Internship, a typical day, and an atypical surprise!

April 24^th, 2011

Just before sitting down to write a new blog post, I found an egg on my bed, on top of the mosquito net, with no idea how it got there. I asked my sister Mounasse about it and she told me that the chicken sometimes comes into the rooms and lays eggs there! Definitely an Easter surprise if ever there was one. In any case, we saved the egg and I thankfully didn’t sit on it or anything.

Time is really flying by, and I can hardly believe that I only have a week left in Potou, and then a week in Dakar after that. It’s going to be really difficult to say goodbye to my family, and already they are telling me that they’re going to miss me when I leave. I don’t want to think about that yet!! I’ve really grown close with my sisters. In addition, my communication skills have improved a whole lot since being here. My Wolof, though far from fluent, is passable, and I can usually get across what I want to say, and I can sometimes even follow conversations that my family members have between each other.

My internship is still unfortunately far from perfect. I feel like one of the major problems for me is lack of communication, and the fact that sometimes the people in positions of responsibility are not responsible at all. For example, my supervisor the principal, while a nice guy, doesn’t really have any idea what’s going on in the school, and doesn’t really tell me anything. The first Monday back from vacation, I came to school at 8 as always, and the principal told me I would be in M. Diallo’s class that day. Until that point I had been mostly just observing in classes and had taught once or twice. I get to class and sit down at a desk, thinking I will be just observing. Five minutes pass and M. Diallo isn’t there yet, and then it hits me: M. Diallo isn’t coming. I have to teach this class for two hours. I hadn’t made a lesson plan or anything, but fortunately I had some grammar review planned that I had done with the informal classes during the vacation. The class went well, despite my total lack of planning, but I was extremely frustrated with the principal afterwards.

Lack of communication seems to be a theme that has plagued my internship. I’ve had the most success communicating directly with the teachers themselves, but even then I sometimes come to class not sure if I will be just observing and occasionally helping or having the whole class to myself. For the past two weeks I’ve been trying to organize a computer training for the teachers of the primary school, and although the teachers seem to be supportive, it’s been very difficult to organize. We had it all set in place that I would conduct a training session today from 9-11 AM, so I woke up early, had breakfast, and made it to the primary school by 8:55. No one was there yet, so I waited (I’ve learned that I need to bring a book with me everywhere I go). No one showed up. I waited until 9:30 before calling the director of the primary school, who told me that the teachers were too tired from another seminar and decided not to come to the training today. However, no one thought to call me and tell me this news. It’s these organizational things that have been really frustrating, and I feel like I am often in the dark.

In addition, one of my internship frustrations has been the way that English is taught in the schools. It’s a very structured approach, and barely requires any effort or creativity on the part of the teacher. Every lesson is divided into Pre-Reading (vocabulary), While Reading (comprehension questions) and Post-Reading (grammar exercises, usually). The approach seems very canned and I don’t think it facilitates students learning very well. I know half the class probably can’t follow the lesson, but I also feel pressure from the teachers to follow this pedagogical method. In any case, there is no creativity involved. During the informal classes, I asked the students to write a story and they had a hard time stringing sentences together. One student literally paraphrased a passage from the book. I really wish that I could do more fun things with my classes, but the educational system is so structured that I don’t think the students would even understand what I was trying to do. I’m really glad that I got at least a little chance to do that with my informal classes, though. The students will remember more if they are having fun while learning, in my opinion. I taught them Rock, Paper, Scissors, and there are still students who come up to me and play it.

On a different tangent, let me describe one of my typical days in Potou:

7 AM: I wake up to my alarm or to a rooster crowing. It’s already light out, so I hop out of bed, use the pit toilet, wash my face and hands, and get dressed. Even though I have just rolled out of bed, I make sure to greet everyone I see, since it’s considered rude not to. This usually consists of “Bonjour!! Nelaw nga bu baax?” “Waaw! Nelaw naa bu baax!” (Did you sleep well? Yes, I slept very well!).

7:20-7:30 AM: Eat breakfast, which is café au lait (Nescafe, powdered milk, and sugar) and a huge piece of bread (we’re talking half a long baguette) with butter. The first few weeks I had a lot of trouble eating it all, but now I can scarf it down in five minutes flat…I think my stomach is expanding.

7:30-8 AM: Walk to school, either through the market (lots of people) or through the fields (less people, and better if I am running late).

