Whistle While You Work

10 December 2010

“I missed not working and I felt the death loneliness that comes at the end of every day that is wasted in your life.” - Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

At last I am free to break from the pressure of the suffocating workload I have been becoming accustomed to and come up for a few breaths of fresh air. I’m not sure what I anticipated when I volunteered for the Peace Corps, I certainly imagined there would be difficulties. I think I envisioned they would be of a different sort, however. I thought I would be learning to live without electricity, suffering through too many quiet hours to myself, boredom like I’d never known before. I guess I believed that the students would be mesmerized by my presence and so appreciative that they’d behave somehow differently than children normally do.

We have passed the six month point and some days I can hardly believe it. Home feels like such a familiar place in my mind but the thought of going back there at some point a year from now seems strange. Walking into the world of technology, skyscrapers, paved roads, running water, filled with so many apathetic individualists seems overwhelming. The world of restaurants, movie theaters, rollercoasters, and so many luxuries my students can’t even wrap their minds around.

Contrary to what I’d pictured, the real challenges have been far simpler such as the insane amount of work that teachers have here. When I first got here I did not understand why more students didn’t dream of becoming teachers as so many youngsters do back home but now I understand that it is hardly a glamorous and rarely a rewarding job to have in this country.

The first several weeks of classes in September I spent poring over the insanely dense national syllabus and combining it with the teaching program designed from the painfully lousy textbook to create a more logical schedule that I can also work thematically into a program for development. The past few weeks I have been teaching AIDS prevention and nutrition in my classes, for example. I plan to also teach about politics and democracy, sanitation and disease prevention, budgeting and saving, the environment, human rights and more. With this kind of agenda before me my impact feels far deeper than if I just taught English grammar 15 hours a week.

Due to the horrendous amount of bureaucratic work that is associated with the end of each sequence (half a trimester), we began testing about 4 weeks into school. That means I have to write tests for all 4 of my levels, then correct all 278 of them, most of which have some incomprehensible composition I must try to make sense of and evaluate fairly. Once the tests are corrected we have to average all the students’ grades, fill out several forms associated and then sign out the report cards while on the campus and fill in each one by hand with the students rote grade, the weight of the class in their studies, the weighted average, and then a remark based on their score. I was given the work of class master at my school even though Peace Corps encouraged us to refuse to do it because it doesn’t correspond well with our trainings out of town and is a lot of work we weren’t really trained to do. Given, though, that there are 13 teachers at my school and 13 classes, it would seem rather bizarre to exclude myself from a responsibility that every other teacher has, and it would also mean doubling someone else’s work. Thus, yesterday, for the second time in 3 months, I spent 6 hours in my living room calculating averages for all the subjects for my class of 54, giving them once again a remark based on their overall work, calculating the class average as a whole, and then ranking each student in the class. All things we have been using computers to accomplish in the States since before I was even in Kindergarten. Thank God I complained so much and threw a mini fit when I was originally assigned the biggest class in all the lycee.

So, this morning I will finally take my report cards into school, do a few minor corrections and walk back home in the mindset of my 3 week vacation being underway. On Sunday we head out for Kribi, a tourist hotspot on the beach that promises to be beautiful, at least somewhat relaxing, and to serve up delicious seafood. On the way home I will meet up with Claude in Yaounde, recover my package filled with much longed-for spices and clothes from the PC headquarters where I will perhaps use the uber luxurious washing machine and take a hot shower, then travel with Claude to visit friends and my host family in Bafia, where I had my training. The thought of all the free time I have to enjoy my surroundings for the first time really since arriving here is utterly blissful, and I’m very excited to have some quality time with my boyfriend where I’m not running off to work or too busy grading homework and planning lessons to pay much attention to him.

Other than the workload I have found that the biggest challenges are in dealing with things like seeing my neighbor beat her 2 young children mercilessly with a tree branch while they fall to the ground in their attempt to run away screaming. Yesterday a girl was beat at school, something I had not yet come across here. I initially thought I should just ignore it but to my own surprise I went right into the Discipline Master’s office and asked him what was going on. I told him right away that I didn’t approve of it and that it was illegal but that was really my first reaction from the shock and anger I was feeling. I headed toward the Principal’s office immediately to take it up with him but he was out and that allowed me a few minutes in the teacher’s lounge to blow off steam before I again approached the Discipline Master and spoke to him rationally about my concerns.

Our conversation was frustrating. At first I was trying to give him courtesy and respect by allowing him to finish his thoughts, but then I noticed that each time I tried to speak he had more to say. It occurred to me that my allowing him to silence me wasn’t going to get me anywhere so I finally insisted he let me finish. I know I made no impact on him whatsoever with my little speech on how even a child who may have stolen money from her parents has rights and how the Cameroonian government outlawed corporal punishment for good reasons. He even gave me a little tap on the butt to demonstrate where they hit the kids reminding me as well how inappropriate it is for a grown man to be hitting a little girl in the same way.

Despite all that, I did understand where he was coming from to some extent and I tried to rationalize that it is not a frequent thing at my school so at least they seem to be reserving it as the harshest form of punishment. Perhaps if some of the seriously delinquent children that I went to school with had gotten a red buttocks every now and then at school they would’ve straightened up a bit. He said a student that is too wayward needs a serious wake up call so as not to become later a threat to society.

Many of the kids here are essentially raising themselves. Their parents are in the bigger cities and come back here only occasionally. In the light of all that it stands to reason that the school stepping in to align children better and fill the gap their parents leave in their absence makes sense. In a land free of law suits, rampant accusations of pedophilia, and where people look at everyone’s children as their own, it is difficult to form a solid argument against their case. It still gives me a bad taste in my mouth but hell, my grandmother was beat, my mother and father, and they turned out alright. I certainly feel that the beatings are too brute, especially when given by an angry parent, even so emotionally charged that the parent seems out of control. In that way I cannot stomach it. Yet, after the event yesterday and my conversation with him, I actually did feel calmer, I did see his point of view. That doesn’t mean I condone it or like it but I accept that not everything here can be as progressive as things back home and in a country where government is another word for corruption, where people find democracy to be a joke, it’s also a joke when you come out preaching to them about what is illegal.

My lungs have been seriously suffering in the last month and a half as the rainy season came to an abrupt halt and the dry season has started kicking up dust reminiscent of the Grapes of Wrath. I was happy to hear that Christine is suffering the very same symptoms that I went to the clinic for; the dust must be responsible.

I spent Thanksgiving with she and Claude at her house, we had a meatless meatloaf (way more delicious than it may sound), lumpy mashed potatoes (anyone wanna send me a potato masher?), and banana bread. Now that I have a loaf pan and a good understanding of the Dutch oven I have been baking loads of cornbread and banana bread for all the neighbors who’ve given me loads of things since I’ve been here.

I have so many other things I could add but, it’s simply too much and I should really heat up my bath water and get my day started so I can be on time to meet Christine at the bank this afternoon. Happy holidays back home! 2011- wow! Didn’t I just graduate high school??!!