud that she could find the answers inside the paragraph, I hope I never forget how happy it made me, granted 2 seconds later I had to threaten to throw her out of the class because she was trying to give the girls around her the answers.

Finding ways to discipline my classes and get them to respect me has been one of my biggest challenges.  Corporal punishment is just a reality here.  There’s no getting around it.  It’s in the home, it’s at school, according to many people here (and I do mean Sierra Leoneans) beating and flogging is the only way to teach African children, as if they are different than white kids.  Obviously I don’t beat my students, but the other teachers do, not easy to see and hear day after day.  That’s one of the things I’m here for though, to prove that you can get results without corporal punishment, it’s a whole Peace Corps thing, you don’t tell them what to do you show them the results of an alternative.  ANYWAY, when most of the other teacher beat them it’s hard to convince kids to listen to you when they know you won’t physically hurt them.  I can now, very proudly, say that through many manipulative competitions and behavioral peer-pressure scenarios I have my classes in as much control as any of the Sierra Leonean teachers, and I am still a safe place to my students.  Sorry if it sounds like I’m bragging, but I’m very proud that on some level the last 3 months have been successful.  

I guess since I’ve already talked as much as I have about school I’ll continue.  I was able to get almost 1000 text books donated to my school a couple months ago!  Only problem now is that they have joined the other 800 books in boxes on the library floor waiting for a place to put them.  The library at the moment consists of 8 shelves divided between the 10 different subjects taught at the school.  We really, really, need the books that are sitting in boxes right now.  What’s the problem you ask?  Well, most of the teachers at my school don’t currently understand how to use a library well, and don’t really understand the need for a library that is accessible to both students and teachers.  Let me just remind you, my teachers don’t have computers, know how to use the internet or how to google something, they use the outdated school encyclopedia if they want to check something.    Inside the boxes we have enough copies of text books that every student could have their own or share with one other person in class, big deal since right now the only information they get is what the teacher writes on the board.  My current project is figuring out how much building bookshelves and chairs will cost to make the library useable, then I will be asking around (possibly to you wonderful people) for the relatively small funds needed to give my girls a leg up.

The most important thing I can say about teaching is that I have come to really love my students, don’t get me wrong I still call them evil in my head daily, they constantly surprise and impress me.  They are so smart, but they aren’t being giving a chance to succeed.  They are growing up in a place where girls education comes after selling in the market, doing chores at the house and taking care of younger siblings.   Girls education is expensive here, not just because of school fees, but because of the money lost by them not being in the house, selling for the family or getting married young, sending a girl child to school here is a very real sacrifice for the family.   You might have guessed or already known, but I’m teaching at an all-girls school.  It kills me to look at how much the numbers of students drop as they increase in level.  It is awful to look at these girls who are so smart, have so much to say, have more personality then most people I’ve ever met, and know that less than half will graduate our equivalent of middle school.  I MIGHT have 1 or 2 girls who will make it to university, out of over 100.  On the bright side I get to see a side of them that most don’t.  Because it is an all-girls school they are as loud and obnoxious and insane as they should be.  In most parts of Sierra Leone women and girls defer to the men or boys in the room, makes it difficult to see who they really are or know what they really think.  My girls are not quiet, they are hellish and obnoxious, and I wouldn’t trade it.  Once a week we have something called, Language and Debate Society, it’s an opportunity for the girls to debate, and they LOVE it.  Because they enjoy it so much I am going to try to tart a debate club for them next term, I’m really excited about this, I think they will love it.  I want them to have a voice and I want them to have opinions and I want them to have the strength to stand up to and leave a man who beats them (terrifyingly and deadly common here), it might not have too much to do with Language Arts, but that is what I want for my girls, to be able to handle what will unfortunately be most of their realities in the future.

On a brighter note I would like to point out, mostly to my dad and my uncles, that of the teachers at school the only ones, other than me, who DO NOT beat the students are the Catholic nuns. Yes, I am working in a Catholic school… and I hang out with the nuns in the convent about once a week… and they’re some of my best friends here…  Sorry dad, I’ve gone to the dark side, not in the super religious way, just in the liking nuns way.  I’m sorry.