8 AM- noon: Teach or help out in the classes

12:30 PM: Return home for my lunch break. Usually my sisters have already started making lunch, but sometimes we have to go to the boutique for miscellaneous items.

1-3: Help out cooking lunch, which is usually ceeb u weex (fish, sauce, vegetables, rice) or ceeb u xonq (same thing, but with tomato sauce). Alternately, I can drift in and out of the kitchen, and sometimes I will take this time to nap, lesson plan, or just hang out with my sisters.

Lunch: Anywhere from 2-4, we eat lunch. We have a communal bowl and I have been trying to learn to eat with my hands the way they do. There is a special technique to making a little ball of rice with your hands and shoveling it into your mouth without dropping any, which I am in the process of mastering. A few weeks ago I told my sisters I wanted to eat with them, and so now I always eat lunch and dinner with them, squeezed around a communal bowl with at least 10 other people! Even though it's crowded, I much prefer it to awkwardly eating alone with my father. I always get more than enough to eat, and sometimes my sisters will even go as far as to put food on my spoon while I am chewing.

3:30: Return to school

4-6: Afternoon class, sometimes with a break at 5 for prayer, but sometimes not (I’m not sure why this isn’t consistent).

6: Return home, rest a little bit, and take a shower if I didn’t take one during my lunch break. One thing that’s very different than the US is that the preferred shower time is during the afternoon, since the water is warmer. Also, all my sisters change clothes right after their shower, so they look snazzy at night, then they sleep in their clothes, and don’t change them again until their shower the next day. I always feel a little weird in the morning when I am wearing fresh clothes and they are all in their clothes from the night before! Also this is the time when I sometimes run errands with my sisters: to the boutique, to the mill, etc.

7 PM: Help with dinner, which is always delicious and doesn’t get boring. Sometimes we have savory things and sometimes we have sweet things, like laax or fonde, both of which are millet-based. Usually any dinner preparation involved a lot of pounding with a mortar and pestle and chopping vegetables, and these tasks are usually easy enough to be entrusted to me.

9 PM: Dinner! Again, usually around a communal bowl with the exception of a few dishes like fattaya, which are easier to serve individually.

9:30 PM: Hang out with my sisters and wait for someone to make attaaya, though usually I am pretty tired so I end up dozing off.

11 PM: Usually I will wait until I have had my first glass of attaaya before excusing myself to go to bed, while my sisters are still up.

11:30 PM: Use the internet if I have it, get ready for bed, and journal. I’m so proud of myself that I’ve been journaling every day, and now it would be weird to go to bed without it. I’m almost out of pages in my journal!

Midnight: Crawl into my mosquito net and go to sleep, only to start the whole thing over again the next day!

That’s all for now! It’s really hard to believe that I only have two weeks (now less!) left in Senegal.

Edited to add: This morning the chicken snuck into my room twice in the space of ten minutes, looking for its egg! It’s a reminder that I should probably keep my door firmly shut. Sneaky chicken.

An update from Potou!! Finally!

April 3^rd, 2011

Well, it’s been way too long since I’ve written a blog entry, but now I actually have a usable internet connection, so I figured I should write an update. I’m in the village of Potou, near the larger town of Louga in the northwest of Senegal. My internship here is with the CEM, which is the equivalent of a middle school, except that many students are as old as 18.

I was really nervous to come here and start my internship, especially given that I didn’t have the best experience with my family in Dakar, but my family here has been really great, on the whole. I have more siblings than I can count, and I’m not really sure which child belongs to whom since there are always a bunch of people running around. This makes it a little hard for me, as an introvert, because it’s very difficult for me to find any time to be alone. I have a whole lot of sisters, and they always have friends over, so I like hanging out with them. I’ve also been helping a lot with chores around the house, especially cooking. I want to learn how to cook all the yummy Senegalese dishes!

