Conversation with my school Director:
“You need a book?”
“Yes, more specifically the textbook—the currculum.”
--silence--
“You don’t have the text book?”
“No I was told my school will give me a curriculum.”
--Gives me a book--
--silence--
“...This is a dictionary.”
And so begins my second day at school. The resources are constantly a problem. I arrived at school on a hot day jumping off my bike—which is just is just barely too big for me so that I always end of half-falling off of it—sweat liberally pouring off my brow, to the gaping of a surprisingly small number of students. After socializing with the other professors for a while, I asked my professor if there was any chalk. He gaped, “you don’t have chalk?” Every time I ask for something, chalk, the curriculum, an eraser I’m met with a pause followed a long explanation that ends with me not getting said object. It’s a good exercise in learning to just take one day at a time, one conversation at a time and one task at a time. This is Africa!
Yesterday I came to school to check out my classrooms that I’d been teaching in. They’re pretty bare, dirt floors, rocks strewn about, unfinished walls and ceilings with cinder blocks exposed. The blackboard is a just the concrete wall with some blackboard like materials painted on top. In the middle scattered about in various levels of disrepair was a pile (no joke—a tall pile) of desks, not stacked neatly but as if I giant had come along and pick them up haphazardly and thrown them down in a pile in a juevenile fit of rage and stomped off without cleaning up. I half imagine that the last time these desks had been touched was the last day of school when the excited storm of departing students had somehow created this pile of dilapidation. What are these kids like, I thought? Some of the desks were split in half with shards of wood on the floor all covered a very very thick layer of Sahara-blown dust. I live in the Savana but sometimes the winds blows out of the north and bring big clouds of dust with it covering everything with a thick film. I turned to the member of the school administration next to me and asked him if it was my responsibility to organize the students to clean the classroom on the first day. “No! It’ll be all cleaned up by tomorrow!”
Alas, the next day I arrived and it looked as if the giant had come again during the night and smashed the pile flat. It was no longer 8 feet tall but now flat, evenly spread around the classroom, though there was a greater number of broken desks than the day before. I wiped a spot of dust away on one desk and waited for my students to arrive. About ten minutes later three students and I began class.
“Where are the others,” I asked? After much cajoling they told me that normally the first week or two is like this with few students present and even some of the teachers not arriving. As they told me this, I look up to the classroom next door, which is this case was very easy because the wall between the two adjoining classrooms has not yet been built. From that classroom a group of about twenty students stared in to our class watching and I realized that there teacher didn’t come to school and they were just sitting there because, well I’m not sure but they were just sitting there. Eventually, I invited them in and talked to both classes for a while about rules, introducing ourselves and discussing the coming year. Towards the ends I brought a map out that I brought with me from the states and asked if anyone could find Benin on the map. I was met by 25 students staring at the ground and not answering. As you can see there is such a dearth of materials and/or visual aids, that students and just as rarely the population at large ever looks at maps. I once asked my host father in Porto-Novo to point out where he lived on a map and he couldn’t do it. There’s lots of work to do. I really want to try to incorporate visual aids in to my teaching and try to get students to think more visually and critically. A big criticism of the Beninese system is that the best students it produces rarely seek to be anything more than bureaucrats. There is a lack of creative thinking.
Anyway, I had a similar experience of my next two classes and the same thing occurred of a class without a teacher watching me and inviting them in to join us once it was evident that their teacher wasn’t coming. Afterwards, I had a meeting with my school’s director and president of the Parent Teacher’s Association to form a selection committee for a girls scholarship program that I hope to start as soon as I can. There is funding available and I plan to take advantage of whatever I can find, wherever I can find it.
The level of girls education is in even more dire straits than education in general. By the end of high school fewer than 10 girls out of an initial 300-400 will pass the final high school barrier test. All the these things make me feel at once excited by the number of opportunities but at the same time daunted by the scaled of what needs to be done. I think one has to just tackle one small problem one at a time or else be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge. Other than that I feel actually quite relieved that school is starting. The first few weeks in village without anything to do have been really lonely! My village is really really small so there is little to buy and even less to do. But things are going well. Please keep writing emails! It’s been great to hear from so many people back home! Your letters help more than you’ll ever know!
