In case you missed last weeks' post, I'm working on a series of posts entitled So You Want to Build a School Library? wherein I give a behind-the-scenes glimpse of my work at the Lycee de Dibi library. Last week, I discussed the "origin story" of the library project. This week, we'll be going through the "motivation" phase -- in this case, two literacy conferences I attended in August and September. The first was a part of our larger MST conference here in Cameroon from August 22-24. The second was a two week long literacy conference in Uganda that included attendees from 11 different Peace Corps countries, and took place from August 29-September 9. Both meant to highlight the importance of literacy, and how to encourage literacy and reading culture in our countries and at our posts.
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Step 2: Motivation. or, the months of August and September
Monday, 22 August 2016
The room is silent. Everyone’s eyes are closed as I read a description of a house from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The kind of house you never seem to come to the end of; a room with only a wardrobe and a dead bluebottle on the windowsill; rooms filled with books, stairs that lead up and down, a room with a suit of armour, walls lined with pictures. I finish, and have them open their eyes. “What sort of person do you think this house belongs to?” I ask. A counterpart raises his hand. “It belongs to an alcoholic!” he declares confidently. The room bursts into laughter. I was prepared for a lot of responses, but I admit this wasn’t one of them. “What makes you think that?” I prompt. “Because there was a blue bottle in the windowsill,” he explains.
I ask them to draw something that they had visualised as I was reading. The room is surprisingly quiet, though the quiet is occasionally punctured with quiet bouts of chatter, hushed laughs and shaking heads as they quietly bemoan their artistic abilities. Two people share drawings based on the line about it being a house that one never seems to come to the end of — one draws a maze, and the other draws a long, never-ending hallway. “Now, we all listened to the same passage,” I say. “But we have here two drawings, based on the same passage, the same line, even — and they look completely different. Interesting, isn’t it?”
Saturday, 27 August
It’s 7:00 in the morning, and our car leaves at 8:00.
“Hey, Tressa,” I say. “Did you ever get your passport from Sally?”
“No,” she says. “I had mine already from when I visited my sisters in London.”
“Shit,” I say.
Saturday, 27 August
“Hello, this is the captain speaking again. Our landing will be delayed due to presidential activity. …also, the radar in Nairobi has stopped working.”
Saturday, 4 September
I’m sitting in a Ugandan classroom. The room is filled to bursting — PCVs and Peace Corps staff take up about 15 desks, and around 75 Ugandan students fill the remaining 10 at the back of the room. It’s windy, and the wind whips through windows whose panes have long since shattered, if they ever had panes at all. The walls are dusty, smudged with dirt and chalk markings, the remnants of a phonics lesson from who knows when.
A row of timid-looking primary schoolers line the front of the classroom. They stare straight ahead, or else look at their feet. Many of them are swamped in their uniforms — their little arms are swallowed in short sleeves that stop at the elbow, skirts rolled up to keep their hems at the appropriate length. Some of them stand with their chests stuck out, looking out the window as if they don’t care. But they do care — they so badly want to win.
A man calls out: “Number 2! Your word is: accountable.”
The students in the back collectively gasp. This one is a tough one. Number two swallows.
“Accountable. A-C-C-O-U-N-T-A-B-L-E.”
She takes a step back into line.
“Attitude.” “Adorable.” The back of the class whispers, “Attitude! Attitude.” Each word is followed by a whispered chorus from the back three rows. Some trying it out themselves, translating it into patois, or guessing at definitions. Spellers can tell if they spelled the word correctly or not based on how loud the clapping is. Cheers mean it’s right; polite clapping means it’s wrong.
I watch a tiny P4 named Jaqueline spell out “affectionate” and “commendable”. She stands at maybe 4 feet tall. She’s very popular — everyone loves an underdog, and she’s beat out students 3 levels above her. It comes down to a draw between her and another student. She takes “access,” and the other takes “agility”. They are both tripped up by “government”. It’s a close race, but tiny Jacqueline wins on “captivate” when her competitor misses “cautious”. The applause is deafening.