The food here is really wonderful, and I don’t think there has been one dish that I haven’t liked. Tonight we are having fattayas, which is one of my favorites: it’s sort of like a samosa with different spices, and you dip it in an onion sauce, which is delicious. Speaking of food, I am constantly being encouraged to eat, and my family doesn’t believe me when I say that I’m full. Every meal, I have to insist “Suur naa, neex na, bari na! Lekk naa ba suur!!!” which means, “I’m full, it was good and a lot! I ate until I was full.” It’s a little exhausting, though, and I know that I am probably gaining a lot of weight (which is what my family wants). They told me that when I go back to Dakar, they will be proud of me because I’ve gained weight, which is exactly the opposite of what Americans want, usually. One odd thing about meals, though, is that often I eat lunch or dinner with just my father, which is a little uncomfortable since it’s a lot more formal than eating with my sisters, and he always tells me “Arame…añal.” Or “Arame…reeral.” Arame is my Senegalese name here, and añal and reeral mean, respectively, “eat lunch!” and “eat dinner!” I have to respond “Maangiy añ!” or “Maangiy reer!”: “I’m eating!!” We usually have a communal bowl, instead of indvidual plates like in Dakar, but that makes it a lot easier for my parents or my sisters to push food towards my side. Anyway, I much prefer eating with my sisters but sometimes they tell me that I have to eat with my father. Here, eating alone is a sign of respect, so I guess eating with my father is also a sign of respect, but it’s still a little awkward sometimes.

Another food-related update: we make attaaya (Senegalese tea), at least once, usually twice and sometimes three times a day. I love attaaya and we barely made it at all in Dakar, but it has so much sugar that I’m sure I’m getting some cavities. Also, the order that the attaaya is served in also seems to have to do with respect. My parents are always served first, then me, since I am a guest, and then my siblings, usually the older ones first. The person making the tea always drinks last. I’ve tried to make it once or twice but I always end up spilling most of the tea, since you have to pour it from a height of about a foot in order to get a good foam on the top, and I’m not very good at pouring.

My internship here hasn’t been great, mostly because there is not much for me to do. My boss, the principal, doesn’t really have his act together, and he doesn’t really know what’s going on. The first week of my internship went pretty well. I sat in on some English classes and was able to teach a little bit. It’s really difficult to teach English to non-native speakers, and the level of the students is very low. I feel like something is not right with the way that English is being taught here, because I worked with students who had been studying for three years and they had trouble forming sentences. One thing that I have noticed is that there is not much review of concepts, and so students are being introduced to complicated grammar structures when they don’t even know the basics. My students couldn’t name all the colors in English, and they had trouble with ABCs and counting.

So, the first week went pretty well, but at the end of it, my boss told me that the next week we would start a two week long vacation because of the Independence Day holidays. I was very clear with him that since I am only here for six weeks, I wanted to keep busy even when everyone else is on vacation, but he basically just told me that there is nothing to do, and I should have a nice vacation. This really frustrated me, and I tried to figure out something that I could do at the primary school, but they basically told me the same thing. On the phone, they had said that there would be work for me to do, but then when I went there to check it out, they basically told me the same thing, have a nice vacation. Culturally, I think it’s more acceptable to say yes even when there is no work for me to do. I was given the key to the office to go and “work” but no one told me what work I should do!

Anyway, the first couple of days of the break were nice, but I honestly had nothing to do at the office. There isn’t a library and there is only one computer, so I couldn’t really help there. However, with the help of Waly, our MSID staff member, and my host father, we were able to organize informal English lessons during the break. They are at my house, and we have been getting together for two hours every weekday afternoon. I like this a lot better than teaching lessons at school, when I feel like there is a very rigid structure to follow and there are so many students in each class that I don’t really know what to do with them. However, in the informal lessons, there have been only five to nine students who have shown up, so we are more able to play games without everything getting out of hand. Even nine students is a lot to control when you are trying to play a game like “Simon says.” They like playing Simon Says a lot, but they have a lot of energy!!

On Friday, I was really proud of my students because I think they started to grasp a grammar concept that had shown up on their exam, but that they had not done well on. I made them a chart for declarative, interrogative, and negative statements in the past and present tenses, and I told them that literally, you can just follow the chart when you are trying to form a sentence. Charts and tables help me a lot, and they were especially helpful for Wolof, so I thought they might like the visual help, whereas earlier they just had to memorize. Honestly, I don’t think the system of teaching English is super great, and the book, while geared towards Senegalese students, seems not to take certain things into account. For example, the students were learning the English words for badminton and hockey, when they had no idea how these sports were even played.

