Cruising Along
So, its been a month. Its the first time I’ve gotten to spend an uninterrupted month in Matameye since the first month I was dropped off there. And it was fantastic.
Things in Matameye are truly great. Friends are wonderful, work feels relatively productive, and language while not free of frustration feels respectable. And suddenly leaving seems right around the corner and I’m getting NERVOUS. Of course it’s a little premature, but hearing back from graduate schools and now needing to make a decision makes leaving suddenly very real and seemingly very soon. Too soon really. Anyway, I got into a couple schools in DC and another in NY. The jury’s still out for sure and it’s a tough choice so anyone hoping to do some recruitment better get to it as I’ve only got a couple weeks to decide.
Anyway, as I said, friends have been great. Yilli just moved to Zinder and so I got to arrange a reunion between her and Nouria for the first time in 8 months which was pretty exciting for everyone involved, namely the three of us. We basically just sat around and chatted (mostly about boys) while Yilli henna-ed Nouria’s feet and hands. Every once and a while I have to laugh at myself when I remember that my best friends here are disproportionately 16 year old girls. Oh well. They’re wonderful what can I say.
The day before I came in to Zinder I hosted a friend’s wedding party which was pretty cool, though also kind of a zoo with my house opened wide to about 100 or so people. There was music, food and some limited dancing. We also had a friends of the bride v. friends of the groom soccer game. It was all a good time. I forgot my camera cord so you’ll have to wait on the pictures, though I’m not sure how great they came out.
Workwise I spent a lot of the last week or so sifting through high school report cards. They just handed out the first semester’s report cards. I think I wrote about this last year, but its crazy how they do it. They invite all the parents and administrators and teachers (obviously not all the parents come, but a decent group who are part of the Parent of Students organization come). Then they go class to class with all these people present. They read the names of the top three students in each class, then the name of the person who was last, and then if anyone had a behavior issue they announce it to all in attendance. I practically had a panic attack just watching it. Its moderately horrifying.
I’m getting a group started for first year high school girls at risk of repeating the year or failing out. So, with report cards and grades finally calculated I went through all the first year classes (a total of around 700 students) and found all the girls who had passing grades or something even remotely close. The cut off for passing to the next year is a 9 out of 20 while the cutoff for even being allowed to repeat is 7, I took girls who had an average as low as 5. Note: don’t equate this with the American system and think that girls are passing with a 45% mark, a 10 is probably like a B or B+ in the US. The school system here is just ridiculously hard on top of many students’ levels being low. Anyway, I came up with a list of maybe 90 girls. Then I went through each of these 90 girls’ files to search for girls who had come from the surrounding villages to school and give them priority. I found five.
I was pretty shocked. They probably started the year with about 100 or 150 girls from surrounding villages and I could only find five who had a semester average of 5 or higher… What I’d heard people say, but never truly appreciated until looking it in the face was that many girls come from the bush and stay for a week or even a month. But they’re not really here to study. They come hoping to get married. Or if they do come to study, the distance of commuting from their villages takes its toll and they abandon quickly. I’m kicking myself for not having started this at the beginning of the school year… Hindsight is whatever it is I suppose.
In the end I added another 7 girls to the 5 by choosing girls whose fathers weren’t professionals, ie. farmers, mechanics, or drivers. Even that was difficult to find. Basically all girls successful in school have parents who are professionals or “funcionaires”. Now that its done I’m pretty excited. I’m working with another lady who works on girls education issues at the primary school level and we’re going to arrange a number of programs for the girls ranging from women and girls’ health to empowerment, to study skills, to money management. I’m actually going to be directly tutoring them once or twice a week, which should be interesting as I teach French, English, and Math to a group of girls who effectively only speak Hausa. It’ll be a challenge but I’m really excited about it. I’m also planning to bring the group to Zinder for an overnight trip in a couple months to visit the professional schools here and also hopefully just to have some fun.
I’ve also been trying to get the high school’s computer set up so that its running smoothly. A lot harder than you’d think. I’ve had to repair this damn computer and its printer about 5 times already. I’m training a number of teachers on how to use it and we got a small lock box set up for contributions to cover future repairs and ink purchases. Its not my favorite activity but computer literacy is atrocious here and it is just so necessary. Of course its also cool (if not sometimes frustrating) getting to teach the 60 year old secretary/typist how to use a computer for the first time in her life (feel like I wrote about that before… oh well, I just have fear of repeating myself). I’ll just say that it requires patience though, we take for granted simple things like pointing and clicking… Don’t even get me started on the frustration that double-clicking brings to my life. But bit by bit it comes, and so… More often than not patience is rewarded.
In other news. Road-warrior Ian is on his way from Ghana. He’s in the middle of a 24 hour bus ride as I write this from Togo to Niamey, then about an 8 hour break before the 15 hour trip to Zinder. BADASS. Pumped though. Its gonna be great. Alright, I promise pictures next time.
That’s really it for the moment. My head is filled simultaneously with thoughts of grad school and with growing nostalgia about my time here. Again, there’s time left, four months, but its flown by so fast I’m afraid to blink for fear I’ll wake up back in the U.S. before saying my goodbyes.
