Funishment

Been a few weeks so it’s about time for an update of sorts. This next week is midterms, so the last week or so of classes have just been review sessions. We’ll see how well the kids do; my guess is that some will do very well, and others very poorly.

Still no water in the well, things were going better with getting kids to help me go to the pump, and then the last week or so they got a lot worse. As I’ve said before, my students are like 12, and 12 isn’t the most reliable age, so I get why they never show when they say they will.

The other thing to consider though is how annoying being at the pump can be. There is always a long line of women and girls waiting to get water, especially now that people’s wells are going dry. Then you’ve got to think about when the line/wait is best, which is inversely related to what time of day it is and how hot it is out.

Since I am 1.) a male, 2.) a teacher, and 3.) a guest in the community they typically let me cut towards the front of line, so I usually only wait for ~30 minutes to get water instead of an hour.

I don’t really have a problem waiting, but if they’re going to offer to fill my water up sooner I’m not about to turn it down, especially because I don’t exactly have “free time” during the week and I’m typically trying to get home to start dinner before it gets dark (the power’s been regularly going out between 5 and 9 every night, so I try to make dinner before 7 so I can see what I’m doing).

What does annoy me, however, is when my buckets are next up and some maman come pushing through, moves my buckets, and elbows her bassine in under the pump. Last time I went to the pump this happened twice, at which point I took my buckets and started to leave to go to the pump in the next village over, where there is typically no line since they have a lot more pumps.

This, however, is sort of embarrassing for the community whenever I go to another village to get water. This set off an argument between the women who are in charge of the pump and the maman who elbowed in, which restored my position.

Anyways, life is hot, I spend my days sprawled on the concrete floor praying for a breeze, and my evening sweating in my bed praying for the electricity to come back on so my fan will work. Here’s the approximate weather for my village http://www.accuweather.com/en/bj/ouesse/32722/weather-forecast/32722

Funishment

I’ve gotten tired of punishing the kids. It’s just too frustrating and a waste of time to spend a quarter of my class waiting for them to be quiet or behaving. In the last month my walking out on classes has increased, so has my putting the entire class on the ringer.

I recently made a girl cry. My class was right after math class, and a lot of students were doing their math homework during my class for some reason. Which makes no sense because it was AFTER math class, not before, and after my class there is a three-hour break.

Anyways, it was the end of class; I had already told them 3-4 times that I didn’t want to see their math notebooks, and I was in the midst of doing a collective yelling because none of them were doing the activity I put up on the board, and that’s when I saw her doing her math assignment under her desk. So I grabbed the notebook, threw it out of the classroom, asked her why she was doing her math, and said that I was going to stand there waiting until she answered me. She did not answer me, I was stubborn for a few minutes and then just walked out.

Instead of the typical go stand in the corner/go stand in the sun/get on your knees at the board I’ve been trying to work in new techniques to get the right behavior. I already reward kids who do exhibit model behavior with either candy or bonus points. I recently started making troublemakers either my permanent board erasers, I’ve also started making them write things on the board with either their left hand, or write on the board with only their pointer, middle and ring fingers.

My next step is going to be making them sing, “I Fought the Law” for some amount of time. I would also like to work in words and phrases like “wimp,” “weakling,” and “you’re a lot shorter than I thought you were” when interacting with them. As part of this plan I will have to continue growing out my facial hair.

On a semi-related note, my biggest regret is teaching one of my classes “[student’s name], you’ve got some ‘splaining to do” in a Ricky Ricardo accent. It’s like I’m stuck in a bizarre episode of “I Love Lucy” for four hours every week.

Projects Updates

All of my projects have made some progress since my last update. The girls’ sports club recently scrimmaged some boys in a soccer match. They lost 5 to 0, but I considered it progress. We’re getting between 15-20 girls to come regularly, so that is good. They’re very enthusiastic, which is also good.

Our English Club at school is kind of stuck in a rut right now; it’s been a couple of weeks since we’ve had a real solid meeting I would say. We usually have 10-15 kids there, but it’s hard to find something new to do every week. Also Friday after their last classes is probably a bad time to do the club, but it’s the only time we’ve been given. My homologue really wants the kids to learn “We Are the World,” which yes, is seven minutes long. If you haven’t listened to We Are the World lately I’ll give you my quick impressions. While there are a lot of good moments, Huey Lewis, Cyndi Lauper, and Bob Dylan all come to mind; there is only one person who really steals the show. That person is Bruce Springsteen, who absolutely kills it during his solo, total slaying.

Of all the projects going on I’d say I’m most pleased with what’s been happening with the school garden. We recently got lettuce, cabbage and carrots to plant (what what vegetables). Also the fence I’ve been pushing for has finally been built, so now people hopefully will stop running on the garden and no one will steal the produce.

Finally, the big project, the school classrooms project, finally had its first meeting. So we had a local builder, who also happens to be a parent, come out and make an estimate, and then took it to the parents association to talk a little bit about it.

There had been some miscommunication between me and the director about what kind of classrooms they wanted, I thought they wanted the cheapest option available, but they would like to have actual classrooms. Which I actually understand and am not really going to fight, since I think the school is kind of looked down upon in the area since they don’t have any real classrooms.

All things considered I think the estimate was actually quite favorable though, and as long as the parents association and school are serious about contributing (which they repeatedly said they were), it shouldn’t be a problem I think to put it all together.

The most difficult part of the meeting for me, however, was that how it happened was the school administration, the parents’ association leadership, and I gathered together. And then a copy of the estimate was passed around (this was the first time I had actually seen a paper copy of it), and then after about a minute of opening remarks the school director asked me to talk about the estimate.

This is actually something I’ve noticed a lot here, if you’re having a conversation with somebody and they propose like a topic or a point to talk about, it is the other person’s responsibility to first talk about it. I notice this weekly at the department meetings where the chair will think up something and then immediately ask me to speak about it, and often times it’s not clear what they are really asking you to comment about.

So anyways, they hand if off to me to then go over the estimate in French that I had just been handed, and then talk a little bit about what I think needs to be done and by when for us to be able to move forward with the project. The good news is that we were immediately able to find a couple of thousand of dollars in savings, and it was made clear that the community was going to have to pull their weight and that I wouldn’t just magically find the money to pay for everything.

We’ll see where it goes I guess, I’ve got what I need to get started on my part.

That’s all for now, I’m going to try and put up another post in the next week or two showing what my house looks like now that it’s all furnished and set and what not.