Another thing that has been really difficult for me here is how different the concept of ownership is, and how I do have a lot more money than anyone here. Last week, I lent my brothers my iPod, thinking that it was a nice gesture, but since then they haven’t stopped asking me for it. While I like my family on the whole, many of them have been subtly or not-so-subtly implying that when I leave, I should give them the iPod, because I have enough money to buy another one back in the US. The thing is, it’s true that I don’t really need an iPod, and I was actually thinking that it might be nice to give it to my family when I leave. However, the fact of them asking for it made me immediately not want to. I guess it’s a cultural difference: here, if you want something you make it known, while in the US, you keep your mouth shut. Also, giving after being asked for something feels more like an obligation rather than a real gift.

On the subject of ownership, things here are definitely shared more, which can be a hard thing for toubabs to deal with. For example, my sister Mounasse asked me to borrow my shoes to go to the market. After that, my shoes sort of became public property, and I have seen at least half the women in my family wearing them. If one person has something, it belongs to everyone in the family. I’m struggling with my own cultural background, too, which tells me, “Those shoes are mine!” even if it is just a $2 pair of shoes that I will probably end up giving to the family anyway. One interesting insight: in the US, it seems like one of the first words children learn is “mine” or “no,” whereas here, it seems to be “mai ma,” which means “give me” or “offer to me.”

Finally, I’ll try to give you a little portrait of my family, as best as I can. There’s my father Saer and mother Awa, who I would guess are in their 50s. My father speaks French pretty fluently, but my mother barely at all. I have a whole lot of siblings, and though they aren’t all children of my parents, it’s easier for me to think of it that way. In fact, it’s very possible that they youngest ones are the children of the oldest ones. There’s Fa-Cisse, who is 4 and is very “reew,” or impolite, according to everyone in the family. She is a little rambunctious and whenever you have food, she will drop everything she’s doing and demand “mai ma!” Baymoor is probably 8, and though he doesn’t speak any French, he always gives me a high five when I come home and I like to act a little silly with him. He’s a little shy, though. Nogoye is about 11 and is already so much more competent than I am in everything concerning housework. I often go with her to the market and we went once to the mill to grind millet, so she has been able to show me the ropes a little bit. Sokhna is probably 12 or 13, and she loves to dance. We have fun dancing the youza together and generally being silly. Arame is my homonym (we are both named Arame Gueye), is 14 or 15, and has been such a big help to me here. She and Mounasse (17) have helped me feel more at home here. Arame also is kind of my mother sometimes, in that she always makes me eat a lot, and she is always trying to make sure that I am comfortable. Mounasse, or Maimouna, also helps me out a lot, and we usually go the market together every morning. She has a lot of copains (boyfriends) and is trying to find me a Senegalese copain, despite my pleas that I’m not looking for one. Kapy is also 17, and he always makes a lot of attaaya. Arame, Mounasse and Kapy have also been coming to my English lessons! Mami is probably 20, doesn’t speak a lot of French, and often does a lot of the housework, but she is really willing to help me out, too. She jokes that I am “Baby Arame,” as opposed to my sister, the other Arame. My brother Boss is 20 as well, but I don’t feel as comfortable around him, since I feel like our only interactions consist of him asking me to give him things, or him demanding me to dance. A side note: everyone here thinks that it’s HILARIOUS when I dance, no matter what it is. I nearly caused a riot in one of my classes because they were begging me to dance the youza. Anyway, Faou is another one of my sisters, and she is probably about 22. She speaks almost no French so we have a lot of trouble communicating, but she has been really nice to me and makes sure that I speak to all of her relatives on the phone (which is another ordeal all together! I can barely speak in French on the phone, much less Wolof). I don’t know how old Misse is, but she is definitely older than Faou and may be Fa-Cisse’s mother (not sure on that). She is also usually nice to me, but always tell me that I have a lot of money, and that I need to send her money or things when I get back to the US, which makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Thiambou is another one of my siblings as well, though she is only here for the vacation. She is a teacher in Podor, in the north of Senegal, and she is the one who lent me the Internet key. She is quite loud and bossy but in a likeable way, and she has also helped me by explaining things to me, even if it’s something I already know about. In addition to all of these people, there are always others hanging around! So it’s a lot of people to know and greet every day. In Senegal, and especially in villages, if you pass someone you know on the street without greeting them, it’s considered an insult. This has been quite hard since I’ve met so many people in the last two weeks and have trouble keeping straight who I know and who I don’t know.

That’s all for now! I’ll try to write more but it’s hard to find time alone to use my computer. In any case, I’ve been keeping a pen and paper journal so maybe I can post some retroactive updates once I’m back in Dakar.