Wow, so I've been officially at post for a whole month! I am in my own house, after 2 days in the convent turned into 2 weeks, but the renovations are completely worth the inconvenience. A brief description of my house—2 bedroom, parlor (living room), kitchen, shower room, toilet/sink room. It was mostly furnished when I arrived, very pleased about that! I had a few more things made, and I'd say it's quite comfortable now. I have a porch, and usually leave the front door open for visitors, most of which consist of the children of the teachers and staff that live on the compound. Speaking of which, I gave away most of my card games to the kids in my homestay family....so card games would be appreciated to give the kids something to do other than try to ride my bike!
I've been teaching for just over 2 weeks. I'm teaching Forms 2 and 3, the rough equivalent of 7th and 8th grade, in Chemistry, Biology, and Computers. A bit of information about the way a Cameroonian school works: Forms 1 and 2 are the junior forms, just out of grammar school. Forms 3, 4, and 5 are working towards taking the O-level GCE standardized tests. Then there is Lower 6th and Upper 6th, the “high school”, who are working towards their A-level GCE tests. Tests are EXTREMELY important here, having the impact of allowing you to move to the next grade or not, and are looked at seriously in job placement and university entrance. And they are EXTREMELY difficult, in my opinion. I can guarantee that I would not pass A-level biology at this point!
Anyway, I only have Form 3 for computers, so I'm spending most of my time with the Form 2 kids, and they are a bit of a handful, but I think I'm managing ok.
Computers—my dad and brother have both giggled at the specs of the computer lab here—64 meg of ram, 2-4 gig hard drives, most are running Windows 98. Blast from the past! But it's ok—they are configured well, so they are mostly functional. When there is power. Which has been erratic at best, and mostly absent. As is water. Fortunately, here on the school compound, we have a generator that they turn on every evening, so we can keep things charged up! Unfortunately, that doesn't help with running a computer lab during the day.
The other teachers are very nice, and have been helpful in easing me into the situation here. I don't have much responsibility at this point outside of teaching, so I have a bit of time on my hands to get used to being here and just living! I'm hoping to take on some more projects during the next terms, but I'm grateful for now to not feel much pressure or stress.
Most of the other teachers have asked what I've been doing for food....I can actually cook, a bit! Spaghetti, veggies, rice and beans....I made a sweet curried beans and rice last week that I'm going to attempt to reproduce tonight (thanks Amanda! I can get curry powder here, but the stuff you sent is WAY better! It smells stronger through the ziploc bag than the other stuff does when I stick my nose in the jar!)
I spend some time in Mamfe proper....but I try not to go too much, in an effort to integrate into the community here.
RANT: Note-taking systems. I ranted to my dad a bit about this, and he found it interesting. There is a culture here of perfectionism/conformity, or don't bother doing it. Case in point: Note-taking and pen use. In Cameroon, titles are in red pen, body is in blue, and drawings are done in pencil but labeled in pen. And if you do not have the correct writing instrument for a particular task, you DO NOT DO IT. Even if that means you do not take the notes, and do not get the information. Wow. And then throw in the fact that the pens available here are very poor quality and are constantly going out...and you have a recipe for a system that makes learning more challenging than it needed to be! In any case, I think I might start writing everything in purple, just to emphasize that the INFORMATION is more important than the format! The teachers work to emphasize the system even—I was working on my lecture notes in the staff room, and had left my blue pen back in my house (oops!), and another teacher commented on the fact that I was writing in (gasp!) red ink!
This might sound like a relatively minor issue, but it speaks to a deeper problem—lack of independent/creative/critical thinking. Examples: I gave an assignment in chemistry to write a procedure for how to prepare a saturated solution of sugar. Of the 5 students that did it, 3 copied a similar procedure (but not the correct one) directly from the textbook. In biology, I took them out onto the field one day, and gave them the assignment to find an arthropod, and make 5 observations. About 75% of the class wrote that their arthropod had compound eyes. We hadn't covered that in class yet, so they had just read in the book what facts are true about insects, and regurgitated. So, my intention is to try to do as many assignments as possible that are open-ended, creative, and thinking-based, instead of just having them say back to me what I have said to them.
Ok, that's all for now....sorry to anyone who has been hoping to skype—my internet is so slow here that I can't do that anymore. But I can still get texts! And would love to! Check the facebook for the number, or my parents, or amanda....sending love and light back towards the US, hope all is well, send ME an update on your life! Or a letter...it might get here faster than I can load an email some days!
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