Things in Matameye are truly great. Friends are wonderful, work feels relatively productive, and language while not free of frustration feels respectable. And suddenly leaving seems right around the corner and I’m getting NERVOUS. Of course it’s a little premature, but hearing back from graduate schools and now needing to make a decision makes leaving suddenly very real and seemingly very soon. Too soon really. Anyway, I got into a couple schools in DC and another in NY. The jury’s still out for sure and it’s a tough choice so anyone hoping to do some recruitment better get to it as I’ve only got a couple weeks to decide.
Anyway, as I said, friends have been great. Yilli just moved to Zinder and so I got to arrange a reunion between her and Nouria for the first time in 8 months which was pretty exciting for everyone involved, namely the three of us. We basically just sat around and chatted (mostly about boys) while Yilli henna-ed Nouria’s feet and hands. Every once and a while I have to laugh at myself when I remember that my best friends here are disproportionately 16 year old girls. Oh well. They’re wonderful what can I say.
The day before I came in to Zinder I hosted a friend’s wedding party which was pretty cool, though also kind of a zoo with my house opened wide to about 100 or so people. There was music, food and some limited dancing. We also had a friends of the bride v. friends of the groom soccer game. It was all a good time. I forgot my camera cord so you’ll have to wait on the pictures, though I’m not sure how great they came out.
Workwise I spent a lot of the last week or so sifting through high school report cards. They just handed out the first semester’s report cards. I think I wrote about this last year, but its crazy how they do it. They invite all the parents and administrators and teachers (obviously not all the parents come, but a decent group who are part of the Parent of Students organization come). Then they go class to class with all these people present. They read the names of the top three students in each class, then the name of the person who was last, and then if anyone had a behavior issue they announce it to all in attendance. I practically had a panic attack just watching it. Its moderately horrifying.
I’m getting a group started for first year high school girls at risk of repeating the year or failing out. So, with report cards and grades finally calculated I went through all the first year classes (a total of around 700 students) and found all the girls who had passing grades or something even remotely close. The cut off for passing to the next year is a 9 out of 20 while the cutoff for even being allowed to repeat is 7, I took girls who had an average as low as 5. Note: don’t equate this with the American system and think that girls are passing with a 45% mark, a 10 is probably like a B or B+ in the US. The school system here is just ridiculously hard on top of many students’ levels being low. Anyway, I came up with a list of maybe 90 girls. Then I went through each of these 90 girls’ files to search for girls who had come from the surrounding villages to school and give them priority. I found five.
I was pretty shocked. They probably started the year with about 100 or 150 girls from surrounding villages and I could only find five who had a semester average of 5 or higher… What I’d heard people say, but never truly appreciated until looking it in the face was that many girls come from the bush and stay for a week or even a month. But they’re not really here to study. They come hoping to get married. Or if they do come to study, the distance of commuting from their villages takes its toll and they abandon quickly. I’m kicking myself for not having started this at the beginning of the school year… Hindsight is whatever it is I suppose.
In the end I added another 7 girls to the 5 by choosing girls whose fathers weren’t professionals, ie. farmers, mechanics, or drivers. Even that was difficult to find. Basically all girls successful in school have parents who are professionals or “funcionaires”. Now that its done I’m pretty excited. I’m working with another lady who works on girls education issues at the primary school level and we’re going to arrange a number of programs for the girls ranging from women and girls’ health to empowerment, to study skills, to money management. I’m actually going to be directly tutoring them once or twice a week, which should be interesting as I teach French, English, and Math to a group of girls who effectively only speak Hausa. It’ll be a challenge but I’m really excited about it. I’m also planning to bring the group to Zinder for an overnight trip in a couple months to visit the professional schools here and also hopefully just to have some fun.
I’ve also been trying to get the high school’s computer set up so that its running smoothly. A lot harder than you’d think. I’ve had to repair this damn computer and its printer about 5 times already. I’m training a number of teachers on how to use it and we got a small lock box set up for contributions to cover future repairs and ink purchases. Its not my favorite activity but computer literacy is atrocious here and it is just so necessary. Of course its also cool (if not sometimes frustrating) getting to teach the 60 year old secretary/typist how to use a computer for the first time in her life (feel like I wrote about that before… oh well, I just have fear of repeating myself). I’ll just say that it requires patience though, we take for granted simple things like pointing and clicking… Don’t even get me started on the frustration that double-clicking brings to my life. But bit by bit it comes, and so… More often than not patience is rewarded.
In other news. Road-warrior Ian is on his way from Ghana. He’s in the middle of a 24 hour bus ride as I write this from Togo to Niamey, then about an 8 hour break before the 15 hour trip to Zinder. BADASS. Pumped though. Its gonna be great. Alright, I promise pictures next time.
That’s really it for the moment. My head is filled simultaneously with thoughts of grad school and with growing nostalgia about my time here. Again, there’s time left, four months, but its flown by so fast I’m afraid to blink for fear I’ll wake up back in the U.S. before saying my goodbyes.
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