Monday, September 5
Over 100 people from 11 different countries stand in a circle at a Primary Teachers Training College (PTC) in Uganda. Together, they sing a song in 4-part harmony: We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Tuesday, September 6
We are visited by Ugandan author Asiimwe Deborah Kawe. She is a beautiful speaker, and I'm sure she is an equally beautiful writer. She speaks about many things, in particular the importance of telling your own story. And in telling us this, she told us one of her own childhood stories. A story about performing the ekyevugo, a traditional Western Ugandan call-and-response poem. A call-and-response poem performed exclusively by men. A poem many men fear to perform, such is its complexity, its significance -- weddings could be postponed for a poor performance.
And she was in seventh grade.
She is in seventh grade, and she asks her teacher to allow her to perform this poem. No, he tells her. Ask your brother to perform it. I will not teach it to you. But she persists. She refuses to accept refusal. And he relents. If you get permission from your parents, he says. If you get their permission, I will teach it to you.
And of course, she doesn't. She smiles as she lets us in on that secret -- I knew my mother would say no, and so I didn't ask. I returned the next day, and my teacher asked me, did you get permission from your mother? And I told him, yes. Not, she adds hastily, that I am encouraging you to lie to your parents. But that is what I did.
And so the day of the performance comes. This tenacious Ugandan girl walks on stage in traditional dress -- the crowd is silent, at first. They stare. And they wait. And they wait. And they wait.
Her throat goes dry. All of her practice, all of her work, all of her temerity and bravery -- it is swallowed in this silence. She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. The words have flown away.
This silence, this horrible lack of sound, is punctured by the only thing worse than the quiet -- laughter. Her cheeks burn as the laughter swells around her. Desperately, she seeks her parents out in the crowd. Her mother is covering her face in shame, but her father meets her gaze. Her father meets her gaze, and slowly raises a hand. He beckons to her -- come on, now.
This motion pulls the words from her lips. The words ring out in the hall -- and the words are met with silence. A call and response with no response. She swallows, and repeats the line. Silence.
And then a voice. A response. Her father, again, throwing her a lifeline. She moves on to the next line, and he continues with her. Her voice grows stronger, her back straightens, her words fill the room, demanding that the audience respond, demanding the respect due to her. And in the middle of an ocean of words, a sea of sound, her father is an anchor. She is a pioneer, sailing the seas of "why not?" Why not allow girls to perform the ekyevugo? Why not allow girls, like boys, to sign up to perform without requiring their parents' permission? Why not?
From that day on, she tells us, her words commanding the room just as they had when she was a girl, nobody at that school dared to tell another girl what she could or could not do.
Wednesday, September 7
We sit with 5 PTC student-teachers in a circle under a mango tree. It’s hot oustide, but the tree is shady and there’s a breeze, so it’s not so bad. I have a full mug of tea — spiced, with milk — but before I can take my second sip, the wind drops a clump of pollen flowers into it. Aww, tea.
I read The Lorax to my students — my students, who next year will have students of their own. My students, who hold the fate of tomorrow's students in their hands. Today’s lesson is on analysis, and how to teach students to apply the texts they read to the outside world. I came prepared with discussion questions, terrified as all teachers are of dead silence, but with the first question — what did you think of the Lorax? — they were off, discussing environmental degradation, making comparisons between Uganda and the world of the Once-ler, discussing the dangers of pollution and climate change. My examples, discussion questions, the article I so carefully copied out onto poster paper, the materials that I spent hours preparing are all rendered completely unnecessary, and it is wonderful.
Thursday, 8 September
It’s raining, so we’ve been forced inside. We huddle on couches, arms tucked in against the chill. The rain drips outside and thunder grumbles in the distance as Sarah tells us, “Education is not the filling of a jar, but the handling of a fire.”
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